It's A Shame About "Ray"

[Jahfin]

I had wondered about this myself, particularly since it seemed to come out so quickly following his death (which was overshadowed at the time by the passing of Ronald Raygun). It's good to know Ray at least had a little say in it but sad to see they "Made-For-TV-ized" what could have been a much more compelling movie.


from
Slate.com, http://slate.msn.com/id/2108507/).

*****************

It's a Shame About Ray
Why must biopics sentimentalize their subjects?

By David Ritz


Ray, the new biopic directed by Taylor Hackford, satisfies in some
wonderful ways: Jamie Foxx miraculously embodies Ray's soul; Ray's own
musical voice sounds bigger and better than ever; and several of the
supporting performances--Sharon Warren as Ray's mom and Regina King as
Margie Hendricks--are heartfelt and powerful. The problem, though, is
that Ray is a saccharine movie while Ray himself was anything but a
saccharine man. He was a raging bull. Sentimentalizing his story may
make box office sense, but, to my mind, it trivializes the compelling
complexity of his character.

For example, the film focuses on Ray's relationship with his mother,
Aretha. Yet the truth is that Ray had two mothers. According to what Ray
told me and insisted we include in Brother Ray, an autobiography that I
co-authored in 1978, two women dominated his early years: his biological
mother, Aretha, and a woman named Mary Jane, one of his father's former
wives. "I called Aretha 'Mama' and Mary Jane 'Mother,' " wrote Ray.
After her 6-year-old son went blind, Aretha fostered his independence,
while Mary Jane indulged him. For the rest of his life Ray was as
fiercely self-reliant as he was self-indulgent. Two dynamic women, two
radically different approaches to his sightlessness--you can imagine the
impact on his character. Ray ignores this phenomenon completely.

Ray tries to explain Ray's blues--the angst in his heart--in heavy-handed
Freudian terms. At age 5, Ray helplessly watched his younger brother,
George, drown. The film insists that the guilt Ray felt for failing to
rescue George is responsible for the dark side of his soul. Once the
guilt is lifted, the adult Ray is not only free from his heroin habit
but is liberated--in a treacly flashback--from his emotional turmoil.
George's death was certainly traumatic for the young Ray, yet the only
time Ray suffered what he termed a nervous breakdown had neither to do
with the drowning nor the loss of his sight a year later. "It's the
death of my mother Aretha," he told me, "that had me reeling. For days I
couldn't talk, think, sleep or eat. I was sure-enough going crazy." That
the film fails to dramatize the scene--we learn of Aretha's death in a
quick aside from Ray to his wife-to-be--misses the crucial heartbreak of
his early life. It happened when Ray was 15, living at a school for the
blind 160 miles from home. "I knew my world had ended," he said. The
further fact that Ray fails to include a single scene from his
extraordinary educational experience is another grievous oversight. It
was at that state school where he was taught to read Braille, play
Chopin, write arrangements, learn piano and clarinet, start to sing, and
discover sex. Ray shows none of that. Such scenes would have been far
more illuminating than the unexciting story, which the film does
include, of Ray changing managers in midcareer.

The minor characters are another major problem. Take David "Fathead"
Newman, the saxophonist who, for over a decade, was Ray's closest
musical and personal peer. In Ray, David is portrayed as little more
than a loudmouthed junkie. While drugs were part of the bond between
David and Ray, the key to their relationship was an extraordinary
musical rapport. In real life, David is a soft-spoken, gentle man of few
words. As Ray was boisterous, David was shy. Both were brought up on
bebop. Like Lester Young/Billie Holiday or Thelonious Monk/Charlie
Rouse, they complemented each other in exquisitely sensitive fashion. We
neither see nor hear any of this in Ray. And while Hackford features a
great number of Ray's hits, he ignores the jazz side of Ray's musical
makeup. There's virtually no jazz in Ray, while in real life jazz sat at
the center of Ray's soul.

