Filmmaker Stanley Nelson Jr. had just premiered his 2019 “Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool” at the Sundance Film Festival when, as he was out on the dance floor, the topic of his next film came up.
“We had a big party, a dancing party,” says Nelson, whose film on the jazz icon was produced by Nicole London, his frequent collaborator. “The music was playing, everybody was happy, and some funk song was on.
“Some of the people who’d put money in ‘Miles’ said, ‘Oh, man, this ‘Miles’ is great,’” Nelson remembers. “‘What do you want to do next?’
“And so … funk!” he says laughing. “That’s how we started, and five or six years later, here we are, finally done.”
“We Want The Funk!” premieres on PBS’s “Independent Lens” on Tuesday, April 1. Through its 82 minutes, it explores the music of legends such as James Brown, Sly Stone and George Clinton while also casting a broader net that pulls in such acts as Nigeria’s Fela Kuti, pop rocker Elton John, and the art rock of Talking Heads.
In addition to archival songs and footage, “We Want The Funk!” features interviews with Clinton of Parliament Funkadelic and David Byrne of Talking Heads, as well as Robert “Kool” Bell from Kool & the Gang, Nona Hendryx of Labelle, Prince Paul, DJ and producer of De La Soul, Fred Wesley of the J.B.s, Questlove, and more.
“It was a long, long road,” London says of the film’s journey. “We actually started with what we knew that we didn’t want. Every 10 years or so, there’s a funk documentary that comes out. We knew we didn’t want it to be a travelogue through funk music where it’s just like James Brown, you know, Sly Stone. George Clinton. We didn’t want it to be a list.
“But we also knew that there’s so many bands we couldn’t cover everyone,” she says. “I think we wanted to really drill down on what makes funk music funk? And what makes funk music so that it connects so well with people? What is it about funk music that makes us want to dance, that makes us feel good?”
In an interview edited for length and clarity, Nelson and London talked about their earliest memories of funk, recruiting funk musicians for interviews, and how the documentary benefited from many of those musicians bringing instruments to play during interviews.
Q: Nicole said neither of you wanted to make a traditional funk doc, so where did you want to enter the conversation about funk on film?
Stanley Nelson Jr.: I think Nicole really nailed it. We wanted to talk about what is bigger than funk. It’s not just the music. It’s something else. You know, where did funk come from? What were the times in the ’60s and ’70s that produced funk? All of those things were kind of floating around our heads and continued to float around our heads as we made the film.
Q: I’ve seen you talk about the importance of music in all your documentaries, not just those specifically about music. How does music elevate or enhance a film?
SN: I think that we relate to music in a unique way, you know. It kind of goes right into you. We’ve all had that experience where we’re out and the music feels like it’s throbbing in our chest and it makes you want to move.
As a filmmaker, one of the things that we try to do is move people, move people’s emotions, and make people feel things. And music helps to do that in ways that no other medium of art does.
Nicole London: Just to tag onto that, music is so connected to memory and identity. Every person thinks the music they grew up with is the best music. Like, ‘The kids today don’t know about all the music I grew up with!’ [She laughs] Whatever generation you’re talking about. So much of what you’re experiencing is imprinted by the music.
So, it innocently takes you back to a certain time in your life. It’s like, ‘Oh, I used to love this song, and I remember I was this age, and this was happening. For instance, who’s not going to remember what they were thinking and what was happening when Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” is played 10, 20 years from now? You can’t forget what was going on in your life, in the country, all of that.
It’s an entry point for filmmakers to get their points across because they’ve got you already with the music. One of the things we found in editing was that music could take us from any one place to any other place.
SN: There’s a cut in the film that I love, where we go from from Prince to West Africa. If we talked it out, it wouldn’t make any sense. But when you see it in the film, you don’t doubt it. The music carries you from Prince to West Africa.
Q: On that topic of music’s ability to transport us to the past through memory, can you think of one of your earliest memories of funk music?
