The new Drake-produced docuseries “Magic City: An American Fantasy” debuted at SXSW on Monday night to a raucous crowd filled with friends, sponsors and fans of the project’s iconic Atlanta club, Magic City.
After a screening of the first episode of the three-part documentary, which does not yet have a distributor or attached platform, producer Cole Brown and director Charles Todd answered some questions from the audience, including “Was there anything too explicit to be true?” Put him in this movie? Documentary?
“We wanted to walk a fine line with nudity, in particular, where you can’t make a documentary about a strip club and not have any nudity, it’s not true to form, and you’re trying to tell the truth,” Brown said. “At the same time, we didn’t want It must be obscene and unjustified. We wanted to use it in a way that you can get a picture of what this place is like. But if you go to Magic City, you’ll see all the anatomy.
According to the tagline for the “Magic City” doc, “In 1985, phone salesman Michael Barney — his friends call him Mr. Magic — puts his talent for smart talk to work, opening a small strip club in Atlanta. He plays DJ, bartender and bouncer while his lone dancer separates men But soon the celebrities arrive. Athletes from Michael Jordan to Shaq climb into the club, DC The Brain Supreme records a hit record from the DJ booth, and Outkast tests out songs by watching the girls dance. In Within a few years, Magic City will become the most famous strip club in Atlanta, and soon the world.But when Mr. Magic is sent away to federal prison, the empire he built may collapse.
Magic City alumna Gigi Maguire, one of the subjects in the doc, backed up Brown’s point about “not being vulgar and not being vulgar” with a story about why she decided to strip naked in the “Magic City” doc, despite having left that chapter of her life behind her.
“I retired from Magic City 12 years ago, but you all just saw my boobs,” said Maguire, who joined Brown, Todd and “Magic City” producers Jamey Gertz and Jermaine Dupri on stage. “And during that day when we were filming in the studio, I had no idea they were going to ask for this. And I remember them coming up to me and saying, ‘Listen, we have this scene and we don’t know how it’s going to feel, but this is the vision.’ And I’m like, ‘Do you want to see my boobs?’ !'”
Maguire explained that her casual answer had a serious argument behind it. “The reason is that I did not feel in any way that it was done in a sexual context,” Maguire said. “I understood seeing the artistic value of what they were trying to achieve and had no problem agreeing to show those boobs.”
“Nudity is an art, and art is clearly celebrated,” she added.
Aside from producing the project, Drake is also featured in the doc talking about his experiences in the Magic City alongside fellow celebrities including Shaquille O’Neal, Killer Mike, T.I., Nelly and Big Boi.
Additional executive producers include Bayan Jonam, Brown, Gertz, Jermaine Dupri, Adil “The Future” Nour, Peter Nelson, Devin Chanda, and Alex Kaplan.