[MUSIC-Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in SoHo. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. Whether you're listening on the radio, live streaming, or on-demand, I'm grateful you're here. On today's show, later this hour, we'll speak with the curators of a new exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art called Juan de Pareja, Afro Hispanic painter. Pareja was the subject of one of the world's most famous portraits from Spanish painter, Diego Velasquez, and he was enslaved by the famous artist, so you know there's a story there.

We start this hour with the little-known story of another talented person of color, an amazing composer living in the 18th-century France. Much of his work has been lost or forgotten until now.

[MUSIC-Luscious Jackson: You and Me]

The true story of a Black man born in 1745 who went on to become a champion swordsman, celebrated composer, and a chevalier, the French equivalent of a knight, was the inspiration for a new period drama hitting theaters tomorrow. The film follows Joseph Bologne, his rise to becoming a great composer under Queen Marie Antoinette's rule, and a burgeoning revolution. In real life, Joseph Bologne was the son of a French plantation owner and an enslaved Senegalese woman, both in real life and in the film, a chevalier. Joseph was raised in France. Now in the movie, his white father drops him off, well, dumps him off at a prestigious finishing school. Here's a bit from the trailer.

Speaker 1: Welcome to Paris, Joseph.

Speaker 2: I fear this will not be a kind place to such a boy.

Speaker 1: The boy has talents, but one in particular that is exceptional.

Speaker 2: Very well.

[music]

Speaker 3: I realized the more I excelled, the less I was alone.

Speaker 4: Were you always so competitive?

Alison Stewart: Joseph became excellent at many of the skills expected of an aristocrat. He was a fencer, played violin, was elegantly dressed and bewigged, and composed music. We watch as he impresses the royal court with his talent, which awarded him certain status and a host of opportunities uncommon for most Black men at the time. Yet because of French's laws, it's Code Noir how Joseph could really live his life was limited. The law dictated who he could love, what he could own, and how far he could go professionally. When he pushes against those boundaries, the reality of the situation becomes clear.

The film is called Chevalier and The Seattle Times described it as, "a stirring tribute to a virtuoso nearly erased by history". It premiered last year at the Toronto International Film Festival and will be released in the United States tomorrow. We're joined by Kelvin Harrison, who plays the title role of Joseph Bologne, [foreign language]. Kelvin, it's fun to say that. Welcome. [chuckles]

Kelvin Harrison Jr: Hey.

Alison Stewart: Also joining us from Los Angeles, Zooming in is the film's director Stephen Williams. Stephen, nice to meet you.

Stephen Williams: Great to meet you. Thanks for having us.

Alison Stewart: You said in an interview, Stephen, that you really hadn't known about Joseph Bologne before reading the script by Stephanie Robinson. What were your first impressions of him, both as a human and as an artist?

Stephen Williams: I was first and foremost just astonished that I'd never heard of someone with such an accomplished resume, if you will. Joseph Bologne was a virtuosic violinist, composer of classical music of opera. He was a champion fencer, an equestrian, a marksman. He was someone, in fact, that the American President John Adams, described as the most accomplished man in all of Europe. It was just immediately intriguing to me that I'd never heard of this person and how could that be? That sparked, sent me off on a deep dive of exploration trying to find out as much as I possibly could about him.

Interestingly, the more I discovered about Joseph's life and his times is the more I felt the reverberation of this French expression, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, which means the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. There was so much about Joseph's life and times that resonated with our current moment and resonated with me personally and my own personal life journey. It ultimately became a really compelling story that I felt I had to do my levelheaded best to bring to the screen.

Alison Stewart: Kelvin, as you got into the basic bio information about Joseph, what did you want to know about him so that you could help create this character?

Kelvin Harrison Jr: For me, it's always those relationships. I'm always fascinated by like, well, what was his relationship with his father? What was his relationship with his mother? Was he actually friends with Marie Antoinette? How far did that go? Were they actually really intimate friends or was he just the obstacle teacher? Did he get to hang out with the king? I think all those things helped better tell me how people viewed him, how much they regarded him, how intimate these spaces were, especially for a man of color in this time. How was he able to navigate his own rights or lack of rights, I should say? Those are the questions I had and wanted to take a deep dive into.

