Celebrating our country at 250, Rivertown Film at 25, Robert Altman at 100, and Kansas City at 30.

Jazz, crime, race and politics swirl around the story of a desperate attempt to rescue a lover in Kansas City in 1934, the time and place of director Robert Altman’s youth. Mayor Tom “Boss” Pendergast kept the alcohol flowing during prohibition and the illegal gambling easily available from the country clubs to the street corners. Supported by more nightclubs per capita than anywhere else in the country, Kansas City Jazz reverberated through the city and before long it changed the course of American music.

Jennifer Jason Leigh plays a working class romantic who models herself after the movie persona of Kansas City native and Hollywood star Jean Harlow, and is obsessively in love with her wanna-be gangster husband. Miranda Richardson plays the wife of a political advisor to the president, hooked on laudanum and in a lonely marriage. Harry Belafonte is a volatile Black gangster, the voice of the story, whose humanity is sustained by the music playing in his headquarters, the “Hey Hey Club.”

Kansas City was where the young Robert Altman heard improvisation in music that later became a signature of his directing, and whose exposure to local politics stuck with him for a lifetime. A New York Times article about the 250^th anniversary of the founding of our nation acknowledged: “There are few filmmakers whose work encompasses America, in all its complexities and contradictions, as fully as Robert Altman’s.”

The Hey Hey Club musicians are an unbelievable who’s-who of jazz musicians of the 1990’s, gathered by legendary music producer Hal Wilner: Don Byron, Ron Carter, Christian McBride, Tyrone Clarke, Olu Dara, Nicholas Payton, James Zollar, James Carter, Craig Handy, David Murray, Joshua Redman, Victor Lewis, Curtis Fowlkes, Clark Gayton, Jesse Davis, David “Fathead” Newman, Geri Allen, Cyrus Chestnut, Russell Malone, Mark Whitfield, and Kevin Mahogany.

Stay for a discussion with Kansas City producer Matthew Seig and Music Producer Steven Bernstein, who both acknowledge their local residence is connected to their work on Kansas City.

The Critics Said

“Robert Altman calls his ‘Kansas City’ a ‘jazz memory,’ and no one could hope to improve upon his description of his rich evocation of his hometown in 1934, the year he turned 9. With the effortlessness of the master that he is, Altman spins a tale of a cockamamie kidnapping that keys a meditation upon race, class and corruption set against a gorgeous period tapestry and a glorious celebration of jazz.” – Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times

“’Movies. White people sit around all day thinking up that s**t. And then they believe it!’ That’s Harry Belafonte speaking in the most powerful film role of his career, playing a lethal black gangster in Robert Altman’s Kansas City.””When Seldom Seen speaks, Belafonte utters some of the most scathing observations ever heard in an American film.” – Armond White, The National Review

“Although Robert Altman’s Kansas City is a labor of love, it’s anything but nostalgic. Rich in texture, it alternates druggy reveries and a harsh clarity about some brutal realities of life in the American heartland in 1934 as it unfolds during a single calamitous day. Although Altmanwas only 9 the year the action of the film takes place, its world of black jazz and white power politics obviously informed his youth. Here he celebrates the former and pitilessly indicts the latter. In fact, the film oscillates between the poles of the class system. Its framing device is a kidnapping — tinny-voiced Jennifer Jason Leigh, a Jean Harlow wannabe, kidnaps a Democratic Party bigwig’s wife (Miranda Richardson), a sad woman given to swallowing laudanum to forget she’s unloved excess baggage.” – Jay Carr, Boston Globe

“Jazz lovers, rejoice. Robert Altman‘s hypnotic riff on his hell-raising, whoremongering, crime-ridden Missouri hometown during the Depression is brimming over with vibrant, vital music.” “For those willing to go Altman’s insinuating way, Kansas City will haunt you like the bass duet of Ellington’s ‘Solitude’ performed by Ron Carter and Christian McBride as the movie fades, fittingly, to black.” – Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

“The story is not really what Kansas City is about. As counterpoint, Altman gathered some of the best living jazz musicians, put them on a set representing the Hey Hey Club, and asked them to play period material in the style of the Kansas City jazz giants (Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Jay McShann, Lester Young, etc.).” – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

“Altman’s bleak, bittersweet look at the town of his childhood, a Midwestern kingdom of hot jazz and cold-hearted gangsters and politicos. Set in 1934, in the high noon of the Pendergast Democratic machine, the film shows us a colorful network of small-time crooks, big-time gamblers, well-connected pols, virtuoso jazzbos and ordinary folks–all thrown together when a local stickup goes haywire and a nervy little telegrapher-turned-manicurist (Jennifer Jason Leigh) tries to strongarm her hoodlum boyfriend from the clutches of a legendary gabber of a gangster (Harry Belafonte). Behind all the action is K.C.’s pride, Count Basie’s jazz, recreated by experts. The most personal film of Altman’s career is less a conventional story than a jazz rhapsody for director and cast.” One of the ten best movies of the year. – Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune