THE GET DOWN: A OLD SCHOOL LOVE LETTER
For #hiphop50 there are no better fictional depictions of hip hop's birth
https://www.netflix.com/watch/80025603?trackId=14170035
YAHYA ABDUL MATEEN, NELSON GEORGE, TONE TALAUEGA, SETH ROSENFELD, RICH TALAUEGA
Last Saturday night I sat on the roof of my home with writer/director Seth Rosenfeld and choreographers Tone and Rich Talauega smoking cigars and talking about art and life. As always when we gather one of the subjects is the Netflix series, The Get Down, which premiered in August 2016 out of the creative mind of Baz Luhrmann. It’s on that job that we all started working together and bonded. Later in the evening we were joined by Yahya, one of the many young actors who blew up on the series, to talk shop and trade stories.
The Get Down only lasted on Netflix for eleven episodes, ending in 2017, but it’s had an outsized impact on the culture. Within TV circles it was ridiculed because the budget rose up to a reported $120 million. People said we spent too much money on the story of the birth of hip hop during the height of disco. It was a lot of money, but no one can say it wasn’t on the screen. We shot on location in Brooklyn and the Bronx, employed a huge soundstage in Queens, and had Kurtis Blow, Rahiem of the Furious Five, Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash among the consultants. In making the show we went through a couple of established showrunners, which raised eye brows,
But the product on the screen was vibrant. We had a number of dynamic writers on the staff, including Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis and TV vet Aaron Thomas (who would go into run CBS’ ‘SWAT’), though I always felt Seth Rosenfeld, who’s had a distinguished career on the NYC stage, in movies and television, was the voice of the show. I got a shot at contributing to scripts as did a number of young scribes, including Sam Bromell, who’d later be part of the Elvis bio pic writing team.
COMPOSER ELLIOT WHEELER WITH TONE AND RICH TALAUEGA
Yet the vibe of The Get Down was really dictated by Baz. He would always call scripts “the text.” It wasn’t a finished script until the musical elements were included. With the aid of composer Elliott Wheeler, his partner in crime Jamieson Shaw, music supervisor Stephanie Diaz-Matos, and some imput by me, Baz developed what we called “the weave,” a way of blending music, both as performance and background, that gave the show a unique sonic quality. (This technique would be further refined in Baz’s direction of ‘Elvis.’) As the show’s aesthetic evolved Rich and Tone Talauega, who’s extensive credits include training the Michael Jackson’s for the Tony award winning Broadway show MJ, became integral, not just for teaching dance steps, but in helping design the photographing of The Get Down’s many performances. Though not technically directors, the Talauega’s communicated what the best angles were to capture the movement they’d created. It was Baz who spearheaded recruiting Naz to write the opening rhymes that framed every show and getting ‘Hamilton’ alumni Daveed Diggs to perform the ghostly look back for every episode.
SKYLAN BROOKS, RICH TALAUEGA, SHAMEIK MOORE, T.J. BROWN
And all that work lived within the bodies of our incredible young cast. Throughout the development and training of our fictional old school group, the Get Down Brothers, we all marveled at the talent Baz had put together: Yahya has since won an Emmy for his role in ‘The Watchmen’; Shameik Moore is now Miles Morales in the animated Spider-Verse films; Justice Smith has been featured in a slew of big budget films, including Jurassic World; after playing Grandmaster Flash, Mamoudou Athie starred in the Netflix film Archive 81; before becoming a red carpet legend Billy Porter was our DJ Malibu in episode one; before winning three Emmy’s for her work on Ozark, Julia Garner, was Claudia, the daughter of a Robert Moses like character. While many veterans actors were featured on The Get Down, I am especially excited by the break out performances of the youngsters for whom the show was either their first gig or first major role.
WITH RICH AND TONE AT THE QUEENS “DOJO” REHEARSAL SPACE
I remember taking Baz on a walking tour of the South Bronx. We walked the Grand Concourse, went by Taft High school (where I first witnessed Kool Herc spin), went into some parks and ultimately ended up at my sister’s apartment, who was living uptown that spring. On that trip Baz noticed that the Bronx was full of hills and, from various vantage points, the skyscrapers of Manhattan’s upper East Side twinkled in the distance. When you watch the series, particularly episode 1 and 11, which Baz directed, the geographical distance between the glitter of “the city” and the rooftops of the boogie down, are parts of the visual design. Whatever project I’m working on now I always “walk the turf” of my subjects, trying to see what they saw, looking for visual metaphors or juxtapositions that could elevate the tale.
For me The Get Down was a sometimes frustrating, ultimately rewarding experience. It was my first time in a writer’s room and it wasn’t really a good fit for me. I’d always lived free flowing life, going from project to project. So being locked into one project in a room for months at a time was not for me. Over time my role evolved enough that I could still contribute to the writing staff (I love seeing my few scenes and many storylines in the show), while being very involved with the musical direction. Baz has a lot of rules for how to use music effectively to motivate storytelling and I employ to this day. My doc ‘Say Hey, Willie Mays’ and the up coming ‘Thriller 40’ are both very influenced the lessons that I learned watching Baz and Elliot Wheeler work. That ‘Say Hey, Willie Mays’ was nominated for a Sports Emmy for Musical Direction is, to me, a reflection of my The Get Down education.
RICH, YAHYA, SHAMEIK, JUSTICE SMITH, SKYLAN, HERIZEN GUARDIOLA PRACTICE “THE BUS STOP”
On the walls of The Get Down production offices, there was always a series of time lines written in red, black and green ink. One of those lines was the musical developments in NYC circa 1970s to ‘80s. One was NYC historical events. The last was the time line of our fictional characters. I created the first one and contrinuted to the other two. It was a real joy to turn my year’s of journalism into a platform for the storytelling talents of the writers, actors and creatives on the show. It wasn’t easy. We didn’t get to tell all of the stories I would have liked to. Yet The Get Down was a true bonding experience for all who survived it. Since the show wrapped Seth has worked with my wife in editing a recent indie film, while I recruited Rich and Tone to create choreography for the short film Flower featuring Misty Copeland. All these years later we still work together and advise each other on work, love, and family.
Moreover, as this year celebrates hip hop’s 50th born day, I believe the work we did in documenting, and elevating, the mythology of hip hop’s birth, is unmatched in the fictional realm. If you have Netflix and haven’t seen The Get Down this is the perfect summer to binge the ambitious dreamscape NYC we collectively concocted.