a night out with jamie foxx
Last week, I had the incredible opportunity to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the movie, “Ray,” the biographical musical drama based on the life of legendary musician, Ray Charles. Many of the film’s big names were in attendance including star Jamie Foxx, director Taylor Hackford, producer Stuart Benjamin and even Ray Charles son and co-producer Ray Charles Robinson Jr.
The event, which took place at the iconic Aero theatre in Santa Monica, began with an introduction by Benjamin who explained the uphill battle he experienced while attempting to sell the movie to studios. After about 15 years of “schlepping the script around,” universal finally stepped in.
Following his presentation, the packed audience was treated to a screening of the film, which follows Ray Charles story from his humble beginnings in Florida to his meteoric rise to the top of the American music charts. Ray, who died of liver disease in 2004 (just 4 months before the movie’s premiere) lost his sight at the age of 7, but his mother raised him to be fiercely strong and independent allowing him to not only deal with his loss of sight, but racism and eventually heroin addiction.
The evening concluded with the Q&A panel, which prominently featured Jamie Foxx’s vivid stories and spot on impressions. Foxx recently revealed that his health scare last year was due to a brain bleed and ultimately a stroke. With his charisma, quick wit and level of detail in recounting his role as Ray, you’d never know the Oscar winner had recently been in a coma for 20 days. You can see more about his battle in his newly released netflix special, “What Happened Was…”
For his portrayal of Ray, Fox swept up at the awards shows winning Best Actor at the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes, BAFTA, Screen Actors Guild, and Critics Choice. That made him only the second actor to win all five major lead actor awards for the same performance and the only one to win a Golden Globe in the Musical or Comedy category. Just as Ray developed a solid foundation from his mother, Jamie credited the skills bestowed on him by his grandmother for giving him the ability to land the part without officially auditioning.
Jamie attended college on a classical music scholarship which clearly helped him land the role, but as a last step, he would have to get the green light from Ray Charles himself, which he did during an anxiety fueled dueling piano session. After a few stumbles, Ray got him to relax and to his surprise, his fingers took over and earned him the virtuoso’s green light. It wasn’t just piano that Jamie had to nail though. It was Ray’s tone and mannerisms throughout the years. That, he did by listening to old interviews on cassette. Yes, these were the days before iPhones and even DVD’s so as you can imagine, listening to the cassette’s wasn’t easy, but Jamie managed to find an old rental car with a tape player allowing him to take all of Ray in.
Ray was created on a budget of $40 million and went on to gross $124 million at the box office. It’ll make for a great watch over the holiday break, so if you haven’t seen it or want to see it again, it’s currently streaming on a bunch of platforms including STARZ, Prime Video, Hulu, and DIRECTV.
