00:00I will say that probably In Time on Fresh is my favorite Sly song, but it's hard to say because he has so many gems.
00:11You know my favorite.
00:13Oh, God. Why do you like Time for Living?
00:15No, not Time for Living. My favorite favorite is Family Fair.
00:18Oh, okay.
00:19We were editing Summer Soap and Sly and the Family Stone was who we were editing.
00:30And in my head, I was like, wow, Sly doesn't know that 10 days from this very performance,
00:36his life is going to completely shift upside down.
00:39And what happens in the next four years after Woodstock should be one for the history books.
00:47And I'm just kind of saying like, man, that's the documentary we really should be doing.
00:53And literally 24 hours later, out of nowhere, of all people, Common calls me.
00:59It's like, yeah, I've written Variety.
01:00Y'all doing that Black Woodstock film.
01:03Hey, you interested in Sly and the Family Stone?
01:06Because he's in that Woodstock film, right?
01:08And literally I thought like, you know, Siri was giving me away or whatever.
01:12I'm like, I literally just said this to those guys yesterday that this is what we need to be doing.
01:17So the project found us, for this one, it's a roller coaster of storytelling as far as emotions are concerned.
01:27I think one of the biggest differences with this film versus Summer of Soul is it's not a particular time and place.
01:35It's one person's story across 50 years.
01:39And I think, you know, I think one of the hardest things that we had to do was like, how much of the story, you know, do we put in the movie?
01:4850 years is a lot to cram into two hours.
01:50And so I think the challenge of making those choices is part of what the fun part was.
01:55You know, that part of that acquiring his rights was his blessing, right?
02:00We couldn't interview him for this film because his health problems prevent him from, and it just wouldn't be good to put him on camera.
02:07And that's kind of how the title came about, right?
02:10It's like whether he's here in physical form or not, because we weren't sure, you know, if he would still be alive.
02:16That's how we finished the movie.
02:17Whether he's here in physical form or not, his music lives on, his influence lives on.
02:24We showed him the film at the end as a courtesy.
02:28And through his manager and caretaker, she said that he loved it and was very proud.
02:34And then, you know, Thursday night we had our premiere here.
02:37And the three kids, his three kids were here and they were seeing it for the first time.
02:42And that was such a special feeling.
02:43I don't know if you got a chance to talk to Novena after, but she was like, there's things in there that I didn't know about my father.
02:48For me, the best part of this process was going through the hundreds and hundreds of hours of reels of music,
02:56listening to alternate takes, listening to songs morph drastically into what we now know it as,
03:08but starting off totally different, squabbles with the engineer,
03:12sly, playfully chastising band members, you know, it was, it's like a music freaks, ideal fly on the wall situation.
03:28So that said, I mean, that people know, you know,
03:37I will say that probably In Time on Fresh is my favorite sly song,
03:46but it's, it's hard to say because he has so many gyms.
03:49You know, my favorite.
03:51Oh God, why do you like Time for Living?
03:53No, not Time for Living, my favorite favorite is Family Affair.
03:56Oh, okay.
03:57And what's funny is that song is so short, the version that's out in the world is like three minutes long.
04:03So when we were putting together the soundtrack, Amir did an edit of that song
04:07that sort of mimics a little bit the original version, which is like four minutes and 50 seconds.
04:13Yeah, almost five minutes.
04:14Yeah, almost five minutes.
04:15Yeah, that was pretty cool.
04:17How Amir and I even know each other is I was a music journalist.
04:21And in 1996, I got assigned a story on The Roots that would be my first cover story.
04:26It was also the first time The Roots were on a cover of an American music magazine.
04:29I got flown to Philadelphia to interview them and that's how we met and we clicked right away
04:35because at his heart, Amir is a fan, but also I think deep down inside wanted to be a music journalist.
04:44He knew what pieces I had written, what reviews I had written.
04:47And for many years after that meeting, we would argue about rap records.
04:51And it's really kind of incredible to work with one of your musical heroes,
04:58but it's also really kind of incredible to see Amir on the other side now being the storyteller
05:03and getting to sort of fulfill that dream.
05:05So that's a real joy for me.
05:07It's also us being in a place where we want to be the change that we want to see.
05:13And oftentimes you'll see, you know, like music documents, not to put anyone that's ever attempted
05:22because there's some music documentaries that are life-changing,
05:25but more often than not, it's just, you know, typical talking head says,
05:31that's incredible and you just, you know, you got to teach people why something's incredible,
05:37put it in proper context.
05:39And that's the fun part.
05:40I think that's the difference between our level of storytelling is you could immediately
05:48tell that music is like our wheelhouse, our passion in the shows.
05:53There's a scene in the movie where we break down dance to the music.
05:57And, you know, I think very intentionally we wanted to give the viewer and the audience
06:02the tools to see why that was such a, why it's such a catchy song,
06:07but also why it's very sophisticated and what, what, what slide did that isn't easy to replicate
06:12and having Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and Niall Rogers who, you know,
06:17break down exactly the parts of the song and why it's catchy.
06:20Like that kind of part of the storytelling is really exciting.
06:26And I think that's the thing, at least I, I think Amir would agree,
06:30is we, we take that technique, that'll probably be used in future documentaries we do.
06:37We take that technique, I think.
Comments