Sat 3/22 @ 8:45pm
Sun 3/23 @ 7:45pm
Mon 3/24 @ 12:10pm
Sun 3/30 @ 4:45pm
By Kendall Embrescia
The highly anticipated documentary The Sax Man makes its world premiere this weekend at the 38th Cleveland International Film Festival. The first 3 showings are 2014’s first film to sell out all general admission screenings at CIFF. We caught up with Executive Producer Todd Bemak about the project, Maurice Reedus Jr., the community support and how this is an exciting film for Cleveland.
Cool Cleveland: Tell us about yourself.
Todd Bemak: I was born and raised in Cleveland. Grew up in Old Brooklyn and then moved to Parma. I graduated from Cleveland State University with an electrical engineering degree. I always had a dream to score movies. I decided I would get the job, get the house and get the car first before scoring movies. So I got the job, the house and the car and then quit the job and learned how to score. I was doing work with an independent music label and they had no money in the budget to shoot a music video. So they asked me to do it and I did. Once I turned on that camera and started filming I thought this is it. The light bulb went on and I realized this is what I wanted to be doing. After that I sought out a director, produced a PSA and did commercial work for a number of years.
Who is the Sax Man and why did you want to make this documentary?
I worked with Joe Seibert (Director) and John Pope (Director of Photography) on commercial client work. Joe, John and I decided we wanted to do a fifteen minute profile piece on the guy who played the saxaphone around the city. We all knew who he was from going to plays, sports games and festivals but we really didn’t know anything about him. So we were like, yes!
We began the research and realized there was so much more to his story than we initially anticipated. Maurice Reedus, Jr. is the Sax Man. He has a very rich, deep past and once we learned this we thought, let’s do a full-length feature film.
So, we took a very big research approach in pre-production and learned that Maurice is the son of a Grammy Award-winning Jazz musician. Maurice also went on to be a member of Sly, Slick & Wicked’s backing band in the ’70s playing in front of large crowds, sometimes as big as 60,000 people. They were featured on Soul Train alongside some fabulous musicians. Maurice was in summer school with one of the key players and he asked Maurice to go on tour. I mean think about it…Maurice was still in high school!
What became obvious to us is that nobody really knows anything about him, yet there’s a connection that strangers have with him. Cleveland and Maurice have a relationship. He impacts and touches people and enriches their experience. There’s a mad appreciation for him, yet people take it for granted that he’s there playing music. He’s engrained in the fabric of our city. He’s iconic and when he’s not on the streets playing his music, he’ll be missed. What he’s giving us is a dynamic cultural component to the community, adding that extra special thing for Clevelanders. Yet, how is that appreciation transcended to Maurice?
We helped facilitate a reunion for Sly, Slick & Wicked and Maurice. We thought if Cleveland comes out for the reunion and shows support and love to Maurice…that was a challenge. It became a high-stake situation. And you’ll have to watch the movie to see how it turned out.
How did you fund the movie and put a crew together?
One of the things I’m most proud of is that this is a movie made in Cleveland, made by Cleveland and made for Cleveland. Beau Miller was in charge of fundraising. We did a lot of fundraising during the same time as production. The support and how people were getting behind this film was breathtaking. It didn’t come easy. We had to find the right people to come through and when they did others saw that and they got behind it too. The city of Cleveland, so many organizations and small businesses were willing to get behind this film to do whatever they could do to make this film happen. It was the community that made this film happen.
We crewed up with people that worked in the industry that didn’t look at this as just another job, but that were passionate about the project and Maurice and wanted to take responsibility for their roles. For some reason it seems that we were always shooting on the coldest days, but they came out with good attitudes and had so much passion for the project. Cleveland is a major character in this film.
How long from concept, pre-production, production, post-production to final product?
The initial thoughts were happening in 2011 and by August of that year Maurice was fully on board. Come December, we hit the ground running with pre-production and started filming in January of 2012. August of 2012 funding really starting amping up and things became easier because of that. Aside from some pick-up shots, July 18, 2013 was our last day of shooting. Post-production began in April of 2013, while we were still filming. We started putting together rough cuts to submit to festivals in September of last year and completely completed the film just this year.
What do you hope this film does? Do well on the festival circuit, have a positive effect on Maurice, get picked up for major distribution, bring light to you as a filmmaker?
CIFF is so appropriate for the premiere. It will be so cool for Maurice’s family. There’s demand for it and we’re really happy about it being in Cleveland. This is the right place and having the premiere at the Hannah Theatre is amazing, it’s such a beautiful space. I’m so excited about being able to look out at the crowd and say thank you to everyone for all their support. Hopefully people will like it.
The biggest things we hope this film does is something for Maurice. He’s 61-years old this year. He’s out on the streets. There’s going to be a time when he’s not going to be able to get out there. We’re hoping that people see how he positively affects the culture of our city. Maybe they’ll appreciate his work and say thank you and give him a little more money in his tip bucket. The primary goal is to help Maurice. Positive things have already happened for him.
And of course the more popular the movie gets the better it will be for Maurice. He is a person who follows his dreams. He’s passionate. He’s a real musician. I respect that. He’s doing exactly what he wants to do with his life. Success isn’t always about money. We want as many people as possible to hear this story so people can respect these artists and appreciate how they contribute to the fabric of the community.
We’ve got Palm Beach and Arizona International Film Festivals coming up, plus four other festivals in April. We’ve also got one in July and maybe more. We’ll make the first public announcement about what other festivals this weekend at CIFF.
And The Sax Man has been great in helping us to begin thinking about development for our next project.
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