Chapel Hill resident wins a 2025 Grammy

COMMUNITY NEWS; ARTS & CULTURE

CHAPEL HILL–When making a documentary about two people as remarkable as musician Jon Batiste and his wife Suleika Jaouad, the most important thing is not to screw up their story, says Joedan Okun.

Given American Symphony won a Grammy for Best Music Film on Feb. 2, it’s safe to say the Carrboro-raised Okun and his co-producers did not screw it up.

“Jon and Suleika–we feel so fortunate to tell their story,” the 47-year-old Okun told The Local Reporter. “They’re an absolute inspiration in the way they live their lives—they made us feel as filmmakers we needed to up our game.” Winning the Grammy, he adds, “is not something you dream about as a filmmaker. It’s very surreal and a lot of fun.”

Becoming a producer

Okun said even before he became a professional filmmaker he was fascinated by documentaries and by oral histories such as Studs Turkel’s books (Working, Hard Times). Watching Barbara Kopple’s 1976 documentary about a mining strike, Harlan County, USA, was “the film that, in my mind, made me want to make documentaries.”

After college Okun interned with filmmaker Roger Weisberg for a year, then worked on documentaries in roles ranging from production assistant to associate producer to post-production specialist. Okun met director Matt Heineman while doing post-production work on Heineman’s Cartel Land (2015). They worked together on Heineman’s subsequent documentaries City of Ghosts (2017), A Private War (2018), and The First Wave (2021) before orchestrating American Symphony.

As a producer Okun is involved in every aspect of a documentary: helping develop the idea, raising financing, as well as establishing the budget and the schedule. “You have to wear a lot of hats; there’s not many people and not a lot of money. What I love about producing is being able to oversee a project from the very beginning to the very end and collaborate with a lot of artists.”

Okun compares the job to a general contractor managing the subcontractors (plumbers, masons, electricians, roofers ) working on a house. “I often say my greatest talent as a producer is hiring good people. It’s a matter of finding key collaborators, then overseeing them.”

Away from work, the Chapel Hill resident is married to Jennifer Breedon; they’re the parents of two sons. Although they graduated from Chapel Hill High School the same year and knew each other, “she was in all the advanced classes, I was in all the regular classes, so we didn’t interact,” stated Okun. They met again in New York, married, and returned to the Triangle during the pandemic.

American Symphony

American Symphony follows Batiste and Jaouad through a year of their lives. That year includes: Batiste composing a symphony (a musical form not associated with African-Americans, as Batiste states in the film) being nominated for 11 Grammys, and coping with the return of Jaouad’s leukemia. By the end of the film, thankfully, she was in remission again.

Okun said he and Heineman had filmed Batiste participating in a Black Lives Matter protest for First Wave, a Best Documentary Emmy-winning film about the pandemic. They asked Batiste to score the movie, which led to Heineman and Batiste becoming friends. When Batiste told Heineman he was creating a new symphony during a residency at Carnegie Hall, American Symphony was born. It became something different when Heineman and Okun expanded it to include Jaouad and Batiste dealing with her cancer.

“That’s the beauty of documentary filmmaking,” said Okun. “It can start out as one thing and become something totally different.”

Financing documentaries is always a challenge. The two options are: 1) to sell to a distributor up front, or 2) to finance it independently, then sell when it’s finished. In the case of American Symphony, they financed it out-of-pocket with help from Mercury Studios. When the film aired at the Telluride Film Festival, Netflix and Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground Productions picked it up. “That’s the dream scenario when you go the independent financing route. We found the perfect partners.”

American Symphony won this year’s Best Musical Film Grammy and his song, “It Never Went Away,” also won a Grammy for “Best Song Written for Visual Media.” The documentary is currently streaming on Netflix.

What next?

Okun said he’s working on some potential projects but they’re not definite enough to announce yet. “Securing financing right now is one of the bigger challenges. We do what we do because we love it and we’re passionate about telling stories. Sometimes it’s the equivalent of living check to check: you finish one project, then you need to get another one off the ground to get things going.”

Fraser Sherman has worked for newspapers, including the Destin Log, the Pensacola News-Journal and the Raleigh Public Record. Born in England, he’d still live in Florida if he hadn’t met the perfect woman and moved to Durham to marry her. He’s the author of several film reference books and has published one novel and several short story collections. This reporter can be reached at: Information@TheLocal Reporter.press.