Questlove on Why He Put Will Smith in ‘Sly Lives!’ Montage

“Ass”Questlove“Thompson famously won an Oscar for his documentary ‘Summer of Soul’ in 2022…just moments after ‘The Slap.'” Now Questlove has threaded Will Smith into a larger discussion in a new film “Wicked life!About “The Burden of the Black Genius” (which is also the subtitle of the new film).

This documentary, as its title suggests, traces the life, times and art of Sly Stone, the legendary bandleader of Sly & the Family Stone. Questlove gave an interview on “Summer of Soul”, even though his health issues meant he was leading a “bad life”! This stone will not be met this time. He uses the arc of Stone’s career to make larger points about the representational burdens that black artists often have to bear: that they represent the entire black community, and in their artistic output and personal behavior must be held to a much higher standard than white artists. The point is made several times in the documentary that success can be more dangerous for black artists than failure.

Questlove and his producer Joseph Patel stopped by Indiewire Studio in Sundanceprovided by Dropbox, to discuss these topics in depth.

“I think there’s a lot of guilt that goes on,” Questlove said about what can happen when a black artist makes the big time. “Why is this happening to me? Why me? There is definitely someone more talented than me. Think about any black mega artist you know: they can get to a point where something takes them out, and you think ‘why did they do that?’ And that’s the burden.”

In a montage at the end of the film, Questlove shows other black artists who have endured an extraordinary level of pressure and scrutiny throughout their careers — the kind of pressure and scrutiny that actually caused many of them to dethrone,” he said. “Self-sabotage” is another term used throughout the film Documentary.

Will Smith, holding an Oscar onstage at the Dolby Theater in the wake of “The Slap,” is among them.

“It was an important discussion,” Questlove said of how or whether to include Smith. “How do we deal with this? What frame do we project? Maybe this was a rare moment of multiple vandalisms happening in one moment, and it was lightning in a bottle. But we had to give examples.” [of what we were trying to express]And I think it was tastefully done. This was definitely a moment in history where you see this idea of ​​“You get what you came for, but what happens when you get what you think you want? What happens in your life then?”

Watch the entire video above.

“Seely life!” It will be released on Hulu on February 13.

Dropbox is proud to partner with Indiewire and the Sundance Film Festival. In 2025, 68% of feature films at the Sundance Film Festival used Dropbox in the production of their films. Dropbox helps filmmakers and creative teams find, organize, and secure all the files important for any project.