The Two Films

I went to see two films.

The first one was black and white and entirely set in the confines of a New Orleans barber shop. It was about a black kid who was struggling to make ends meet and afford a saxophone.

The second was a full colour film about a white couple who got really into jazz music. James Earl Jones was in it. The kid who starred in the first film made a small cameo as a street musician playing saxophone.

Both films had the same title (which I can’t now remember), made consecutively by the same director as part of the same project and were commercial disasters. The former film was only available to view in a couple of venues in a shopping district, I think in New Orleans. I went to see it in the back room of the very barber shop in which it was set. The latter film I got to watch at a Picturehouse but in fairly spartan room with crappy wooden chairs on an old TV set on a stand with wheels; the type that was common in schools in the 1980s.

This all got mingled up by the usual stuff about walking around in public naked. At some point there was some confusion whether this was about a unique film or about different versions of The Goonies.

I’ve never been to New Orleans and have no interest in Jazz.