President of Beauty: The Life and Times of Lester Young

First: The Film Nears Completion

It has been a long time since we last posted here. But we’ve been busy. In August of 2022, Henry found animator Dawn Stockbridge virtually in his backyard. By October that year, she signed on as Director of Animation, and drew a small team of interns and a lot of pencil lead and watercolor and pixels to the task of bringing Lester’s interview and memories to life.

Soon, the award-winning editor Christo Tsiaras joined the team, and in great love and companionship, Henry’s vision for Lester’s story finally took flight.

Featuring nearly 20 minutes of animation, dozens of interviews from jazz greats who were inspired by and played with Lester, and underpinned by an extraordinary soundtrack, and a very special closing track we will tell you more about soon, President of Beauty is now nearing completion.

The entire story has been told. Animation is fully designed and blocked in. Final motion sequences are in progress.

So, we are now entering the post-production phases, during which we will undertake the Herculean task of clearing rights for the music, photo and video artifacts; sweeten the sound and add sound effects under the animation; color grade; and finalize the credits and titles.

And if you have donated, you can expect to see your name on the gratitude page. Because we couldn’t have done this love poem to Lester, without the love and support of each of you.

If you haven’t donated, or feel you can increase your contribution, please do click on the donate link. The cost to clear the music rights for the sound track is… well… as Lester would say, “Chandelier.”

Second: You Have Got to Check Out Our New Trailer!

Even the trailer is rich with jazz royalty, all sharing their love for Lester. Christo has created a wonderful sense of the film. And you can only see this on our new website. Which brings us to:

Finally: President of Beauty Has a New Website!

As we move toward completion, we are looking forward to building energy around the film for festivals and distribution. So, we’re moving to a website that shares the name of the film. From now on, you can find us at www.PresidentOfBeauty.com. We are working to move all the content from here to that site, and we are trying to do it in a way that won’t break the links you have made to our content here. (Please let us know if we break a link, and we’ll fix it straight away.)

On the new website, in addition to the trailer, we will be adding outtakes from the film, bios for all the performers and poets who are in the film, and also some links to their favorite foundations or charities, to magnify the good that the President of Beauty can do in the world. There’s also a new mailing list there that you can join, so when we do our friends-and-family screening, you will get an invitation.

Hope to see you there!

And thank you for your support.