Todd Graff and cinematographer David Boyd

NEW YORK – You might never guess that the sassy, down-home Vi Rose Hill (Queen Latifah), tough choir leader at the small-town Georgia church in “Joyful Noise,” was inspired by writer-director Todd Graff’s Jewish mother from Queens.

In closing credits of the film, Graff pays tribute to his mother, the late Judy Graff, longtime and strong-willed leader of a women’s Hadassah choir in her small ethnic neighborhood of Bellrose, Queens, for inspiring the character.

In fact, Graff said, she inspired the whole movie.

“Yeah, I really based Vi Rose on my mother, even though if you saw the two women (Latifah and his mom) together they couldn’t be more different,” Graff said in press interviews arranged by Warner Bros.

“My mom was the choir director for this Hadassah choir,” the filmmaker recalled. “These ladies would come over to our house every Tuesday and Thursday night, and they would chain smoke and sing these songs while I was trying to do homework upstairs for years. Maybe they would perform at a nursing home every once in a while.

“But she was like the whip, she was so tough on these ladies and she made them sound incredible, like amazing,” Graff said. “Now, my mother was a music major, and my father was a very successful musician. It’s our family business, like everybody in our family – knock wood – has done very well in this business. But she gave it up to raise a family and be a community activist and fundraiser and all these amazing things she did.

“But she was really tough on these ladies,” he said. “And they sounded better than any Hadassah choir had any reasonable right to sound.”

Graff said one line in particular – in which Vi Rose admonishes a choir member, “You have to look at me because Jesus doesn’t know where the cut-offs are,” was taken straight from his mother’s lips.

“She used to tell her Hadassah choir members, ‘I’m thrilled that you’re into it, but God doesn’t know where the cut-offs are,’” the good son said. “I couldn’t get her voice out of my head, and this movie really took shape around that voice.”

- Dennis King

BY DENNIS KING

NEW YORK – Call them the Dolly and Dana Mutual Admiration Society.

Dolly Parton, Queen Latifah

Put the folksy, feisty Dolly Parton next to the brassy, robust Dana Owens, a.k.a. Queen Latifah, and the love just flows and the funny verbal sparks fly.

The unlikely co-stars of the gospel-infused comedy-drama “Joyful Noise” form a most improbable but apparently harmonious duo.

Physically, they could hardly be more different. The diminutive Parton is all big hair and frilly fashion (she’s often been called “The Backwoods Barbie”). The physically imposing Latifah is dressed in sleek urban style (her prevailing nickname: “Hip-Hop’s First Lady”).
One’s more than a little bit country, the other’s decidedly rock ‘n’ roll (or, more precisely, hip hop).

As they strode into a room at Park Avenue’s Regency Hotel for interviews hosted by Warner Bros., the 5-foot-10, Newark-born Latifah towered over the 4-foot-11, Tennessee-bred Parton. But the two were already chattering like long-lost sisters, sharing private jokes and finishing each other’s sentences.

“Joyful Noise” features Parton and Latifah as G.G. Sparrow and Vi Rose Hill, members of a church choir in a small Georgia town who have warring opinions on how the close-knit community should approach its upcoming effort to win the National Joyful Noise Competition. Folded in is a tale of young love between Vi Rose’s good-girl daughter (Keke Palmer) and G.G.’s rebellious grandson (Jeremy Jordan).

But the heart and soul of the movie spring from its music, and Parton and Latifah chime in with full voices.

“Our first day to work together was at the recording studio,” Parton recalled. “And it was just magic. I knew I’d love her and I have and I do and we just really clicked. We just kinda went out to the microphone, and it was like we’d been singing together all our lives.”

“Singing and jamming and just having fun,” Latifah agreed.

Both singer-actresses are known for their directness and honesty, and they agreed that contributed to their instant bonding.

“I think that’s part of it. We’re just who we are,” Parton said. “She’s just a total individual; so am I. But we love that space that we can share. It just works. Some people you work with and you don’t have that rapport. But we do. We really like each other. We’re not just playing like it.”

“Even our crews liked each other,” Latifah added. “My team of people and her team of people liked each other. We all just got along. We clicked from the very beginning.”

“But that’s what this movie’s about,” Parton said. “Love …”

“And laughter,” said Latifah.

Both women said the characters they play are close to who they are in real life.

