How SOUL got made, by Bob Blagden.
It’s a very long story, almost ten years long, a never ending story, full of soul and passion, good times and bad times but never, ever giving up. Here is my much shortened version.
Back in 2006, I was having a drink with Film Producer Michael Ryan when we shared our passion for Marvin Gaye and his music. We were both blown away when in 1971, his masterpiece ‘What’s Going On’ was released and decided a film about his life and death should be made, not just to celebrate his music genius but the drama and truth surrounding his death by his father in 1984, was it murder or suicide?
Michael said I should meet the person who occasionally works for them in their LA office and it just so happened, he was referring to Marvin’s young sister Zeola ‘Sweetsie’ Gaye. A month later, wow, I was having lunch with Marvin’s glamorous young sister Zeola in LA. I knew I would be in a queue of other film makers wanting to tell his story, and sadly this was true. Zeola was working with Jan Gaye, Marvin’s former second wife, on a biopic starring Denzil Washington. Oh well, it was worth a try. Zeola said, keep in touch, things may change and fortunately, they did.
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Early 2007. The Zeola and Jan Gaye movie had gone belly up. Their deep routed differences had surfaced again and I was back in LA talking to Zeola. Let’s do a feature length documentary instead. This was my chance to tell the untold truth about her brother’s life with the family and so ‘My Brother Marvin’ was born. But how do we get the money to make it?
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Xmas 2007. At our annual neighbourly Xmas Eve get together, I sat opposite my neighbour Sir Robin Saxby, he of Arm Holdings, who said, come and see me and let’s see if we can make this happen. And we did, and he was true to his word. Sir Robin was willing to fully finance the making of MBM.
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Having no history in producing a feature length documentary about such an iconic musician, I partnered with a production company that did – Double Jab Productions. I was categorically reassured that the music rights clearance would not be a problem, that they had an in road to EMI Publishing who said my treatment for the film was the best they’d ever read. What could go wrong?
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Pre-production before filming. My team were hard at work setting up locations and interviewees for the filming from a list supplied by the Gaye family and others we could arrange. My concept for the film was a road movie journey from Marvin’s childhood in Washington DC, onto his Motown success in Detroit and through to his final years in LA, including a two year gap living in Belgium. This was an exclusive untold story told by the family narrated by Zeola and elder sister Jeanne.
Our research exposed the deep rift between the Gaye family and his surrogate Motown Gordy family, including Marvin’s second wife Janice Hunter/Gaye. We were not going to get any co-operation from them, we would have to make our film without them, and we did. Filming went well especially in Washington DC including the chance of filming with Marvin’s closest school friend Reese Palmer, the only surviving member of Marvin’s first doo wop group ‘The Marquees’. But it was a different story in Detroit where we were refused any filming at the ‘Motown Hitsville’ museum where Marvin recorded all his hits of the 60s and 70s. In fact, they tried to stop us filming outside from the public highway – but that didn’t stop us.
In LA, the same problem, we were refused filming inside Marvin’s recording studio. And even my location co-ordinator was stalked trying to set up our locations. How bad could this get? At the family home, the ‘Big House’ where Marvin was finally shot and killed by his father, things were different. For the first time, we were allowed to film inside. It was an amazing and haunting experience. I was pleased with everything we filmed but on the last day we got some devastating news, an unnamed Hollywood studio had bought the exclusive rights to all Marvin’s catalogue of music, for two years. We were blocked from using Marvin’s music. No music, no film. (I subsequently found out it was A -list Hollywood director Cameron Crowe who was going to make his biopic on Marvin Gaye. It never happened though, like me he was also blocked.) My cast iron promise, from Double Jab that the music rights were secure, looking back now appeared to be nothing but a hollow lie.
