Article on John Jorgensons recreation of QHCF

Tollundmanden

I came across an interesting article in Acoustic Guitar Central on how John Jorgenson was involved in recreating the QHCF for the film "Head in the Clouds".
It's quite an interesting read on how they rerecorded Blue Drag and Minor Swing to come as close as possible to the original QHCF recordings. The article is a bit old by now, but I thought I'd might post here for anyone who hasn't read it:http://www.acguitar.com/issues/ag139/feature139.html

The sequence from the finished film can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daOT4liVbXA&feature=related#t=06m09s

crookedpinky

Thanks for those links, really interesting. I am a huge fan of John and love his work and having met him a couple of times I know he is a really lovely and genuinely friendly guy. I say all of this because I've often wondered why the director of the film didn't use a genuine gypsy, someone like Tchavolo Schmitt for example.

I suppose most people who watched the film wouldn't know or care that Django and most of the band were gypsies. It just seems odd that they went to the trouble of creating prosthetics to mimic Djangos hand and then used a non-Gypsy to play the part.

Let me make it clear I am not cticising John - his article shows his love of Django and I know he has a huge respect for the music - I just find it an odd directorial decision, especially when there are players like Tchavolo et al out there. Maybe, given the restrictions on the film making John mentions in his article, it was simply easier to do it the way it was done.

frater

John is great as always but that's a dreadful scene (in a dreadful movie): it would have been more believable with Andreas Oberg disguised as Django!

crookedpinky

EXCELLENT !!!!!!!!!! ......lmao

klaatu

Did anyone happen to notice the Charlize Theron bath scene or her incredibly erotic dance with Penelope Cruz, or did everyone just cut straight to the Django bits?

crookedpinky

Yeah, but didn't want to be the first to mention it.

noodlenot

frater wrote:

John is great as always but that's a dreadful scene (in a dreadful movie): it would have been more believable with Andreas Oberg disguised as Django!

or even that thin lizzy guy...

klaatu

Yeah, John is a terrific guy, one of the nicest around, and an absolutely awesome musician in all the styles that he plays (GJ included). But why would you have a 6'2" blonde Scandinavian-looking guy play a 5'6" dark-haired gypsy? (I'm guessing at the heights; I met JJ once, and he looked about seven feet tall to me).

Tchavolo would have been visually perfect. Plays pretty good, too.

MichaelHorowitz

It would have been cool to have Stochelo, Bireli, Tchavolo, etc to play Django in the movie. But I could see why they would call someone like John who certainly has the skills to do a good job and is a seasoned studio musician with heaps of experience doing sessions like this. It would have been infinitely more difficult to deal with all the logistics of getting a Gypsy to do the part.....guys like Bireli and Tchavolo aren't exacly know for their punctuality!

David F.

I read that article too--and it completely eliminated any desire in me to see the movie. I grew up in LA and both of my sisters have worked in movie-related occupations at times; it's an old axiom in Hollywood that the more effort is taken to nail arcane details in a period movie, the bigger a turkey the movie will be. Same with soundtracks--anyone remember how some really awful biker flicks in the 60's had the greats of classic rock doing soundtrack songs, sometimes recordings that appeared nowhere else?

frater

In any case, next time I vote Stacy Keach as Django.