Hater Hearst Helmsley
I AM THE GAME
In the new Netflix adaptation of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” it’s a sweat-slicked summer day in Chicago 1927 and everybody wants something. White music-industry bigwigs want a new recording from the indomitable Ma Rainey (Viola Davis), a Southern singer dubbed the “Mother of the Blues,” and they want it fast. Her ambitious trumpeter, Levee (Chadwick Boseman), is desperate to put a contemporary spin on Ma’s old-fashioned songs, hoping it will launch his own career.
And what does Ma want, after she’s arrived late to her recording session, caused a commotion on the street and sized up the pleading music men who now swarm her like gnats?
Well, for starters, she wants a Coke. So where the hell is it?
Adapted from the 1984 August Wilson play by the director George C. Wolfe and the screenwriter Ruben Santiago-Hudson, this new take on “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” will arrive Dec. 18 on Netflix, though much has changed since the film was shot last year. In August, the 43-year-old Boseman died after a private battle with colon cancer; Levee is his final role.
