Collaborating on ‘Ray’

Director Taylor Hackford had a vision, 15 years in the making’to bring the story of Ray Charles to the big screen. ”But when it was time for his vision finally to come to fruition, he couldn’t do it himself, he needed the help of many collaborators, including three Palisadians who played key behind-the-scenes roles: casting director Nancy Klopper, music supervisor Curt Sobel and editor Paul Hirsch. ”’Ray,’ which opened on Friday, tells the story of Charles’ life through music, focusing on the years from age 17 to 35, with flashbacks to his childhood before and after he lost his sight at age 7. The movie tells about his innovation of blending gospel music with rhythm and blues, his struggles with heroin, his marriage and the affairs he had on the road, his business acumen as his career took off, and his role in the civil rights movement. ”Because the film was independently produced, and acquired by Universal only after it was completed, the creative team had an unusual degree of independence on the project. ”’The casting works and it’s so fresh because no studio was involved and no one dictated to us whom we had to cast; we got to cast whomever we wanted,’ said Klopper, who has been collaborating with Hackford since 1982’s ‘An Officer and a Gentleman.’ ”When Hackford sent an e-mail, telling her she should start thinking about a Ray Charles movie, Klopper went to see ‘Any Given Sunday.’ ‘Jamie Foxx had a supporting role and he popped off the screen. It happened again in ‘Ali.’ He pops out of the movie.’ ”Later, the producers were also interested in Foxx, and Hackford said to Klopper, ‘You’ll never guess who they’re talking about to play Ray.’ ‘It didn’t surprise me,’ said Klopper, who called the casting of Foxx a great idea that occurred to several people simultaneously. ”Fortuitously, Foxx is a classically trained pianist and talented singer. Although Ray Charles’ own piano playing is heard throughout the film, Foxx’s skill was vital for authenticity in the music scenes. ”Foxx worked closely with Curt Sobel, who was present, along with Hackford, at the first meeting between Foxx and Charles, where Charles ‘gave his blessing’ to the hiring of Foxx. ”The two sat down at the piano side by side while Sobel shot footage of them with his digital video camera. ‘Ray was testing him and playing a very difficult phrase from ‘Straight, No Chaser’ by Thelonious Monk. Jamie was struggling at first, trying to figure out the notes. They went back and forth and when Jamie got it, Ray stood up, cheering, hugging himself and saying ‘That’s my boy. He’s got it.’ It was a validation of Jamie in Ray’s eyes.’ ”’Ray approved the script [by James L. White],’ said Klopper. ‘The one thing that was most important to him was the portrayal of his mother.’ ”The casting of that actress, Sharon Warren, was a true Cinderella story, said Klopper, who calls casting ‘an instinctual craft.’ Klopper was working in Los Angeles while the location casting director she had hired, Mark Fincannon, was working in Georgia, where the movie was originally going to be filmed, before it later moved to Louisiana. ”Warren, who had worked only in local theater in Atlanta, happened upon the auditions for ‘Ray,’ and walked in without an appointment. ‘Mark Fincannon gave her scenes and told her to come back tomorrow,’ Klopper recalled. ‘She was so green, she had her back to the camera at first. He FedExed me the videotape. It was so unbelievable to see her raw power and raw intensity. ”’There’s a plethora of gifted African-American actors and not enough great parts for them. It’s exciting to let great actors do their thing,’ said Klopper, who sees every movie that comes out in her search for acting talent. ‘People just wanted to be in this movie, there’s such a reverence for Ray Charles.’ Other major parts she cast were the important women in Charles’ life, his wife Della Bea, played by Kerry Washington and his lovers; singer Mary Ann Fisher, played by Aunjanue Ellis, and Raelette Margie Hendricks, played by Regina King ”Another fun part of the casting process for Klopper was having many of the actors who would play performers sing during the audition, even if their voices wouldn’t actually be heard in the film. ‘They had to really look like they knew how to sing, they had to really be performers.’ ”Sobel, who has also been a trusted collaborator of Hackford’s since ‘An Officer and a Gentleman,’ met with Charles three times. ‘We needed music that was not available on recordings, such as a young Ray playing and singing ‘I Got a Woman’ for the first time. Ray worked with us for a week and came up with wonderful new recordings that we used primarily at the beginning of the picture.’ ”Sobel worked with Charles to find other recordings such as a live performance of ‘What’d I Say’ from Charles’ vaults. For authenticity, he asked Charles for his sheet music for some of his songs, so the musicians onscreen could play the original arrangements. At the beginning of his career, before he found his own musical voice, Charles made a living imitating Nat King Cole and other singers. For those scenes, Foxx sang the vocals along with Charles’ piano tracks, since Charles in his 70s couldn’t replicate that youthful voice. ”Lip-syncing was a particular challenge for Foxx, Sobel said, because the vocals weren’t separate from the music. ‘Jamie had to nail both the vocal and piano playing during actual shooting. Taylor and I scrutinized every take, judging the synching with the music track.” ”’There was a tremendous amount of music for Jamie to learn,’ Sobel continued. ‘It would have been overwhelming to give him all of the material to learn up front. So weekly I made a CD for him. Then, in between shots, camera and set changes, Jamie and I were at the piano, with headphones, as he practiced the hand movements for the upcoming musical scenes.’ ”Although most of the filming took place in New Orleans, Sobel found a trumpet coach in the Palisades, Larry Newman. ‘Larenz Tate, who plays Quincy Jones in the film, came over one evening. He’d never picked up a trumpet before. Larry coached him and taught him how to finger the song.’ ”Sobel even had a small part in the movie, conducting the orchestra for ‘Georgia on My Mind.’ He previously had appeared once as a conductor in ‘Cast a Deadly Spell,’ for which he won an Emmy for his song ‘Why Do I Lie?’ ”To make the film more believable, director/producer Hackford had Foxx wear prosthetics over his eyes for 12 to 14 hours during filming. ‘I asked him to go blind for the role,’ said Hackford, who wanted Foxx to not be able to anticipate things, and to bring the experience of blindness to his acting. ”’During looping [dialogue enhancement during post-production], Foxx was shocked when he saw the film, because he’d never seen his fellow actors in makeup and costume,’ recalled Paul Hirsch. ”For Hirsch, the biggest challenge in editing ‘Ray’ was to shorten the first cut from 3 hours 20 minutes down to the final 2 hours 25 minutes. ‘It wasn’t a question of throwing out scenes which didn’t work, we had to take out good material. There was no confusion or bad performances to cut around. In editing, you always have to consider the whole: imagine if the Parthenon had four more rows of columns, it would still be a beautiful building but it might look odd because the proportions wouldn’t be right’just as in a film, you try to find a form that’s suitable. ”’It’s still rather long, but it’s a very comprehensive portrait of a man’s real life, the struggles he had with drug addiction, his personal life, blindness, his artistic life, his business life, how he managed to succeed in a difficult world, where people were trying to take advantage of him. ”’Taylor gave me complete freedom on the first cut,’ said Hirsch, who won the 1978 Oscar for editing ‘Star Wars’ along with Marcia Lucas and fellow Palisadian Richard Chew ‘My approach to the first cut is to make it as close to the script as possible, which, to me, is logically the best starting place. You make choices as an editor, and the director either endorses your choices, or asks for changes to bring it closer to his sensibility. The director is the one who gets to say, ‘This is the way I’d like it to be’ and I am there to help him get what he wants.’ ”Working with Hackford for the first time, Hirsch joined the project six weeks into the filming after the original editor left due to some personal problems, and Hackford was very pleased with Hirsch’s work. ”’He told me that he could feel what I was shooting, that the footage was speaking to him, that he understood what I was trying for,’ Hackford told the Palisadian-Post. ‘I was terribly nervous before looking at his cut but when I saw it I immediately started to relax. He really did see what I had intended. Paul has intelligence, combined with a sense of music and movement.’ ”Charles was given a video of the rough cut of the movie which he listened to on a TV set in his office with poor sound quality. Although he was happy with the dramatic scenes, the filmmakers were hoping to play the movie for him on a sound stage with high-quality speakers, but he became too ill before that could happen. ”Final dubbing on the film was finished in early February and Charles passed away on June 11. ”’The timing of this film, being something Taylor wanted to do for so many years, the fact that he eventually got this going in the final years of Charles’ life is truly incredible,’ said Sobel. ‘Taylor’s brought this great story of this great performer to the screen and to the world.’ ”Hackford equally admires his Palisades collaborators. ‘They all three are really dear to my heart,’ he said. ‘You’re not a painter at an easel, or a writer at a typewriter. These three along with a lot of other people, they all go into making the film that you see. You forge bonds that turn into filial love.’