It's a great mirror of American history. While doing the film, Gerald Early, a writer in St. Louis, said that when they study the American civilization 2,000 years from now, Americans will be known for three things the Constitution, baseball and jazz music. That puts a smile on your face when you think about it. But the genius of Americans is improvisation. The Constitution is four pieces of paper that help adjudicate the most complicated problems of the 21st century, even in Florida, despite the fact that they were written in the late 18th century.
Baseball is a simple children's game with a stick and a ball that uses chess-like combinations.
Jazz music is the only serious music that we invented and at the heart of its genius is improvisation. Those are the perfectly wonderful things that Americans done. And because jazz is an art form that can be shared with the entire world, there's universal truths. Historians and filmmakers make lousy prognosticators, but I do know I had a complicated set of desires. I wanted to tell a complicated narrative for people who were not into jazz.