Dan Pritzker's new silent film imagines obscure musician Buddy Bolden's influence on Louis Armstrong

BUDDY BOLDEN is probably the most influential musician you've never heard of. He's certainly the most influential musician those he's influenced have never even heard.

A renowned cornetist and bandleader in New Orleans at the turn of the 20th century, Bolden was a jazz innovator during the music's earliest development. But struggles with alcoholism and schizophrenia cut his career short at age 30, when he was admitted to the insane asylum, where he spent the rest of his life. He left behind no recordings, only a legacy passed through word of mouth and the testimony of his musical disciples.

Of course, such gaps in the historical record are fertile ground for legends, and Bolden's story is rich in mythology. By the time his name reached the ears of Dan Pritzker, he was identified as "the guy that invented jazz."

"There was some anonymous guy out there that invented this music and I had never heard of him?" Pritz-ker said, recalling that life-changing moment. "It was a revelation and an inspiration - and it hit me hard."

It was New Year's Eve 1995 when Pritzker first heard Bolden's name. He was on tour with his R&B-infused rock band Sonia Dada when a radio programmer casually mentioned the name.

"I had devoted such a large part of my life to music and loved a really wide and diverse range of music," said Pritzker, the group's guitarist and primary songwriter. "Now here's this guy who basically invented the core of all the music that I grew up with and loved so much, and I had never heard of him. This guy changed my life. It was unbelievable."

That conversation resulted in an obsession that has preoccupied Pritz-ker for 15 years and counting, resulting in two films that grapple with Bolden's legacy. The feature-length biopic "Bolden," which stars Anthony Mackie of the Oscar-winning "The Hurt Locker," is being edited.

The first of the pair to reach screens, then, will be the curious companion piece "Louis," a 68-minute silent film only tangentially related to Bolden, which imagines Louis Armstrong's childhood in New Orleans. The film will premiere Aug. 31 at the Keswick Theatre in Glenside with live accompaniment provided by trumpet giant Wynton Marsalis, classical pianist Cecile Licad, and a 10-piece jazz ensemble.

"My aim is to make both films have a mythical quality," Pritzker explained. "This is not history or biography at all. With Bolden, there's no there. We know when he was born, we know when he was institutionalized, we know when he died. There's no recorded music and there's one photograph. So it was left to my imagination.

"Similarly, so much of Louis Armstrong's life is known once he got to Chicago [in 1922]. But what about when he was a little boy, and what if it was a silent film and had a sort of mythical, magical quality to it? That was really the enticement to me."

Despite having no experience in film whatsoever, Pritzker was in a unique position to make his offbeat concept a reality. The son of Hyatt hotel chain co-founder Jay Pritzker, he ranks somewhere in the lower half of Forbes magazine's "400 Richest Americans" list, with a reported net worth of $1.5 billion in 2009.

Pritzker financed the films himself, with a budget estimated somewhere in the $10 million to $25 million range. His conversation grows somewhat curt at the mention of money. All he would say was, "I'm in a really lucky position to be able to do that, and that's what I've done."

He's more open when talking about the creative side of the process.

When asked the most challenging aspect of a first film, Pritzker laughed and said: "Oh, everything. It's a multiheaded monster making these things, that's for sure. You probably have to be a little schizophrenic to do it. Basically, what I came away with is it's insane to make a film, and only crazy people do it."

One advantage of nearly unlimited resources is the ability to surround oneself with the best available talent. To that end, Pritzker hired legendary cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, whose filmography includes such classics as "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "The Deer Hunter," "Deliverance," "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" and several of director Woody Allen's recent films.

"I usually love to work with first-time filmmakers," Zsigmond said in an interview. "New directors usually are more open to help from cinematographers. I think that Dan is a very artistic and interesting future director."

Pritzker returned the compliment, albeit with a few caveats, saying, "Vilmos Zsigmond is one of the most inspiring guys I ever met in my life. An incredible guy - who drove me nuts! And I loved it. I'm not going to tell you that Vilmos was any kind of pussycat, but the thing that made him difficult at times was his passion for what he does."

The main attraction for Zsigmond, meanwhile, was the rare opportunity to work in the antiquated silent-film form. "I always wanted to do a silent film," said the 80-year-old cinematographer. "I like the artistry of the silent film. I always thought that silent films were more of an art form than later on, with sound and color and all that.

"The visuals have to tell the story. In modern films, the story is mostly, unfortunately, being told by dialogue and a lot of talk, talk, talk."

While an advantage for Zsigmond, that facet was a particular challenge for screenwriters Derick and Steven Martini. "I was very accustomed to writing films with dialogue," said Derick Martini. "You can't lean on dialogue at all in a silent film to tell the story. It has to be very visual and very operatic in order for the story to resonate."

Originally enlisted to pen "Bolden," Martini recalled his reaction when Pritzker brought up the idea for "Louis." "I thought he was kidding," Martini said, laughing. "But he was dead-serious. Dan is a guy with really big and interesting ideas."

Pritzker likened the experience to his years as a musician in a touring rock band. "The nature of any collaborative process is ceding some level of control. I guess I'm old enough now and have had enough collaborative experience in different areas that I felt extremely confident about my vision for the film, and my passion for doing it. I think at the end of the day, that's what gets the camel through the eye of the needle."

The inspiration for "Louis" came during the process of writing "Bolden," when Pritzker saw a screening of Charlie Chaplin's classic "City Lights" accompanied by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. That experience is reflected most literally in the film's villain, a corrupt judge played by Jackie Earle Haley ("Little Children," "Watchmen") with a Chaplin mustache and a Little Tramp swagger.

Set in a New Orleans populated almost entirely by scheming white politicians, downtrodden black prostitutes and a few musicians, "Louis" is gorgeous to look at but is ultimately a strange blend of broad comedy and equally broad social commentary.

The two strands never successfully intertwine, especially when Haley's baggy-pants judge threatens the victimized heroine, played by Shanti Lowry. The delicate balance of slapstick and pathos is one that Chaplin mastered, but here it teeters violently between the two.

Despite Pritzker's years of research, "Louis" displays a relatively superficial approach to both film and jazz history. The unsophisticated physical comedy is more akin to lower-tier Keystone Kops shorts than Chaplin, while the title character is little more than an onlooker with a horn.

He does take part in the movie's most cringe-inducing scene, however, the cameo appearance of Buddy Bolden himself. Played again by Mackie, Bolden rides by in a horse-drawn cart marked "Louisiana Insane Asylum" while playing his cornet, pausing to hand young Louis Armstrong his crown.

It's a strikingly literal moment in a film dedicated to mythologizing, though Pritzker doesn't necessarily subscribe to the exaggerated claims made for his subject.

"My take on it is that Buddy Bolden was Prometheus, and maybe Icarus too," he said. "I think that jazz very much evolved through the American experience, and that it's an amalgam - it really is the quintessential American art form. It's so rich and so colorful that you can't pin it to one guy."

Following its current five-city tour, Pritzker sees a further life for "Louis" as a live vehicle. He hopes to interest other composers in writing alternate scores and performing with the film. He expects "Bolden" to end its long journey to the screen in 2011 or 2012.

Keswick Theatre, 291 N. Keswick Ave., Glenside, 8 p.m. Aug. 31, $45-$55, 215-572-7650, www.keswicktheatre.com.