Tyler Perry first started working on “A Jazzman’s Blues” 27 years ago.
The film which is premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday, is a saga of love and murder. It tells the story of Bayou and Leanne who are black lovers in 1940s Georgia, that separate then meet again years later when Bayou becomes a song-and-dance sensation and Leanne has married and is passing as white.
Perry says the film poured out of him one rainy night in Georgia when he was “struggling and broke”. But for years, even as he achieved success in show business, including with the popular Madea franchise and his own studio production complex, it hung in his head and he felt he could not make it.
I wrote this 27 years ago, and I finally get to show it to the world. This is my new movie, A Jazzman’s Blues. I can’t wait for you to see it on @Netflix September 23rd. Here’s the trailer. More to come. #AJazzmansBlues pic.twitter.com/DGgJBSc1db
— Tyler Perry (@tylerperry) August 23, 2022
“Being in Hollywood, being a Black man, I could not have a flop, and having a period-piece ten, fifteen years ago could have been really risky. So I needed to wait for the right time,” he said.
Perry’s directorial credits include “A Fall From Grace” “Acrimony,” “Nobody’s Fool” and multiple “Madea” movies, but he says he has never enjoyed directing until this movie.
“The thing that made it hard to wait was the criticism of some of the other movies, people thinking that this is all I could do when I understood and knew that I had ‘Jazzman’ in my back pocket.”
Actress, Solea Pfieffer, who plays Leanne says she read the script and saw an opportunity to exist as herself within this story. She adds that it was also an experience to learn about colourism and passing as white in American history.
“It’s a very clandestine history. It’s unwritten because it had to be hidden, and it’s heart breaking. There are all these people who had to betray themselves, leave part of themselves behind – and that is painful,” said Pfieffer.
Perry has experienced colourism himself, from a father who he said preferred Perry’s lighter-skinned sister over his darker children.
“I understand it firsthand,” Perry said he hopes the film sparks conversation.
“If this sparks conversation and inspires people to do research, to really find out what really happened to us as Black people in America, then I’ve done all I wanted to do.”