Alison Stewart: Stephen, what was a detail from your research that really helped you think about the direction of the film?

Stephen Williams: I think that what I vibed into in a way and connected with was this idea that all of what we're talking about, all of the music production that is reflected in the movie and that was happening at the time, meaning, mid-1700s leading up to pre-revolutionary France, all of it was, to state the obvious, pre-iTunes, pre-Apple Music, pre-Spotify, pre-CDs, even pre-Wax, no vinyl. All the music was happening in the immediate moment, in the now. It was performed live. The reaction of contemporaries at the time to the music carried the electricity of the live. It became really clear that Joseph Bologne, as he traversed the upper echelons of French society, became a rockstar.

He reminded me of what I imagine Prince might have been like had he been alive in those times. That became the clue, if you will, to unwrapping the visual vocabulary and the visual grammar of the movie.

Alison Stewart: Kelvin, what was something about the script, the way that Stephanie Robinson, the writer lets this story unfold that you found interesting or something you hadn't really seen before in a script?

Kelvin Harrison Jr: I love just the musical journey of the script. I think Stephanie was being inspired by Joseph's music and the opera and the format of the opera in a lot of ways. I thought, especially for any artist, I do think that their work speaks more about them than their actual words in some ways. Joseph's compositions, if you listen to them, it's like his diary. For her to use that pacing, that momentum, those characters, I don't know, it was almost like Joseph used pentatonic scales and all these augmented chords. You can hear it. The script feels a little like-- It feels emotion.

I think what I liked about it was that I could feel the virtuoso, I could feel it in the [unintelligible 00:08:05] I could feel it in the pacing and the language and his sharpness and it started to paint a better picture of the character for me.

Alison Stewart: When we first meet him, what are a few adjectives to describe Joseph?

Kelvin Harrison Jr: Confidence. I almost say arrogant. [laughs] Stephen told me on my first second audition, he was like, "He's defiant" and I definitely agree with that one.

Alison Stewart: Defiant, oh.

Kelvin Harrison Jr: Yes.

Alison Stewart: I was going to go with brash.

Kelvin Harrison Jr: I like that one too. Playful. He's just really playful.

Alison Stewart: How about for you, Stephen, do you want to add any adjectives to Joseph when we first meet him?

Stephen Williams: I think that covers it. He's confident in his own ability and he's just aware that what he needs is the opportunity to showcase that and to present that. I think that earlier clip that you played where his father says to him, "Always be excellent," I think that you see a commitment to excellence also in his posture and his approach to music.

Alison Stewart: We're discussing the film, Chevalier, it opens in the States tomorrow. I'm speaking with its director, Stephen Williams, and the star of the film, Kelvin Harrison. While the film's based on facts, there are creative liberties in the script. The first scene is an example of that. It's this classical music version of a rap battle. Not drop the mic, drop the bow moment. [laughter] We see that Joseph is going to challenge Mozart. Let's play a short clip.

Speaker 7: The show off Who Spoiled Mozart's Concert.

Speaker 8: May I play with you me too?

Speaker 9: I hope this won't be embarrassing for you.

Alison Stewart: It does not prove embarrassing for him at all. Let's listen to a little bit of the battle, the first round.

[music]

Kelvin is in here directing on his own, [laughs] conducting just for the record. Stephen, tell me about some of the choices you made so that we really understand what's the subtext of this battle when we see it. It's visually beautiful, we're seeing them on stage, go back and forth and back and forth.

Stephen Williams: Look, so Mozart and Joseph Bologne and our Chevalier were contemporaries, and they crossed paths in Paris, as far as I understand it, for a very brief period of time. It was an opportunity in a way. That scene is like a haiku that the rest of the movie endeavors to expand on. There were a lot of things happening in that sequence and one of them was our attempt, again, to make a connection between the authenticity of the period in which these events were unfolding, but to give a nod to how contemporary those events still felt.

