Mary Lucia and Jill Riley talk about two new documentaries, Ricky Powell: The Individualist and the new Amy Poehler-directed film, Lucy and Desi.

Transcript

Edited for clarity.

Jill Riley: Friday mornings, I am joined by my friend and colleague, afternoon drive host Mary Lucia. Happy Friday.

Mary Lucia: Jill!

Jill Riley: What is going on?

Mary Lucia: Well, if you're only looking for obscure documentaries that probably seven people have watched — I'm one of the seven — I'm here to tell you about the coolest, most amazing thing I saw just randomly. Ricky Powell, he's a dude that grew up in New York. He was a photographer, and it immediately spoke to me because it's like: right place, right time.

So he was selling lemon-ice drinks on the street and started taking photographs. And some of the photographs he happened to capture were, like, Andy Warhol and Jean Michel Basquiat getting out of a cab. Then he befriended — he just sort of fell into — the whole birth of hip hop, including Run DMC, and Beastie Boys. In fact, at one point, Chuck D is interviewed in this documentary, and he says, "I thought [Powell] was in the Beastie Boys, because he was always with them." Ricky Powell is in a bunch of their videos. And he did a lot of their photography; he did that that fisheye lens photo on Paul's Boutique. A lot of hip hop artists used him. There's a great picture of Run DMC in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Powell went on tour with them, and he also sort of became the unofficial fourth Beastie Boy, but he was a guy that had also public access TV show called Rappin' with the Rickster.

Some of the people that show up as the talking heads to say how great he was include Laurence Fishburne. Big fan. And he, along with Russell Simmons and Doug E. Fresh and Kool Keith and Fab Five Freddy — you know, he was right place right time.

The really interesting twist about it is that he is he kind of lived in squalor. He lived in this apartment that was disgusting. Couldn't find anything. Of course, he discovered crack. And that's always a good thing when you realize cocaine isn't strong enough. What's next?

Jill Riley: Oh, that's too bad.

Mary Lucia: It is too bad. But he has been able to be recognized now. There's been exhibits of his work as well as books, The Rap Photography of Ricky Powell. Tons and tons of his street photography. And again, it's a fascinating look at a dude that lived in New York, right place right time. And then the twist, of course, in the story is his mom. His mom and he were estranged, and yet they lived probably two blocks from each other.

Jill Riley: Really?

Mary Lucia: Yeah. So while they're shooting the documentary, his mom will just walk into the same convenience store he's in and he has to kind of look at the camera like, you know, "Stop filming. That's my mom. I don't want to confront her." It's, it's very uncomfortable. But there is a little bit of resolution, I guess, at the end of it. But it is, once you start, if you Googled his name, you'd see all of the photographs that he has responsible for, and they're amazing!

Jill Riley: Yeah, so it's called Ricky Powell: The Individualist.

Jill Riley: It's a good time for documentaries. I'm going to tell you one that I'm excited to see just real quick, just because, you know, I grew up watching I Love Lucy reruns. I mean, just an incredible story. And so the new documentary is called Lucy and Desi. And I know last year, that biopic came out, Being the Ricardos. And I just didn't really have a lot of interest in seeing it. Did you see it?

Mary Lucia: I did. It is Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem. It's, it's ...  it's not that great. I'd rather see the real thing because they were like a powerhouse couple in Hollywood. They own their own studio, Desilu. And they were ahead of their time because they were doing a TV show on film, so it could last forever.

Jill Riley: Yeah. So it's called Lucy and Desi. Directed by Amy Poehler, produced by Ron Howard, which that's kind of a cool moment for Ron Howard, because he was Opie in the Andy Griffith Show. And that was filmed at their studios. So that's kind of incredible. The guy that did the editing — this guy, Robert Martinez — he was the editor for the BeeGees, How Can You Mend a Broken Heart. So it's like they brought in all these really great people. And you know, Lucy and Desi's kids are involved; that kind of gave them all access to a lot of footage that people haven't seen before. And so, yeah, that one's out this weekend, and you could find it on Amazon Prime. And then the documentary that that Mary's talked about, about Ricky Powell, you can see it on Showtime. I think that's that's where I saw it listed. So yeah, a lot of great documentaries to to get into. You never know what we're going to talk about on a Friday morning. But we just want to tell you about some things that we're excited about.

External Links

Ricky Powell: The Individualist - Showtime site

Lucy and Desi - Amazon Prime Video