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 "Jimi: All Is by My Side" from writer and director John
Ridley was shown this week at the South by Southwest film
festival in Austin, Texas. The small film drew much greater
attention thanks to Ridley's Academy Award.
"There is this added thing now, and people will see it through
that prism of the Oscar," Ridley, who won the award for best
adapted screenplay for "12 Years a Slave," said in an interview
this week.
The movie, starring the hip hop duo Outkast's André Benjamin as
Hendrix, looks at a year in the life of the rock legend when he
was an unknown backup guitarist living in New York who moved to
London and became a budding star.
The film opens in the United States in June.
Ridley, who wrote and directed the Hendrix film, said there were
parallels between Hendrix and Solomon Northup, the man whose
narrative was the basis for "12 Years a Slave": Both men were
struggling with ways to express themselves.
Northup's struggle was keeping his soul alive while trapped as a
slave. Hendrix had to meld rock, blues, jazz, and rhythm and
blues into a musical style to call his own.
"What must people don't realize is that when Hendrix was 24
years old, he was pretty much washed up," Ridley said.
The movie shows Hendrix being discovered in New York by Linda
Keith, played by Imogen Poots in the movie. Keith, then the
girlfriend of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, found
Hendrix a guitar because he could not afford one, and a manager
who took him to London.
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In England, Hendrix found his voice, his style, and with his
spellbinding performances drew the attention of rock luminaries,
including Eric Clapton and the Beatles during his year there
spanning 1966 and 1967.
The oddest part of the Hendrix film: There are no Hendrix tunes in
it, mostly because his estate would not grant rights to them for the
movie.
Critics said that without essential Hendrix songs such as "Purple
Haze," "Foxy Lady" or "Little Wing," viewers got an incomplete
picture of the man who lit the rock world — and occasionally his
guitar — on fire in the late 1960s.
Ridley said that without the Hendrix song catalog at his disposal,
he could focus more on what shaped the artist.
In the movie, Hendrix is seen jamming with artists from the era,
playing guitar riffs and covers, including a rendition of the
Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."
In 1970, fans were stunned by Hendrix's drug-related death at age
27.
"When people think of Jimi they think of it as a tragic, tragic
story. But in reality, in his life there was a lot of beauty and a
lot of connectivity and love," Ridley said. "I wanted to write a
story that ended on an upbeat and hopeful note. This will help
people revisit songs that they thought they knew."
(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; editing by
Scott Malone and Jonathan Oatis)
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