A turbulent recording session with an influential blues singer is dramatized in Director George C. Wolfe’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.
Based on August Wilson’s Tony Award-winning play, Wolfe’s film captures the tensions and temperatures that rise over the course of an afternoon recording session in 1920s Chicago with the legendary “Mother of the Blues,” Ma Rainey. As the fearless, fiery Ma engages in a battle of wills with her white manager and producer over control of her music, her band waits in the studio’s claustrophobic rehearsal room where an eruption of stories reveal truths that will forever change the course of their lives.
On January 30, Wolfe discussed the making of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom in a DGA Virtual Q&A moderated by Director Bill Condon (The Good Liar).
During the conversation, Wolfe spoke about the importance of production design and how it informs the character of Levee, played by actor Chadwick Boseman.
"On the other side of that door, America is gonna’ come through on the deal it's been promising black people since the very beginning,” said Wolfe. “And when [Levee] breaks through and he finds just an enclosure that's smaller than the one he's operating from, it's the end of hope and faith and possibility and that sense of buoyancy about the potential of a happy ending. It shatters that wonderful childlike thing that we all have inside of ourselves, which is the possibility of the next moment."
Wolfe’s other directorial credits include the feature films You’re Not You and Nights in Rodanthe; and the episodes “Fires in the Mirror” of the series American Playhouse and “The Colored Museum” of the series Great Performances. He was nominated for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Movies for Television and Mini-Series in 2017 for The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and won the award in that same category in 2005 for Lackawanna Blues (in a tie with Joseph Sargent for Warm Springs).
Wolfe has been a DGA member since 1990.
You can listen to Wolfe's Q&A by clicking the podcast episode embedded below. You can find more DGA podcast episodes here.
About the DGA Virtual Q&A Program
Mirroring the ever-popular DGA Membership Screening Q&A program in the virtual space, DGA Members can now learn more about films directly from the filmmakers in this series of livestreamed conversations.
