Art News

Pritzker’s 1st is Silent Film with Live Music

RALEIGH, NC (AP).- Dan Pritzker has spent more than 15 years and millions of dollars trying to bring the story of a jazz singer of whom little is known to the big screen. Then he decided to release another movie first. And not just any other movie, but a silent, black-and-white movie about Louis Armstrong. “Since I finished the silent film first, it’s kind of like I finished my second film before I finished my first, which is a little ridiculous,” Pritzker acknowledged. Pritzker, the billionaire son of the late Hyatt hotel magnate Jay Pritzker and a musician in his own right with the R&B band Sonia Dada, had intended to release “Bolden,” starring Anthony Mackie, as his debut film project. It’s about Buddy Bolden, the cornet player virtually unknown in most circles but credited with being one of the creators of jazz. But while Pritzker was writing the script for that movie in 2001, he took his mother to see the Charlie Chaplin classic “City Lights,” complete with a live symphony,