DGA Monthly

8 I D G A M O N T H L Y Taylor Hackford's conception of his Ray Charles biopic, Ray, was to track Charles' (Jamie Foxx) attempts and ultimate failure to balance his competing priorities of heroin, music, women on the road, and his wife and family at home. When the chaos finally catches up with him, Charles had to make the ultimate choice: the dope or his music. He kicked heroin cold turkey, which is documented graphically in the film. Of the many women Charles had relationships with outside his marriage, his romantic and collaborative relationship with Raelettes backup singer Margie Hendricks (Regina King) was paramount. To explore his visual storytelling approach to Ray, Hackford chose a sequence that shows the dissolution of this emotional and creative relationship with Margie. Holed up in the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, Charles is stoned but ready to start working on a new song, "Hit the Road Jack," when Margie, informs him that she is pregnant. When he refuses to leave his family for her — which she argues he has effectively done already — Charles channels her fury into a raw performance of "Hit the Road Jack," which made this record into a hit. S H O T T O R E M E M B E R "Hit the Road" DGA Past President Taylor Hackford's 2004 DGA and Academy Award-nominated feature, Ray, tells the story of legendary musician Ray Charles who lost his vision as a child but went on to redefine soul music and inspire a generation. In this article, Hackford reveals how he created a pivotal scene for the film that encapsulates the complex nature of Ray's life and how he channeled that into his art. | by Rob Feld photo by Marc Bryan-Brown The sequence cuts from the dark hotel room to the glamor of a supper club performance, to RCA Records' corporate office, and back to the Theresa Hotel. There, Charles tries to filter his thoughts through a heroin haze of memory that jumbles the many losses of the women in his life — from his mother onward — and, tragically, is too incapacitated to stop Margie from leaving him. "One thing I was trying to accomplish with Ray," Hackford says, "was to tell his story through the women in his life, beginning with his mother, whom he lost as a child but who he swore was still the most important person in his life. He gave her 'tough love' credit for the success he attained in his life because, when he lost his sight, she wouldn't let him be dependent on anyone. This sequence appears to be just a scene in a hotel room between two fighting lovers, but it carries all the drama of Ray's life and the people he really cared about. In its last moment, before we cut to a flashback of his mother, we see him relate his abandonment to all the women in his life. This scene carries all of it." 1 Away from his family, Ray has been living and working with Margie in the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, a set we built on a stage in New Orleans. In this master shot, he's reading a new song in Braille, ready to work, as Margie jumps out of bed and runs to the bathroom to vomit. He accuses her of being drunk all the time. This sequence is all hand-held: When Ray was a child, he could see, so I started the film with fixed camera positions — I never moved the camera. As he started to lose his sight, I had the camera on a dolly or a crane. When he went blind — and, more importantly, when he started shooting heroin — I switched completely to handheld. What I wanted to communicate was that his life was untethered, that the dope was taking over, and that he was not rooted in anything. 1 She tells Ray she's not drunk, she's pregnant. Ray's reaction is immediate: he tells her they can't keep the baby, and Margie erupts with emotion, slapping him. Regina really slapped Jamie hard — once in the master and once in a close-up. You have to understand Jamie's commitment. An actor can't really comprehend blindness by closing his eyes — he can always open them. So Jamie agreed to glue his eyelids shut. When you can no longer see and you just hear everything, it's all confusion, and an actor can still panic. Jamie knew he was going to get slapped, but not when, so he couldn't betray it. My technique here was just to focus on what these actors were delivering to the camera, so editor Paul Hirsch and I didn't want to overcut. We cut to Ray's silence to get his reaction to her being pregnant, but you know how he's feeling. The handheld camera also delivers an immediacy to the subtleties these actors are delivering. 2

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