Film Review: "Quincy" (2018).

"A life beyond measure." This is Quincy. This documentary film co-written and co-directed by Alan Hicks and Rashida Jones. This documentary profiles music and culture icon Quincy Jones, offering unprecedented access to his private life and stories from his unparalleled career.

Since his birth on March 14, 1933, Quincy Delight Jones Jr. has since gone on to become one of the world's most well known record producers, multi-instrumentalists, singers, composers, arrangers, and film and television producers, with a career spanning over six decades in the entertainment industry. He has recorded over two-thousand, nine-hundred songs, over three-hundred albums, fifty-one film and television scores, and over a thousand original compositions. Which has garnered seventy-nine Grammy nominations, twenty-seven Grammy awards, as well as being one of eighteen E.G.O.T winners (Emmy Grammy, Oscar and Tony), especially for Thriller, the best selling album of all time, and We Are the World, the best selling single of all time. He is also known for his philanthropic work, raising $63 million for famine relief in Africa. 

Jones came to prominence in the 1950s as a jazz arranger and conductor, before moving on to work in pop music and film scores. In 1969 Jones and his songwriting partner Bob Russell became the first African-Americans to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song, for The Eyes of Love from the film Banning (1967). Jones was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score for his work on In Cold Blood (1967), making him the first African-American to be nominated twice in the same year. In 1971 he became the first African-American to be the musical director and conductor of the Academy Awards ceremony. In 1995 he was the first African-American to receive the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. He has tied with sound designer Willie D. Burton as the second most Oscar-nominated African-American, with seven nominations each. Jones was the producer, with Michael Jackson, of Jackson's albums Off the Wall (1979), Thriller (1982), and Bad (1987), as well as the producer and conductor of We Are the World (1985). In 2013, Jones was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as the winner, alongside Lou Adler, of the Ahmet Ertegun Award. He was named one of the most influential jazz musicians of the 20th century by Time magazine. In early August 2018, it was announced that Netflix had acquired the documentary.

An intimate and ultimately fascinating peek inside the world of Quincy Jones, Quincy will inspire and engage audiences in equal measure. If you were in the dark about the man behind musicians like Michael Jackson, this documentary may prove educational. For everyone else, it's a necessary, and salutary, study. Indeed a comprehensive documentary on the iconic musical figure. The fact that it accomplishes so much in just over two hours is a testament to the love and respect Jones' own daughter Rashida imbues. It rightfully weaves the music around its narrative, which by the way, is some of the greatest American music ever made.

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