Directors Rashida Jones & Al Hicks Discuss Scouring Through Hours Of Footage

Quincy Jones has been one of the hardest working people in show business over the past seven decades. Jones is an accomplished musician, film and music production mogul, film and music composer, humanitarian, and loving family man, among other things. The music icon seemingly never stops working. His rags to riches story, facing tremendous adversity growing up and throughout his career, make his career all the more meaningful and impressive.

Jones’ daughter, actor, writer, producer, and director Rashida Jones, and musician and filmmaker Alan Hicks (“Keep on Keepin’ On“) recently teamed up to write and direct the quintessential documentary about the life of the entertainment mogul. Distributed by Netflix, “Quincy” is an informative, engaging, and timely feature that focuses on the legend’s past achievements, struggles, current endeavors, and captures the generosity of his spirit.

While promoting “Quincy,” I had an opportunity to sit down with Jones and Hicks about the tremendous effort and time put into making the film, the process of sorting through the archival footage, autodidactic filmmaking, Quincy’s influence, what’s next, and more.

Did you learn anything new about your father in the making of this documentary?

Rashida Jones: I don’t know if I learned anything new, but I certainly saw and heard a lot of new things. There was tons of stuff that I don’t think he’s even ever seen that was like buried away in this off-campus vault [laughter]. Not at his house. There was tons of footage there that I’d never seen before.

Is this where you sourced all of the archival footage?

Al Hicks: Yeah. It’s about 2000 hours of archival footage in total. And we shot 800 hours of footage with him around the world. So, it was a massive undertaking. It was a treasure trove of amazing things. In the vault is where the 16 mil film, the 8-millimeter film was, among the audio. But a lot of the stuff that got used in the film was from the vault. In every era, there was just somebody [who] had sent him some footage of — him on TV with Duke Ellington — that’s nowhere else. And all of a sudden, there it is. There’s Quincy with Duke on stage. That’s the only place you could find it.

Did you ever consider turning “Quincy” a docu-series in the process of making it?

Rashida Jones: Yes. But I think I think Al and I are both such film nuts, and as much as I love watching doc series, I really, really do, there is just something that happens to you when you’re immersed in somebody’s world for two hours. And the time that you get after to kind of think about it also return to it; there’s a few series in my life that I’ve returned to. Like “The Sopranos,” or “The Wire,” or “Seinfeld.” But I think that the impact, like the kind of per minute punch of a movie, and to try to make a definitive movie about him, is really what we wanted to do, absolutely.

In going through that footage, what did you want to focus and zero in on in telling Quincy’s story with this documentary?

Rashida Jones: Thematically, there’s so many things we wanted to get across. Obviously, his work ethic. His compulsion to be decategorized when he succeeded in one area, in music, or culture, or whatever, he would just push through and make a decision to go a different direction that had never been gone in by a young black man. So, kind of that compulsion, that need, that energy, that perseverance, and that passion. But then, especially with the archival footage, we wanted things that felt so quintessentially that era, whether it was the audio tracks or the footage that we found. So, because it spanned seven decades, we wanted to make sure that the flavor of that decade was really communicated with the visuals and the audio.

Al Hicks: You can’t predict any of that stuff, really. We knew the major points in his life. But at a certain point, the material just started speaking to us and informing us where to go and where the parallels were. And having things from the present informing the past, and vice versa – that’s something you can’t plan. And you kind of just put it out there to let the material lead us, I guess.

Did you always want to tell dual narratives with the past and present?

Rashida Jones: Yeah. That was always the goal. He has been documented in the past. And I think the problem is, because he’s such a successful person, professionally, it’s really hard for there to be any time to actually spend with him, personally. But what that doesn’t account for is the fact that who he is and how he interacts with people in his personal life very much connected to the reasons why he’s successful. So, we wanted to make sure to tie those two things together, and also tie the past to the present by making sure that any time we went to the archival footage, it felt like a natural connection, either a visceral, emotional, psychological, sometimes visual connection, that starts from my dad, and then he brings you into his past. That was the only thing we had when we started filming is we knew that we wanted to do that.

