magic city

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A new documentary series taking viewers inside the notable Magic City gentlemen’s club produced by Drake and Jermaine Dupri debuted at SXSW to rave reviews.

If you mention Magic City to anyone in and out of Atlanta, Georgia, you’re bound to get an approving response. The well-known strip club is the focus of a new documentary series, Magic City: An American Fantasy, which has Hip-Hop icon Jermaine Dupri and superstar Drake as producers. However, it is not currently attached to any distributor or platform. The series made its debut at the South By Southwest Festival Monday (March 11), with director Charles Todd and producer Cole Brown on hand to field questions from the audience along with fellow producer Jami Gertz after the first episode was screened at the Zach Theatre in Austin, Texas.

On the red carpet, Todd spoke of the influence that the strip club has. “Magic City is a purveyor of culture, and its an A&R – all the biggest hits that you hear on the radio, if it doesn’t break at Magic City, it doesn’t break, period.” Brown also spoke about the fine line everyone walked in bringing the series to the screen. “We wanted to walk a fine line with nudity, in particular — where you can’t make a documentary about a strip club and not have any nudity, it just isn’t true to form — and you’re trying to tell the true story,” he said. “At the same time, we didn’t want it to be salacious, gratuitous. We wanted to use it in such a way that you’re getting an image of what this place is. But if you go to Magic City, you see all the anatomy.”
That was underscored by Gigi McGuire, a former dancer at Magic City who appeared at the premiere and appears nude in the series. “I understood the vision of the artistic value of what they were trying to achieve, and I had no problem with agreeing to show these titties,” she told the audience, adding: “Strip is art, and the art is being celebrated, clearly.” In addition to Drake, the series also features appearances by Big Boi, Shaquille O’Neal, T.I., Killer Mike and Nelly.