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A finer focus joplin4/15/2023 Yet the movie is worth seeing if only for one thing-the wonderful, brooding music of a man for whom recognition was long overdue.Īs a fit to feed historians and musicians alike into the world of early american music, this made-for-television movie may start grandiosly on one of the greatest musical scenes at the piano duel where we can even find the great Eubi Blake (living Rag time era pianist at the time, 1883-1983) BUT the films lacks in Billy Dee Williams a realistic portrayer of what it means to sit in front of the Keys, unwillingly failing to delivery the right feel at the performances and this my first sad turn off. The movie implies they reconciled, which in reality never happened. It also touches on the growing animosity between Joplin and Stark, but this too is sugarcoated. They did collaborate on one piece, "Heliotrope Bouquet", when Chauvin was dying and no longer able to play-this the movie gets right. The movie implies they were friends from the earliest days, which they were not. ![]() Chauvin in his prime would compose beautiful rags on the spot, never to be heard again, because he could not write them down. Hayden is not even mentioned in the film, which prefers to focus on Joplin and the tragic, unsung musical genius Louis Chauvin, who Joplin barely knew. But the movie either ignores or glosses over certain details, such as Joplin's longtime friendship and collaboration with Scott Hayden. Billy Dee Williams is a superb Joplin, as is Art Carney as his publisher, John Stark. This movie rode the wave of his renewed popularity, but plays so loose with the facts of his life that we end up knowing little more about him. Joplin's work received long-overdue attention from music scholars, and he was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer for his body of work, some fifty known rags, waltzes, marches-and one opera, Treemonisha. In 1973, Marvin Hamlisch used the then-largely unknown Joplin's music in the movie "The Sting," spurring a ragtime revival and a renewed interest in Joplin specifically. The man who gave us the Maple Leaf Rag and the Entertainer, Scott Joplin, once said that he would not become known until fifty years after his death. The second half was a chore to watch-and the music portion of the film suffered because Joplin was no longer functional. The first half is quite enjoyable and I loved the music. If you think this movie is a giant downer, you are right. His final years were A LOT worse than they show in the movie and his decline lasted far longer-but regardless, he died young in a mental institution-committed due to his dementia. ![]() But because of his syphilis (which was pretty much untreatable at that time) his career and marriage slowly spiraled downward. ![]() For a while, things look great-Joplin marries and he achieves moderate success. Soon he meets and befriends Louis Chauvin (Clifton David) and they come to the attention of a music publisher/promoter (Art Carney). The film picks up with Joplin an adult and playing music in brothels. However, the film DID find an audience and won a Writer's Guild award. It's also unusual for its choice of Joplin as a subject for the film because the guy died from syphilis (something folks RARELY talked about in 1977) and his later years were spent deteriorating more and more-a tough sort of film to put over to the viewing audience. It stars Billy Dee Williams as the famed composer. "Scott Joplin" is an unusual made for TV film in that it was, briefly, released in theaters just before it aired on TV.
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