Al Hicks: In weaving those two stories, it was able to bring his personal story arc, his growing up in the ghetto, having a grandma as an ex-slave, eating rats to “We are the World.” There’s these links that happen when you think, “how can he go from this to that?” And interweaving it between the past and the present is the way that we, from the beginning, thought that’s how we can achieve that.

What were some of the biggest challenges in making this documentary?

Rashida Jones: Just the sheer volume of material. And the overwhelming nature of his career and his life, and trying to accurately represent his impact over seven decades of career. And also make it personal enough that you felt like you got a chance to get to know him. And then, I think, really, it was about tone. Al and I always, from the very beginning, wanted to make something personal. Intimate. And we felt like the best way to do that was to avoid talking heads. Doing that, it sounds great now, but it’s not so great when you’re editing, because it’s kind of like putting yourself in a box — setting up rules for yourself that you always have to abide by. So, I guess just making sure that we found enough audio that was dynamic enough to tell the story, whether it was Quincy or people talking about him, so that if it played over imagery or old footage, or him now, it felt like the story felt rich and alive.

How much, if at all, was Quincy involved, creatively, in the making of this documentary?

Rashida Jones: Not at all [laughter]. I mean, obviously, he gave us his life to look at. But he was incredibly generous. And I think that’s really the only way we could have made the film. But he said, “I’ll just see it when you’re done.” Which is the dream. And the only way to do it.

Al Hicks: And he was so inclusive with the crew. I was lucky enough to spend about a year hanging out with him before coming onto the film. And so, once we brought in the crew, he kept saying, “Everyone’s family here. This is all family.” And then he would just call us up and tell us where he was going. You know, when you’ve got a subject, and you’re making a documentary, a big challenge for a lot of people is to try and gain the trust and be able to move with their life. But Quincy would just tell you, “Hey man. We’re doing this. And you guys should come. It’ll be amazing. We’re gonna have a ball.” And so, that was the dynamic.

When did you start filming your father with the intention of making this documentary?

Rashida Jones: I started filming very clumsily about six years ago. Jane Rosenthal, who is the executive producer for the movie, said, “We should make a film about your dad. And you should direct it.” So, I started to try to pick up moments with him and film him, which is kind of how I met Al. We met at the Montreal Jazz Festival. I was just starting to film with my camera, badly. And he was helping me learn how to use the camera. And then, a couple years in, I asked him to direct with me, and then we kind of kicked into high gear and started filming regularly.

The penultimate event in the “Quincy” centers around the opening of the African American Museum. It reminds audiences how monumentally influential Quincy is. He’s able to gather so many people together at once. It seemed like such a surreal experience. What was it like to be there as a fly on the wall?

Rashida Jones: It was totally surreal. It’s hard to remember this…well, for me, but it was October 2016, so it was pre-elections. And there was a sense of, “Oh my god. We’ve come so far. Obama’s been in office for eight years. We’re all here to celebrate the fact that things have changed, that we can look back on our past and accept it, and reckon with it, but also move on.” And now, it has a bit of a different flavor. Because we’ve unfortunately seen a lot of division. And some regression. But being there was completely surreal, because it did feel like this moment in time, like an ephemeral moment in time. I’m so happy we captured it for that reason. Because of the way things are now, and because the country’s so divided; because there’s so much hatred and vitriol going on. And concluding the movie on my dad, kind of his musings about hate and division, that takes a whole new form in 2018.

Al Hicks: What was really striking, from the behind-the-scenes side of things, was that he had come out of a coma, and that was the first thing that he decided to commit to. And as we were going through his archives and learning about all the barriers that he had to break through, through his career, and how hard his past was, dealing with having a schizophrenic mother, and eating rats, and coming from absolute poverty. And then still having barriers to break through. It started to make a lot more sense of why he made the decision to produce that concert, and why it meant so much to him.

For storytelling purposes, it was really wonderful, because it was this natural culmination. And then, looking back on how the world’s changed since that moment in time, it feels like it, for me, really crystallized the importance of telling his story and leading up to that moment, because when it was happening, it felt like a real celebration. We had broken through. We had progressed so much as a country. And now, there’s also a nostalgia to it, because what we had missed while we were busy celebrating how far we had come, people who don’t want progress were angry at how much progress had been made. So, it was a bittersweet moment to be there, and to capture that on film.

“Quincy” is currently available to stream on Netflix.