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LIGHTNING STRIKES FOR ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS’ THUNDER SOUL : Jamie Foxx to present award-winning documentary

Posted Friday, February 4th, 2011 - Comments Off on LIGHTNING STRIKES FOR ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS’ THUNDER SOUL : Jamie Foxx to present award-winning documentary
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LOS ANGELES, February 4, 2011 – Much as Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry were inspired to put their weight behind last year’s Oscar contender Precious, Jamie Foxx has jumped on board to present one of this year’s most uplifting, crowd-pleasing music documentaries, Thunder Soul.

Nominated for Best Documentary at the upcoming Spirit Awards, and winner of 2010 Audience Awards at South by Southwest, the Los Angeles Film Festival, the Dallas International Film Festival, the Aspen Film Festival and Toronto’s Hot Docs Festival, Thunder Soul follows the extraordinary alumni from Houston’s storied Kashmere High School Stage Band, who return home after 35 years to play a tribute concert for the 92-year-old Conrad “Prof” Johnson, their beloved band leader who broke the color barrier and transformed the school’s struggling jazz band into a world-class funk powerhouse in the early 1970s.

Foxx, a Texas-native himself and an outspoken advocate of music education in schools, heard about the film after its South by Southwest premiere, and sought it out immediately. “I can’t wait to share Thunder Soul with the world so that everyone can enjoy this one-of-a-kind experience,” said Foxx.  “It’s such an entertaining and inspirational story that touches your soul and awakens the human spirit in the way that only love and the power of music can.”

“Having Jamie Foxx on board with us is incredible,” said Roadside Attractions co-president Eric d’Arbeloff, “and his enthusiasm and excitement for the movie is palpable. We couldn’t be happier that he’s mentoring the film in the same way that “Prof” mentored his Kashmere High music students to greatness.”

Snoot Entertainment’s Keith Calder and Jessica Wu produced Thunder Soul along with director Mark Landsman.  Foxx will present Thunder Soul, and will serve as executive producer, along with his FoxxKing Entertainment partner Jaime King.

In addition to the multiple Audience Awards it has won, Thunder Soul received the Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 2010 Indie Memphis Film Festival and was the Heartland Film Festival’s 2010 Crystal Heart Award recipient. The film was also nominated for the International Documentary Association’s Music Award.

Roadside Attractions, which scored big with such docs as Chris Rock’s comedic Good Hair, R.J. Cutler’s The September Issue, Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize Me and the Academy Award-winning The Cove, plans a September release.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon