IDLEWILD REINVENTS MOVIE MUSICAL

Grammy winning OutKast members Andre Benjamin aka Andre 3000 and Antwan Andre Patton aka Big Boi team up in the film Idlewild. Set against the backdrop of a 1930s southern speakeasy, Andre plays Percival, the club’s shy piano player and son of a mortician who is discovered by the club’s showy lead performer and manager Rooster played by Big Boi. In the film Andre gets to showcase two of his talents, acting and performing music and says Idlewild just may have reinvented the movie musical for an entirely different audience.

Idlewild which opens Friday also stars Broadway musical veteran Ben Vereen as Andre’s father and other popular musical talents including Macy Gray and Patti LaBelle.

“But I think it’s hard to make it resonate with kids now because the problem with musicals it’s the music. What’s the popular musical right now? You can’t do these huge scores of music that kids really don’t get into. You have to do the music that they dig and incorporate that into the whole musical genre. I met this girl the other day and I said something about Purple Rain. And she said, ‘what’s Purple Rain?’ I said, ‘what?!’ So really a lot of people really don’t know about musicals believe it or not. So it’s reintroducing something in a whole new way. It’s nothing really new under the sun, it’s just the combinations and how you do it.”