We were inspired by a real-life event that we understand took place in 1960s England when Eric Clapton, who was then considered the preeminent rock guitarist of his time was a member of a band called Cream. He was performing in London one night and a guy in the audience asked to be invited up and play with him and Clapton acquiesced. The guy came up on stage and proceeded to shred Clapton off the stage. Clapton ran backstage and grabbed the first person he saw and said, "Who the hell is that guy?" and it turned out that that guy was Jimi Hendrix.

It felt like that was the perfect analog for all kinds of reasons to talk about somebody who at various points between the 1700s and now, to my way of thinking, been disparagingly referred to as the Black Mozart as opposed to by his actual name. Somehow that designation has stuck more than his name and his title. All of those ideas were a swirl as we said about trying to figure out the best way to open the movie.

Alison Stewart: Kelvin, what was your musical training before this?

Kelvin Harrison Jr: Both of my parents were musicians. Everyone's like, "How did he do this?" [laughter] I just want to start with I have very, very serious musicians in my family. Violin was my first instrument at seven. I played for a few years, and then Hurricane Katrina happened and the program I was in was lost. When I got back, I went to school with my dad, and my dad teaches concert band, not orchestra. Violin wasn't going to get picked up again until Stephen Williams [laughs] told me that basically, "If we're going to do this, we're going to do this right. We're going to do this authentically and I'm going to need you to play the violin."

I picked it back up and I called my dad and I said, "Hey, what's the plan, man? What's the plan, Stan?" He said, "We can do five months of seven days a week, six hours a day. If you stay consistent, you'll maybe be able to accomplish this." I think we got there. It would happen the day before shooting most times, but we got there.

Alison Stewart: Was [crosstalk].

Stephen Williams: It's really important that when you see the movie, you understand and appreciate that every time you see Joseph Bologne playing the violin, that's Kelvin Harrison Jr. There is not a single stunt double, there is no cinematic trickery. You are just seeing the product of a young man committed to his craft, dedicated, focused, hardworking, putting in the time, and then somehow all of that hard work getting funneled through the artistic prism that is the center of his soul so that he inhabits the humanity of this character all while playing the violin and dancing around stage like a rockstar. It was quite something to witness, really, I got to be honest.

Alison Stewart: You were in training. If you were going to play a boxer, you would be in training for five hours a day for five months getting in shape. You were just getting in musical shape. What about the fencing? Had you ever fenced before?

Kelvin Harrison Jr: A little bit. When I was doing [unintelligible 00:15:00] Joe had asked me to start learning fencing, and I did that, and then he cut all my scenes because he wanted to give them all the Peter Dinklage, whatever that guy. [laughter] I finally came in handy and Stephen was like, "It's your time to shine, Chevalier."

Stephen Williams: By the way, no stunt double for that either, for the fencing scenes. All Kelvin.

Alison Stewart: You're like this amazing creature. Find me a young, handsome Black man who can fence and play violin. [laughter] It's amazing. The name of the film is Chevalier. We're talking to its Director, Stephen Williams, and its star Kelvin Harrison Jr. We'll have more after a quick break. This is All Of It.

[MUSIC-Luscious Jackson: You and Me]

You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guests this hour are Kelvin Harrison Jr and Stephen Williams. We're talking about their new film Chevalier. It opens in the US tomorrow. It is the story of the life of the composer, Joseph Bologne. Part of the story, I won't give too much away, but Kelvin, part of the story is that Joseph wants to be considered to head the Paris Opera, and there seems to be this shorter traditional issue in Canada. Joseph feels he should be considered because he is the best. He's daring the public, the French public, to say anything about his race in this. How did you come to understand his interest and his motivation in pushing the limits?

Kelvin Harrison Jr: I think when you're sitting there trying to understand what it means to have them on a privilege that he had, you have to understand the laws. I think he's trying to cope with the fact that his father is still a white man who does well-selling rum and is successful and he has this wonderful, beautiful apartment. How do I justify that without being intelligent enough to be able to communicate with these people so that they can see who I am, but at the same time, stay in my place that I don't lose it all? I think it has a lot to do with trying to understand is this my privilege or is it not and dealing with that in every scene.

Alison Stewart: In the film, a contest just proposed to determine who will become the head of the Paris Opera, and the scene we're going to play, Joseph is challenging his rival, Christoph Gluck, and then Marie Antoinette gets in on the action too. This is from Chevalier.

Joseph Bologne: Perhaps we should settle this right now and get a couple of violins.

Christoph Gluck: You're not seriously suggesting some sort of competition.

Marie Antoinette: Yes, a contest. Who doesn't love a little contest, hm?

Christoph Gluck: Forgive me, Your Majesty, a contest?

Marie Antoinette: Yes, for the head of the Paris Opera.

Christoph Gluck: How would that work exactly?

Marie Antoinette: Simply, each of you will compose an opera for the music committee, and I shall have them select a victor based on the quality of the production. The winner shall be rewarded the role and his operational premiere at the Palais-Royal for all of Paris.

[music]

Christoph Gluck: I have never lost a bout.

Joseph Bologne: Opera is not fencing.

[music]

Alison Stewart: The tension builds. Stephen, this story is interesting because at one point, Joseph notes that this man is not even a Frenchman, but that's a big part of this film, is identity. Who is a Frenchman? Who gets to be a Frenchman? What is a Frenchman? What is Bologne's identity? Does he think of himself as a Frenchman? What happens when that's challenged? How does this story examine identity?

Stephen Williams: Wow, that's such a great question. I think that maybe the best way to crack that open is to understand, first and foremost, that France and France's relationship to colonialism, to plantation economies is different than that of the American experience. In America, the plantations were on national soil. They were all contained within the context of and the confines of America and its national boundaries. In France, it was a bit of an arm's length operation. France had colonies in the Caribbean, in North Africa, around the world. That allowed them the national psyche to separate itself in a false way, but in a way that they were able to live with.

Whereby France was like, "We actually are all about ultimately a different kind of representation and a different kind of fair-minded sense of national identity in a way that distinguishes us from other participants in the slave economy. That schism in the French psyche allowed them at one and the same time to go, "Hey, a guy like Chevalier, you can ascend to societal levels that your counterpart in lots of other countries probably couldn't." At the same time, you're not exactly equal. You're not fully equal. You're kind of equal. It's conditional and transactional. That understanding and awareness of identity at the core of the French psyche is a key and a critical part of Joseph's story.

Alison Stewart: When Joseph's mother comes into the picture, he has to contend with identity like never before. How does her presence rock his world?

Kelvin Harrison Jr: He's angry. He's really angry because what he doesn't understand is is, "I was seven when I left the plantation and I never heard from you again, so how do I know that you cared from me? How do I know that you loved me? You've left me out here with these wolves and I've had to fend for myself. Here you are not trying to comply or assimilate to French culture and this society that I've tried to present myself with the wigs and the regalia and whatnot. You say that you are here to protect me or to love on me?"

He has a hard time accepting that and respecting that because the pieces, they didn't add up yet.

He basically is just challenging her too. He's like, "I'm challenging you like I'm challenging everyone else here because it's just me on this island. Everyone else is just a visitor and you say I'm a tourist."

Alison Stewart: Something that when I was watching the film and I was happy that this didn't happen, I was worried for a hot minute that maybe the script had fallen into the tragic mulatto trope, Stephen, but it doesn't. It really does avoid that. I was curious if you had conversations around that because that is something that we see in literature. You see it in the white gays literature a lot.

Stephen Williams: For sure. It was really important that we told a story about someone who did not actually feel sorry for themselves. What they were doing was constantly navigating the rules of the nation-state in which they found themselves. As we've touched on, those rules were conditional and they were based in large part on the degree to which you were prepared to tow the line, if you will. Any challenge to that then resulted in the rescinding of your rights as we see, for example, in the case of the petition that the three divas launched and Marie Antoinette's response to that.

For us, this was a story about a guy coming into a greater sense of self-awareness and self-understanding that in turn fuels the next chapters in his life and empowers him and brings about a real sea change in terms of the way he sees himself and sees his relationship to the monarchy and to French society and to wider ideas like the ideas espoused by the revolution, the French Revolution, liberty, equality, and fraternity. Not interested in tragic characters. Interested in the truth of who Joseph Bologne was, which was someone who fought the law and ultimately won.

Alison Stewart: Tell me about becoming Joseph Bologne, Kelvin. Putting on the costumes, the wigs, what did that feel like? How did you feel about your costuming whence you were in it?

Kelvin Harrison Jr: At first, I was excited because I saw the picture and I was like, "Oh, yes, I get to put on the George Washington wig." [laughter] That's such a kid from '94. [laughter] Didn't really know anything else but George Washington. Once you finally put it on, here's the thing, you put on the costume and you look really beautiful in the sense that the costumes are beautiful and the heels and the colors and the fabrics and the wig is really well put together, but then you're like, "I don't even look anything like me." It all feels like costumes and posturing of some sort and it doesn't really make sense.

Especially when it was interesting going through the process of talking to Stephen and the hair designers about will I ever get to wear an afro. Stephen presented to me that we were going to do cornrows in the film and I was like, "That's going to be amazing. When do we get to do it?" It's so fascinating when you live most of your day with your hair out and you're embracing it and everyone says it's beautiful in your culture, and then suddenly, it's like you have to hide it. Then Stephen always like, "Can I wear it today?" and not really completely processing what is happening yet as an actor in this process. He being like, "You can't go out in French society with your afro.

They're going to think that you are not of them and you're not going to be respected anymore. You're the chevalier, you have to present." It's like a superhero costume, but also, the biggest dismissive diminishing item element to Joseph in expressing who he is.

Alison Stewart: He has his own hair journey. Stephen, I'm going to ask you a somewhat of crass question, but I'm genuinely interested.

Stephen Williams: We love crass questions.

Alison Stewart: Period pieces are hard to get made, they're expensive, they're time-consuming. This is a period piece about an unknown Black composer. How'd this film get made?

Stephen Williams: Miraculously, the genealogy of it is that, Stephanie Robinson, our writer, was aware of Chevalier. Her mother had given her a book about historic figures when she was a teenager and the story of Chevalier stood out for her. She always thought it would make for a great movie, and so she wrote the script and took it to Searchlight Pictures. Searchlight Pictures who remain one of the holdouts in terms of cinema and a certain kind of storytelling that doesn't necessarily lend itself to global commodification. Put it that way.

They found the script and sent it to me and we just put one foot in front of the other and kept working on the script, kept refining, got our cast together.

Once we had Kelvin, who was the linchpin in the tent, the maypole around which all the other characters rotate, all of those things came together and somehow miraculously, the movie happened. Having said that, all the factors that you articulated are correct. It's a period piece and costumes and blah, blah blah, and so it's really expensive. It would've been great to have had $100 million to do Joseph's story because Joseph's life story is so rich, it could fuel six movies. We had to be judicious about the portion of Joseph's life that we were going to tell and that we felt was most seminal in a way and essential. In narrow focusing that, I think the movie became feasible from a production and financial point of view.

Alison Stewart: The name of the film is Chevalier. It is starring Kelvin Harrison Jr. It was directed by Stephen Williams. It will be released in the United States tomorrow. I want to let you know, if this piques your interest and you want to know more about Joseph Bologne and his music, our sister station, WQXR, hosted a program about him in 2020. We're going to weed out the link to it, put it on Instagram, but it's on the WQXR website. It's called Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier of Music and Revolution. Thanks to both of you for being with us.

Kelvin Harrison Jr: Thank you for having us.

Stephen Williams: Thank you so much.

Alison Stewart: Let's go on a piece of music composed by Joseph Balogne.

[music]

 

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