I am looking forward to this, also now the Miles Davis film, knowing now the gangster elements are just a hook for the real stuff.

You have to take liberties for dramatic effect, this issue sadly, stopped Laurie Pepper giving the rights to Hollywood to film the life of Art Pepper based on Straight Life with Johnny Depp interested in the lead. She obviously had her reasons.

I do like Baker immensely, as a jazz musician and not just the bad boy junky mystique. I am trying to remember when I first came across Baker's But Not For Me, it was on a compilation, I was thinking it may have been Blue Note's California Cool, but that was from 1993, I thought it was a little earlier than that, perhaps not. But I do remember I had borrowed my dad's car and I was on the way to the Chester film festival and it blew me away. Literally, a different way of being. It was that powerful, unlike anything I had heard before. Here was someone operating, completely and utterly in a strain of the cool. Jazz had been seemingly dead for a long time, other than explorations by The Style Council and some of Sting's live stuff, it wasn't part of our culture. The exception of course was Elvis Costello's Shipbuilding which had Chet's trumpet solo.

With Baker you get this: the intrepid youthful effervescence bright young thing punching above his weight who then comes back from Europe fully formed, but all H'd up after the death of Twardzik and then you get a period of junky genius with that horn that floats for all eternity on the high and then his strength goes and he's gone, really gone up until the comeback in 1974. Then he makes a move: to distil and refine a pure vision of the cool - baroque chamber cool jazz that enabled him to stay true to his true love of heroin.

With Chet Baker, as with Charlie Parker, the music is closely related to the heroin high and addiction. It gives the listener a sweet taste of the freedom of the high, with none of the nasty side effects. Other junky musicians, such as Art Pepper were genius despite their addictions, with Parker and Baker, they may be great musicians because of their love of heroin.

I just started Deep In a Dream, by James Gavin.

Are you afraid it's going to be horrible?

Saw it. Liked it!

EDIT: Here's the thing, though. The movie, to my knowledge, departs significantly from what biographers tell us about him. I think the film is a bit disingenuous in this respect. However, seen as a story about a fictional jazz musician, it's worthwhile.

As an aside, I was reminded how lucky we are to have the little venue that brings stuff like this to town. We always feel comfortable there--there's a great lounge with comfy sofas and shelves of film books. We misjudged how long dinner would take, so we got there pretty early, bought our tickets, and settled in with a beer and some reading until show time.

Last edited by Chipper (2016-05-01 08:13:40)

It ends with his '73 comeback at Birdland but the full story spans from when he got his teeth smashed (1966?), and it also flashes back to the '50s through the movie's contrivance of a movie within a movie (Chet is hired to play himself in a black-and-white biopic that never is finished, something I understand did not really happen. This is also how he meets the woman he falls in love with who stays with him as he recovers, etc.).

So the movie definitely takes liberties. But if you give in to the movie just being a good story about a jazz musician, it's really enjoyable. It can also be seen as a really fine love story. Ethan Hawkes and Carmen Ejogo are wonderful together, all the acting feels spot on to me, and the story is captivating without boiling over into melodrama. Plus, the soundtrack is great.

Last edited by Chipper (2016-05-02 08:22:35)