SN: For me, there’s a specific memory. I was 16 and I went to Martha’s Vineyard. We, these people, had a party. It was outside in the full moon and the Temptations‘ ‘I Can’t Get Next to You’ was playing. And when the end of the song comes up and they’re going, ‘Ne-ext to you!’ everybody was singing that. I just thought I had died and gone to heaven. It was one of the great moments of my life.
NL: For funk music, I had older sisters who were really into Parliament Funkadelic. They had those records, and then they bought the first Prince record I ever saw. I was just fascinated with the records.
I remember they had a party down the stairs in the basement, and I was just listening a lot, you know, peeking down and listening to them, and watching them dance to [Parliament Funkadelic’s] “Flashlight.” That was crazy. That was such a good time. I wanted to go down. “No, get back in your bed!” [She laughs]
Q: I’d assume most of the interviewees were happy to sit to talk about funk music. What was it like to get them on board?
NL: They were great. Once you get people sitting down, they’re happy to talk. And especially, I was struck by how generous the musicians that brought their instruments were to actually sit down and play. Fred Wesley [who played trombone in James Brown’s band] was happy to play. But he’s like, ‘You know, I don’t really go for that solo anymore.’
I had him do it at the beginning, which was pretty rough. Then after we talked for like an hour and a half, I was like, ‘You want to go for it?’ He’s like, ‘I’ll go for it.’ And he did it. He did the famous solo [on “Doing It to Death” or “Gonna Have a Funky Good Time”].
Q: What surprised you during the interviews?
A: The whole “Bennie and the Jets” [by Elton John]. We knew we wanted to talk about Talking Heads, but “Bennie and the Jets” and David Bowie’s “Fame” kind of came out of thin air. I was talking with Donnie Simpson [a long-time radio DJ and television music host] who was the first person that mentioned “Bennie and the Jets” influence in an interview, just unsolicited.
I hadn’t even talked about that at that point, with Stanley, about making that a story. I was sitting down with [gospel star] Kirk Franklin and he brought up “Bennie and the Jets” out of nowhere. I was like, ‘Oh, OK, this might be a thing.” And we were able to build this really nice section that shows that people have – especially people who are “outside” of the culture – they feel a point of entry. That’s what this music does.
SN: George Clinton was incredible. You never know. You heard so many stories about George Clinton and he was just incredibly generous, and had an incredible memory and was really funny. Another story is David Byrne. We wanted to do something on Talking Heads. I was on this program to speak at noon and saw that David Byrne was on at nine o’clock in the morning.
So I went there at nine o’clock in the morning and kind of grabbed him and said, “‘We’re doing this film on funk, and we’d love to talk with you.” He said, “Talk about the funk? Sure!” And he was just great.
Q: What was it like to weave in the footage of interviewees like bassist Marcus Miller, guitarist Carlos Alomar and others into the narrative?
SN: It’s not easy a lot of times to get musicians to play – and play off the cuff, but we did it. We did it enough so it’s a thing in the film. It really adds something to the film.
NL: Not their own music, necessarily. But that’s the thing about funk music. You see the joy and the love on their faces. When Kirk Franklin plays a little bit of P-Funk or “Bennie and the Jets,” there’s joy. When Carlos Alomar plays “Fame” [which he cowrote with Bowie and John Lennon], or when he plays James Brown, by whom he was fired, there’s a joy. Everybody, when they see the film, really connects with that.
Q: It’s such a joyful movie to watch – and hear. Was it that way to make it too?
SN: I think one of the things that drove the whole filmmaking process was at the very beginning, in the tease, where Marcus Miller says, “You know, there’s no sad funk songs.” It was like, “OK, there’s no sad funk. So we’re going to make this film that there’s no sad moments.”
We don’t stop, you know. It just moves so quickly, like, bam! James Brown comes at you, and we’ve got to keep this pace up, how do we do it?
NL: See it with an audience if you can.
SN: Yeah, we’ve shown it three times at festivals, and all three times, the audience went crazy. Literally, there would be standing ovations, screaming and yelling and stuff at the end of the film. You know, for whatever reason, we won’t go into that, we need some fun in our lives right now.