“I’m like the … um, I started to say the Playboy, I mean the Energizer bunny… I just keep going and going,” the energetic Parton said.

“Oops, wrong bunny,” Latifah laughed.

“How do you know?” Parton quipped.

Someone asked Parton if she was the least bit sensitive about a joke during an exchange of insults between G.G. and Vi Rose that referred to G.G.’s (and by extension Dolly’s) many nips and tucks and cosmetic surgeries.

“Oh no, I’m the one that told (writer-director Todd Graff) he should use all that,” Parton insisted. “I said, ‘that’s fine. Make it fair, Let’s do tit for tat,’ if you’ll pardon the expression.”
The famous “Dolly look” is always a part of who she is and who she plays on screen, she said.

“Well, I always tell this story, and it’s a true story, that I patterned my look after the town tramp in our little town,” Parton said. “There was this woman that walked the streets, and I thought she was the prettiest thing. I can’t say her name, but she was absolutely beautiful. And I would say to people, ‘oh, ain’t she pretty, and they would say, ‘oh, she ain’t nothing but trash.’

“But I always wanted to have pretty things,” she said. “And I used to get the pokeberries to make lipstick, the kitchen matches and burn them to make eyebrows and beauty marks, and I used anything I could. But my grandpa was a Pentecostal preacher and my Daddy didn’t want me to wear makeup. So I went through a lot.

“They couldn’t scare it out of me. They couldn’t beat it out of me. They couldn’t wipe if off of me,” she said with a laugh. “I knew that I just wanted to be me. And I would dress up.”

“You were a rebel,” said Latifah, who knows a thing or two about rebels.

“Well, I was. But I was a good one,” Parton said. “I got whipped a lot for just being myself. But I always had nice boobs. I got ’em doctored some, too, as years went by. But I always had a nice little figure.”

So, someone asked, how does she stay so tiny?

“Oh, I have to starve,” said Parton matter-of-factly. “I gained a bunch of weight when I continued to eat like a country girl. But I’m just a tiny little thing, so I don’t have anywhere to put it.”

“So she just gives it to everybody else,” Latifah said.

“Oh, I cooked her some dumplings,” Parton replied.

“She cooked me some mean chicken and dumplings,” said Latifah.

“I cook old country food,” said Parton.

“And that fudge. She brought fudge to the set,” Latifah marveled. “Who works 16 hour days and goes home and makes fresh fudge, peanut butter and chocolate? I mean it was like crack on the set. Everybody was like, ‘you got any of that fudge?’”

As for Latifah, she said gospel music is bred in her bones.

“I definitely grew up on it,” she said. “I grew up between Virginia and Maryland and New Jersey, and church was not a choice. You were going to church and vacation Bible school in the summer, and I stayed with my grandmother in Maryland and my aunt and uncles in Virginia and my aunt directed a big mass choir.

“So I would always go to choir rehearsal with her,” she said. “I loved going to choir rehearsal with her and just watching how they built a song. How she taught a new song and she assigned the parts and when the choir really started to learn it and rock it. Then to see them come into the church on Sunday, it was amazing.

“Gospel just has this thing about it,” said Latifah. “The only time I can really say I almost caught the Holy Ghost was in choir rehearsal with my aunt. This song had really moved me, and I was only 12 years old, and I just felt this feeling come over me and I started to lose it. And it scared me so I pulled back and thought, ‘what’s happening to me?’ I had to have a talk with my grandmother about that, and she said just let it happen next time. There’s just something about that music. It’s not just a song; it happens to you. Even if you’re not a Christian, if you really listen to this music, it will start happening to you.”

“Amen to that,” said Parton.

Dolly Parton, Queen Latifah

As long as the exuberant cast of “Joyful Noise” is raising its collective voice in song, this corny but open-hearted gospel glee-fest has the power to stir some souls.

If this were simply a concert film of inspirational pop and faith music with powerhouse performers Dolly Parton and Queen Latifah leading the way in righteous voice, or even a documentary on the real-life House of Blues Joyful Noise Gospel Contest, an online talent search open to anyone that the spirit moves, it would probably soar on its own merits.

It’s only when writer-director Todd Graff’s clichéd tale of warring small-town matriarchs and forbidden young love intrudes on the heavenly sounds of choirs singing that “Joyful Noise” loses its transcendent air.

The hokey, by-the-numbers story is set in small-town Georgia and centers on church choir members G.G. Sparrow (Parton), a wealthy, “glamorous granny,” and Vi Rose Hill (Latifah), a working mom with an absentee military husband. They have very different ideas of how to approach the upcoming National Joyful Noise Choir Competition.

As cutting-edge G.G. and old-school Vi Rose bicker and compete for the gospel upper hand, young love enters the picture in the form of Vi Rose’s wholesome teen daughter Olivia (energetic and tuneful Keke Palmer) and G.G.’s bad-boy grandson (hunky Jeremy Jordan of Broadway’s just-closed “Bonnie and Clyde”).

A comic and solemn cast of supporting players – from Courtney B. Vance as the dour church pastor to Angela Grovey as a lovesick choir member to Kris Kristofferson as past choir master and G.G.’s late husband – dodge in and out of the proceedings without great impact.

Some cynics at early screenings have been quick to dismiss this hybrid musical and comedy-drama as “Glee for Baptists.” But that’s glib and unfair. If the formulaic story of rural American adversity, faith, bonding and triumph fails to inspire (despite some appealing performances), the musical content is almost enough to lift the story above its mundane mechanics.

That’s thanks in large part to the stellar work of Grammy-winning composer-arranger-producer Mervyn Warren (“Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit,” “The Preacher’s Wife”), who infuses the picture with a moving, emotionally rich array of gospel and pop arrangements that will have even nonbelievers shouting hallelujah!

Graff is a self-avowed “theater kid” whose two previous directing efforts – “Camp” and “Bandslam” – are unabashedly fueled by an old-fashioned, let’s-put-on-a-show ethic that would do Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney proud. But if his story tastes are pedestrian, Graff’s sense of musicality is soaring.

When “Joyful Noise” sings – whether it’s Palmer in a touching solo of Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” or Parton and Latifah in a medley anchored by Sly and the Family Stone’s “I Want to Take You Higher” or gospel star Karen Peck belting “Mighty High” or the great Kirk Franklin getting down and funky with “In Love” or (best of all) the Our Lady of Perpetual Tears children’s choir flying with Billy Preston’s “That’s the Way God Planned It” – it is heavenly. When it narrates, it comes thudding down to earth.

- Dennis King

“Joyful Noise”

PG-13
1:58
2 stars
Starring: Queen Latifah, Dolly Parton, Keke Palmer, Jeremy Jordan, Kris Kristofferson
(Some language including a sexual reference)

BY DENNIS KING

NEW YORK – If Common hadn’t become a hip-hop music star and a promising screen actor, he no doubt would have tested his skills in the hardwood arena of professional basketball.

As a Chicago native and lifelong Bulls fan, the 38-year-old rapper (born Lonnie Rashid Lynn) grew up in the rough-and-tumble world of pick-up hoops games and agile trash talk that helped shape his well-honed verbal acuity. And he dreamed of playing in the NBA.

Life led him down another, equally lucrative path, but for his latest outing on film, “Just Wright,” Common said he got to live out that fantasy of basketball stardom in a way only the Hollywood dream factor could manufacture.

Starring opposite the imposing Queen Latifah, the soft-spoken, athletic Common more than filled the bill for the role of Scott McKnight, a star point guard for the New Jersey Nets who gradually falls for Latifah’s tomboyish physical therapist Leslie Wright while she helps him come back from a career-threatening knee injury.

“I grew up playing basketball; it was all I thought about,” Common said during a round of press interviews hosted by Fox Searchlight. “My first dream was to play in the NBA, so this was a dream role for me in many ways – a dream to play the lead in a serious movie and a dream to play in the NBA. For those two months we filmed, I got to be in the NBA.

“I prepared by training with an assistant coach from the Nets,” said the actor, whose previous roles were as villains in action movies and crime dramas like “American Gangster.” “He just basically said, ‘Look, I’m treating you like you’re a player right now. We’re going to go through all the drills – defensive drills, ball-handling drills, whatever. I ended up getting in really good shape because of the training I did. Running up and down that court is a lot.

“The most exciting moment for me was looking across that court and seeing Dwayne Wade (of the Miami Heat). I’m thinking, like, I gonna take him to the cup. Show him what I’m really about. It’s the competitive nature in me, the Chicago basketball player in me. I wanted to challenge him. Even when we weren’t filming I was still trying to drive and see how far I could get with him.

“And actually with Dwight Howard (of the Orlando Magic), during one take he just decided to block my shot into the stands to let me know, hey, he could to that anytime.”

Common said he was especially pleased that his character could serve as a positive role model and help dispel some widely held negative stereotypes about professional athletes.

“I took pride in Scott being a good guy and having a good heart,” he said. “And also being interested in jazz music and being well spoken and classy. I listen to LeBron James and Kobe Bryant in interviews and these dudes, they speak well, they’re intelligent human beings. They’re destined for greatness, and that’s why they’re great.

“I think I was able to show a side of NBA stars in a way that we don’t always see them,” he said. “I think the film as a whole shows an image of African-American characters and people in a way we don’t normally see them.”

Shooting at the Izod Center, home of the Nets, Common said, was like being at an NBA fantasy camp with all his hoops idols.

“ It was basically like we were living the life. Like I said, I was in the NBA for like those two months,” he marveled. “It was just exciting for me to be up there with Dwayne Wade and Dwight Howard and Rashard Lewis (Orlando Magic) and those cats.

“My friends, well, let’s put it this way – I had a bad experience in a celebrity all-star game a couple of years ago,” Common recalled with a rueful laugh. “I was playing and it was like five seconds left, and I got the rebound and was turning around to hit the game-winning shot – in my mind I’m gonna hit the game-winning shot – and I turned to shoot and my shot got blocked by this girl, some WNBA player.

“All I did when the game ended was put my face in my jersey,” he said. “My cell phone started lighting up with texts from friends saying, ‘don’t ever say you’re from Chicago.’ So this film was definitely my redemption, and I wanted every scene to be authentic. I had a stunt double that was there, but he did not get in the game at all, cause I’m like, ‘there’s no way I’m gonna look at that screen and see a stunt double there when I know I can do all the things necessary, basketballwise.’”

Common and Latifah

Common said he’s grateful to Latifah, whose Flavor Unit Entertainment produced the film, for giving him his first shot at a leading man role.

“It was a big step for me in terms of letting people see me in a different type of role,” he said. “My vision has always been to become a leading man and to take on roles that are diverse.

“I was definitely nervous, because my mother would call me like every other day and say, ‘this is it, this is going to be the big one.’ And I’d say, ‘Ma, you’re putting more pressure on me. I’ve already got everybody around looking at every little thing I’m doing.’ But I enjoy that pressure a little bit. That’s why it was exciting, because I’m up for the challenge and I live to grow. And I think I was able to grow a lot throughout this process, and I love taking on roles that challenge me in many ways.

“The funny part about this role is, I think out of all the characters I’ve played this one is the closest to me,” Common said. “You know, Scott McKnight is a good guy. He loves his mother, and that’s very similar to me. And I also feel like with all his popularity, he wants love, he wants to be in love. He was caught up in wanting the prototype woman, the quote-unquote what beauty is supposed to be. But he learned, and I feel a lot of those things are things that I’ve experienced. But in this role, I had to go around to get back to the root of it.”

Common said the lessons of this film are lessons that he’d like to impart to his own daughter.

“I really try to instill in her that she should just love herself and let her know that she’s loved by me and by all of us around her,” he said “And I let her know that there are going to be things that don’t always go her way, but she just has to work through them. And I always tell her, say your prayers, say your prayers, because that’s what gets me through a lot of things.

“But more than anything I keep her in the mind state of loving herself,” he said. “I feel like for all kids, man, no matter who you are if you love yourself it can help you in a lot of things in life. And I really think that’s what this film is encouraging and endorsing. Hey, Latifah showed that Leslie Wright was really a confident woman, and she loved herself no matter what society deemed to be pretty. You gotta be size three to be pretty. She knew she was beautiful, inside and out. That’s important for all of us to know.”

Sanaa Hamri

BY DENNIS KING

NEW YORK – Sanaa Hamri has made a name for herself as a director who is adept at handling multi-racial, multi-cultural stories.

In music videos and on film and television, she’s worked with artists as diverse as Prince and Sting and on stories ranging from the largely black romance “Something New” to the multi-racial “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2” to mostly white TV series “Desperate Housewives” and “Men in Trees.”

The lively director of the newly released Queen Latifah-Common romantic comedy, “Just Wright,” said her multi-hued take on life and art comes naturally.

“I think my vision comes from within,” said Hamri, who was born in Tangier, Morocco. “I’m multi-cultural. I’m mixed. I grew up with people with different skin colors. What you see on screen is how I feel about the diversity of people and their beauty.”

Hamri, who studied theater arts and psychology at Sarah Lawrence College, talked about Queen Latifah, Common and the making of “Just Wright” during a recent press event hosted by Fox Searchlight.

On the film’s strong basketball theme: “I played basketball as a teen. I was a point guard, and I’m 5 foot, 2,” she said with a laugh. “I’m athletic, so I understand sports and I understand the dynamic of athletes. But I think what helped me most on this film is that I’m fascinated by body and motion. I mean, I know more about soccer because in Africa that’s the main sport for us. But here basketball is so cool, and the dynamics are very similar.”

On working with Queen Latifah: “I hadn’t worked with Latifah before, and I was stunned at how quickly she picked up the details of her character, the jargon and techniques of a physical therapist (her character’s profession). At one point I wondered, did she study physical therapy? We had consultants on the set, but she was just so natural at it. I was tempted to ask her, can you check my sore knee out? She just knows how to get into those roles.”

On the casting of hip-hop artist Common in his first leading role: “You know, Common is a positive, great role model,” she said. “I always liked him as a person. It’s always difficult when you have an actor who comes from a musical career. But I knew he upheld what he talked about in his music. He’s kind of unique among hip-hop artists of his caliber. I mean most of them are talking about loose women and the party they went to last night, which I’m tired of. I always knew that Common has so many layers emotionally, so when this role came up I knew he would be perfect for it.

“The rest of Hollywood only sees black males in certain types of roles,” she said. “He had done the gangster stuff on screen, but I knew he could do so much more. Plus, Queen Latifah and Common have natural chemistry. They genuinely like each other, so it’s good to start from that place.”

On presenting positive black male role models: “I think it was important that we showed James Pickens’s character as a father who was there for his daughter. That’s why I wanted to highlight it as much as possible, because I really think that life imitates art nowadays. So we wanted to reinforce that positive image of a father being there and being that great support system. And quite frankly the reason that Latifah’s Leslie Wright winds up with a good guy like Common’s Scott McKnight is because she had a good role model in her father. If her father is not around and doesn’t pay attention to her, then nine out of ten times she’s going to end up with a man who does that.”

On Paula Patton’s character, Morgan, an ambitious a gold-digger: “She’s smart as a whip, but she’s channeling all her energies into the wrong thing,” Hamri said. “She’s on the computer, reading books, setting herself up to nab a rich man. But if she took all that energy in a different direction, she could wind up running a company. There are women who are obsessive about celebrity, about getting the right man, the money. Especially with all these reality TV shows, I felt she kind of epitomized where some of the culture is going – in a negative way.”

On what makes a good date movie: “First and foremost you have to have romance. And you have to have two characters who you want to get together,” she said. “I think that’s what works. And, of course, comedy and having fun are always important when you’re on a date. Not something too heavy but something you can talk about afterward. Like if you’re going to go out to this movie and have dinner afterward, you and your date can have a lot to talk about. For me it’s important to have a movie that’s not like you just ate too much popcorn and feel, well, uggh.”

BY DENNIS KING

NEW YORK – Whenever Queen Latifah does press interviews, she said, someone always asks her about starring in a biography of the iconic singer and actress Pearl Bailey.

Latifah is said to bear a striking physical resemblance to the larger-than-life Bailey, who died in 1990, and there are uncanny similarities in the trajectories of the two women’s careers.

“When there’s a decent script, I’ll do it in a minute,” Latifah said during a press day for her new film, “Just Wright.” “But there hasn’t been a script yet. Just lots of talk and speculation. Even my father, he says he’s going to wring my neck if I don’t get after that. There’s no book, nothing to option, but there are more than a few tantalizing stories out there about Pearly Mae that could be told.”

Bailey, like Latifah, began her career in music and later moved on to success as an actress on stage, film and TV. She won a Tony Award for the title role in an all-black Broadway production of “Hello, Dolly” in 1968.

Latifah said she’s admired Bailey all her life and considers her a positive role model. A film biography of her life and times is long overdue.

“That could be one of those movies that could change a career,” she said. “Every time I’m asked about her, I’m reminded of a time when I saw a picture in a book and I thought it was me but it was actually Pearl, with a skinnier waist. I mean, in some ways we look identical.”