360°Sound spoke with veteran film producer Frank Marshall, co-director with Ryan Suffern of the new documentary Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story. The film, which made its world premiere at SXSW in Austin, Texas on March 16, documents the 2019 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, marking the 50th anniversary of the storied festival. Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story is the first theatrical documentary feature about the fest, which occurs every year (save for the last two due to the pandemic) over eight days in late April and early May. The doc includes interviews and performance footage of such acts as Jimmy Buffett, Wynton Marsalis, Bruce Springsteen, and Earth, Wind, & Fire.
In a film career spanning over 50 years, Marshall has produced dozens of hugely successful films, including Raiders of the Lost Ark, Back to the Future, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. His last documentary feature as director was the acclaimed The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart. In this exclusive interview, Marshall talks about the challenges that came with shooting, what makes Jazz Fest unique, the symbolic 2006 Springsteen set, and more. Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story is slated for a theatrical release in May or June.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
360°Sound: How’d the documentary come about?
Frank Marshall: Back in the summer of 2018, I was introduced to [festival producer] Quint Davis by my good friend Jimmy Buffett. Quint and I started talking about Jazz Fest and he said, ‘We’ve got our 50th anniversary coming up. We’re thinking about filming it.’ I said, ‘Sounds like a great idea.’ We started putting together the plan to shoot the festival and turn it into a documentary, not just a historical recording.
A lot of performers were interviewed, including Jimmy Buffett, Earth, Wind & Fire, and Pitbull, illustrating what a musically diverse festival it is. It’s much more than just jazz.
What’s great about the festival, although there is jazz, is there’s every other kind of music you could imagine. There’s the culture, the food, and just so much going on at this festival which makes it so great. You’ve got blues, gospel, zydeco, rock, rhythms, poets, brass bands. It’s really a potpourri of all kinds of entertainment. I think that’s what makes it so special.
It was a real challenge for us as documentary filmmakers because there’s only eight days of the festival and we want to cover the performances of these great acts – everyone from Earth, Wind & Fire to Pitbull to Preservation Hall Jazz Band to Jimmy Buffett to Katy Perry. We also want to interview them. You don’t want to bother them when they’re about to go on stage, so it was really a scheduling challenge for us.
We split it into two groups and [co-director] Ryan Suffern and I directed every other day with one of us covering interviews while the other covered the festival and vice versa. A couple of times he’d be on one stage while they were performing while I’d be on another. We had three separate camera crews all shooting IMAX cameras, which is cool because not only is it gonna sound great, it’s gonna look great. We had a place that was away from the festival, mainly because of the noise, where we could shoot the interviews.
In addition to the diversity of music, what are some defining characteristics of Jazz Fest that make it unlike other festivals?
First off, you can’t go to everything, so as you’re wandering through the festival, you’ll go, ‘Oh, what’s that?’ You see an arts and crafts tent and you go and see this wonderful art. Most of the performers and exhibits and art and culture are from Louisiana or have a connection to Louisiana, which really makes it different.
When you’re walking around you can’t help but get drawn to something you’ve never seen or heard before. You might wind up in the gospel tent and there you’re staying for a couple of hours because of the incredible, electric group up there, and you just get mesmerized by the things you see and hear.
Festival founder George Wein passed away last fall. Talk about the importance of being able to include his comments.
Wein came from the Newport Jazz Festival. He came to New Orleans and then founded with Quint Davis the original festival in 1970. One of the great things about documentaries is you get to dive into archival footage, and it was so cool to find footage of [Wein] back in 1970 with [gospel singer] Mahalia Jackson and then have him comment on it. To get that full circle of 50 years and being able to talk to him was pretty special.
What was the experience like diving into the rich musical and cultural history of New Orleans and then synthesizing it into the doc?
We just didn’t want it to be a concert doc. We wanted to show the history and the heritage and everything that goes into making New Orleans such a special place. Jazz Fest has really been ambitious and very resilient. It’s survived all kinds of things, like hurricanes, and finally it succumbed to COVID in its 51st year.
We just wanted to show how unique the festival was, so we had all this great archival footage with B.B. King and all these other performances, several of whom were there in 2019. It was very cool to be able to capture that when they’re young like Irma Thomas and Al Green and then show them in 2019 full circle. That really made it a much fuller documentary where we could talk about things that happened in the past and had the footage.
I was there for the Bruce Springsteen & Seeger Sessions performance in 2006, the first festival after Hurricane Katrina decimated the area. That performance was truly unforgettable and emotional. Talk about your decision to include that in the doc.
That was a very important moment in the festival when Katrina hit. It wasn’t only about the comeback of the festival, it really became a symbol of the comeback for the city of New Orleans. And the fact that everybody rallied and came together told the world that the city was healing. With Springsteen’s performance there, you could just feel it.
We were fortunate enough to get the footage and have a wonderful interview with Bruce where he talks about it being one of his most special concerts. It’s the feeling you get from seeing the people come together and support the city that was so special, so we really wanted to show that.
What are your hopes for the film?
What I really am happy about is that Sony Classics is waiting to put this up on the big screen. We’ve been pushing back our release date until we know people are going back to the movie theaters. For me, this is my first picture in two years that’s going to be on the movie screen. As much as I like to have people see our work, this one really needs to be seen and heard in a movie theater. I’m thrilled we’re having our world premiere at SXSW and people will get to see and hear it the way it was meant to be.
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