This was very bad news and what was I going to tell my investor that we weren’t able to finish our film, that he’d paid for and wasn’t going to see a return of his investment. Understandably, he wasn’t happy, and neither were we but thankfully my investor wanted to finish the film. Post production went smoothly and the end result was terrific, people loved it. Without Motown co-operation, we produced a film that people admired and wanted to see released but without the music rights this wasn’t going to happen. Even at our private cast and crew screening, we received the threat of hostile legal action from EMI Publishing.
This was 2009 and our feature length documentary, like many other films that have been refused music clearance, has been gathering dust on the shelf ever since then, despite my endless perseverance in trying to release my film. No one would tell me who could grant me the music rights, who could say yes, I just kept hitting a brick wall. I met everyone including Berry Gordy’s personal assistant in LA, the ex-head of EMI Copyright in London, Marvin’s first adopted son Marvin lll in LA and even his second wife Jan Hunter/Gaye, mother of Marvin’s two children, Nona and Frankie, in Washington DC. They all said no and the latter, Jan Gaye, gave me the distinct impression that anything that has Marvin’s sisters Zeola and Jeanne in it, just won’t happen!
There was some hope when Sony/ATV bought the publishing rights in 2012 when EMI was sold by Guy Hands. The head of music at BBC Worldwide and a senior sales executive at Sony/ATV both loved my feature length documentary and wanted it to get a cinema release. They produced the best presentation to make the case for it to be granted the music rights but in the end it was refused. The Marvin Gaye estate said no. The Marvin Gaye estate is controlled by his two children Nona and Frankie, his children by Marvin’s former wife, Janice Hunter/Gaye.
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In 2009, I decided, if I can’t release my film, let’s tell the story as a dramatic stage play. So, I went to see ‘Mountaintop’ by Katori Hall starring David Harewood and Lorraine Burroughs, a play set in the motel room, the night before Martin Luther King was assassinated. It went onto win the prestigious Olivier Award beating hot favourite Jerusalem. I went to see the very last performance before its transfer to Broadway, to see the work of its director James Dacre. I wanted to turn Marvin’s amazing family story into a stage play based on Jeanne Gaye’s memoir about her mother called ‘Bitter Sweet’. At the same time, I set up my company ‘Marvin the Stage Play Ltd’ with my partner Barbara Cole who represents both Zeola and Jeanne Gaye. James and I met for tea one Sunday afternoon at Bafta and to my pleasure and surprise James was very keen to come on board as director. We both agreed that the writer who was best suited to write the play was the prolific award winning writer Roy Williams.
But we needed money to pay for this and I soon learnt getting finance in theatre land was not easy. Through some experienced advice, I was told I needed some front money investment which isn’t easy to come by. This put things on hold until I eventually persuaded a good friend to put up some money for this first stage of development. The budget was extremely tight and was not enough to cover the trip to take Roy and I to meet Zeola and Jeanne in NYC. It even ended up with Roy and I having to share a bed, to save money. The trip was a success though, although Roy ended up losing his luggage at Heathrow on our return.
Roy wrote a great first draft and we had a brilliant read through including the amazing actress Adjoa Andoh as seen in the Oscar nominated film ‘Invictus’. But we needed a second draft and so, more front money investment. This took another year or so until I found further investment. This enabled Roy to move on to write the next draft, draft two. And the result was even better. I filmed the read through and again we had the good fortune of a great cast.
We were ready to move onto getting the play produced and fortunately James had become artistic director at the Royal and Derngate Theatre in Northampton. After some initial difficulty, including the refusal of the music rights from EMI/Sony/ATV, which has now been overcome, we have finally arrived at this exciting stage of seeing SOUL being performed for the first time in the UK. It’s a play featuring original music arranged by Marvin’s close music collaborator Gordon Banks and not a musical like the successful ‘Motown, The Musical’ that recently opened at the London Shaftesbury Theatre. It tells the untold story of Marvin Gaye – The Prince of Motown. It’s taken a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get here, so enjoy it and tell all your friends to come and see it. You won’t be disappointed.