You wouldn’t think this is possible. But Dan Pritzker’s $100 million jazz movie “Bolden!” is re-shooting again. Pritzker is from the Hyatt Hotels family and has money to burn. In the mission of making his epic masterpiece, a “Citizen Kane” of jazz, he’s spent well over $100 million to make a movie about obscure jazz legend Buddy Bolden.
Originally, Anthony Mackie starred as Bolden. He shot an entire movie with Pritzer. But then Pritzker took so long to put the movie together– and then didn’t like it–that Mackie was too old to come back for re-shoots. So Pritzker started all over again, this time with Gary Carr, the actor who played the jazz musician in “Downton Abbey.”
Now Pritzker is looking for an actor to play the older Buddy Bolden. Instead of getting a great makeup artist, Pritzker is looking for someone who resembles Carr at age 65. If they find the actor, he’ll play a scene in which Buddy Bolden is an insane asylum. Sounds like fun!
The “Bolden!” adventure began in 2007, when George W. Bush was president of the United States and “Empire” was just a diner on the West Side. In June 2014, I told you that Pritzker–whose cousin Gigi Pritzker has made 15 movies since then ranging from good (Rabbit Hole, Way Way Back) to the awful (Mortdecai) to the well intended (Rosewater)– was looking for actresses who had a “fearless acceptance of full nudity” “simulated sex acts.”
I guess to be admired is Dan Pritzker’s persistence. Maybe this is how the pyramids were built.