If Fathead is painfully misrepresented, Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler,
owners of Atlantic Records, suffer a similar fate. Among the most
colorful characters in the colorful history of the music business, they
are reduced to stereotypes. We don't get a glimpse of their quirky
sophistication, sharp intellect, or salty wit. Same goes for Mary Ann
Fisher, the first female singer to join Ray's band. Mary Ann was an
engaging character--sometimes endearing, sometimes infuriating. In Ray
she's just a manipulative tart.

Finally, though, Ray is about Ray, and its attempt to define his
character. In many ways, the definition is accurate. Foxx brilliantly
captures Ray's energy and contradictions. Yet those contradictions are
not allowed to stand. The contradictions must be resolved, Ray must live
happily ever after. The finale implies that, for all his promiscuity, he
is back with Della, the true love of his life, and that, with his heroin
habit behind him, it's smooth sailing ahead. The paradoxical strands of
his life are tied up into a neat package, honoring the hackneyed biopic
formula with a leave-'em-smiling Hollywood ending.

The truth is far more complex and far more interesting. Ray's womanizing
ways continued. His marriage to Della ended in a difficult divorce in
1976. And while he never again got high on heroin, he found, in his own
terms, "a different buzz to keep me going." For the rest of his life he
unapologetically drank large quantities of gin every day and smoked
large quantities of pot every night. While working on his autobiography
he told me, "Just like smack never got in the way of my working, same
goes for booze and reefer. What I do with my own body is my own
business." Ray maintained this attitude until his health deteriorated.
In 2003 he told me that he had been diagnosed with alcoholic liver
disease and hepatitis C. "If I knew I was going to live this long," he
added with an ironic smile, "I would have taken better care of myself."
Whatever Ray was--headstrong, joyful, courageous, cranky--he was hardly a
spokesman for sobriety.

The producers of Ray make much of the fact that Ray himself endorsed the
movie. That's certainly true. He wanted a successful crossover movie to
mirror his successful crossover music. He participated and helped in any
way he could. In one of our last discussions, Ray reminded me that the
process of trying to sell Hollywood began 26 years ago when
producer-director Larry Schiller optioned his story. Since then there
have been dozens of false starts. It wasn't until his son, Ray Jr.,
producer Stuart Benjamin, and director Hackford stayed on the case that
cameras rolled.

"Hollywood is a cold-blooded motherfucker," said Ray. "It's easier to
bone the President's wife than to get a movie made. So I say God bless
these cats. God bless Benjamin and Hackford and Ray Jr. Weren't for
them, this would never happen. And now that it's happening, maybe I'll
have a better chance of being remembered. I can't ask for anything more."

David Ritz is the co-author of Brother Ray with Ray Charles, and Sexual
Healing with Marvin Gaye, in addition to memoirs with B.B. King, Etta
James, Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson, and the Neville Brothers.

[RinglingRingling]

The only drawback is that Taylor Hackford is pretty much a hack director. I can't think of one film he has made that has been a "warts and all" storytelling.

[SchoolGirlHeart]

While I agree that it's regrettable that Ray Charles's death was overshadowed by the death of a former president, you could at least have the respect to spell Ronald Reagan correctly.

[RinglingRingling]

While I agree that it's regrettable that Ray Charles's death was overshadowed by the death of a former president, you could at least have the respect to spell Ronald Reagan correctly.

Ron probably wouldn't remember how to spell it correctly either...

[Jahfin]

While I agree that it's regrettable that Ray Charles's death was overshadowed by the death of a former president, you could at least have the respect to spell Ronald Reagan correctly.

I have a great amount of respect for Reagan but spelling his name "Raygun" is no different than those that refer to Richard Nixon as "Tricky Dick" or to Clinton as "Slick Willie", make up your own jokes at home.

I still may see Ray but I'm not nearly as excited about it as I once was. I have been on the lookout for his much heralded "Modern Sounds of Country and Western Music" but it doesn't seem to be one the local record stores like to keep in stock.

[meisinger]

I have been on the lookout for his much heralded "Modern Sounds of Country and Western Music" but it doesn't seem to be one the local record stores like to keep in stock.

Aside from compilations, that's the one I see the most. Keep looking. When you track it down, you will be glad.

[msu#1]

I was excited this was a discussion about the Lemonheads