by Helen Barlow
The most high profile film to world premiere at Zurich was Fran Strine’s Ray Parker Jr. biopic Who You Gonna Call?, which announces a new collaboration between Zurich and the Swiss Montreux Jazz Festival.
It was a highlight to attend a concert with Parker and other world-class musicians and to hear the array of songs that Parker wrote, and in some cases, sang. While his name isn’t well known outside the music world, the Grammy-award-winning artist is most famous for the Ghostbusters theme tune, which truly got the crowd going, as did ‘You’ve Got the Love’, which he wrote and Chaka Khan recorded and ‘You Make Me Feel Like Dancing’, a huge hit for Leo Sayer. Parker’s first hit in his own right was ‘Jack and Jill’, which is instantly recognisable and he says “it’s probably the most important song in my career.”
Sony Pictures Television has acquired the global rights to Who You Gonna Call? Of course, Sony released Ivan Reitman’s original Ghostbusters and is set to bow Jason Reitman’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife next year.
Who You Gonna Call? is worth seeking out to discover Parker, a teen prodigy rhythm guitarist who started out with the likes of Stevie Wonder and Barry White.
Interestingly, the woman who organised the Zurich concert is from Sydney and we met afterwards, by chance, over a glass of champers. Michelle Goff is in fact the Chief Digital officer at the Montreux Jazz Festival and lives between Montreux and London. Goff commended incoming Festival director Christian Jungen for his efforts in bringing “Switzerland’s two great festivals together” as did Parker on stage. As for the 66-year-old musician, Goff said she’s never worked with anyone nicer, and in the music business that’s saying something. She explained how the authorities decreed that the concert audience had to be kept to 100 in order for attendees to refrain from wearing masks, which made it a truly intimate event.
Not all members of Parker’s usual band were able to attend because of the logistics of coming over from the US. It’s interesting to note that his guitarist Freddie Washington played on the original ‘Forget Me Nots’, the song on which the Men in Black theme song is based. The band played ‘Forget Me Nots’ here too with Washington on guitar. They also played two private functions and will introduce the awards ceremony on Saturday.
The 16th Zurich Film Festival runs until October 4, 2020
