BEFORE: I've got a beer festival to go to in Manhattan today, so let me get my initial framework done for this post, then head into the city and start drinking. I haven't been to a beer fest since last September, so I'm a bit out of practice, but I'm sure it will come back to me. At one point I had a next-level tolerance, somehow I would always get home safely from the events, but occasionally with no knowledge of how. I'll admit that seems a bit troubling, but I just kind of get myself on auto-pilot and I remember the way home, despite being intoxicated. Probably should not make a habit out of this, but it's only two or three times a year.
But this means I've got to get my cast list section written in the morning, and that means straightening things out with the IMDB. In this case, I noticed there are TWO listings for this film on IMDB, one for the main documentary with NO ONE starring in it, and another for the film as an episode of "American Masters" on PBS, with a nearly-complete cast list. This means that someone who works for the production company dropped the ball, and someone working over at PBS picked it up. I still had to plug a few gaps of the famous people who appeared in archive footage, but more importantly, I officially suggested to IMDB that the two records should be merged, as they represent the same film. We'll see what happens, the IMDB staff doesn't always listen to me.
But hey, maybe that's my dream job right there, getting paid to watch movies - sorry, I mean RESEARCH movies - and make alterations to the database that all film fans use. And that would mean I could work from home - oh, if only... BUT the IMDB is owned by Amazon, so that would mean working for the evil empire. It's too bad they don't have any competition. Maybe I should go work for PBS and be that guy who enters information into the IMDB when the filmmakers and their staff didn't properly get their film listed there.
Carlos Santana and Quincy Jones carry over from "Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over"
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Miles Ahead" (Movie #2,738)
THE PLOT: Musicians, scholars, family and friends reflect on the life of jazzer Miles Davis to reveal the man behind the legend.
AFTER: OK, I'm back after three hours at the Craft Brew Festival, a trip home and a four-hour nap. Already it feels like I watched this movie a month ago, but it was just last night. And I had trouble staying awake, because jazz, like the blues and like tennis, just isn't my thing. But I know Miles Davis' music is important to a lot of people, so I watched this trying to find the reason why. Yeah, that didn't really work. If you're not really into jazz, this documentary isn't likely to change that.
They did that thing here where they hired a sound-alike actor to read the words of Miles Davis, as Davis was unavailable to comment on his own life stories, on account of being dead. This is a tricky road to walk for documentary filmmakers, remember that the director who made that doc about Anthony Bourdain drew some criticism by faking just ONE LINE of Bourdain's speech, making it seem like he said something he never said. The doc about Val Kilmer used Kilmer's son to record text that his father had written or said over the years, but they were very open about that, even showing Jack Kilmer speaking into a microphone. It's better to get out ahead of this thing, that's all, rather than be found guilty of using an impressionist or taking audio clips out of context, or worse, using a computer program to mimic someone's speech.
Like Val Kilmer, Miles Davis went to Juilliard in NYC, but he dropped out to join Charlie Parker's quintet in 1944 - for a while, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie were playing as part of the same combo, and from what I understand of jazz, this would be akin to Spielberg, Scorsese and Coppola all making a movie together, or Monet, Van Gogh and Picasso working on the same painting. I suppose that analogy doesn't really work, but my point is that everybody has their own style when creating art, and Miles Davis seems to have gone through a few of them, from cool jazz to hard bop, then later worked in Spanish influences, African rhythms, funk, hard rock, all while bouncing around between five different record labels and supporting a heroin addiction.
So, you've got to figure, that was an interesting life, by any definition of the term. Married three times - though the documentary for some reason does not mention the third marriage, to Cicely Tyson, but instead focuses on his relationship with painter Jo Gelbard, which began while he was still married. I guess this just means Gelbard agreed to be in the doc and Cicely Tyson didn't? Still, the facts are the facts. Like charges of domestic violence from his first wife, Frances Taylor, who was also close to being in the film "West Side Story", until Miles showed up and removed her from the set, because he needed to be the alpha male. Sure, you can say that his aggression came from abusing alcohol and drugs, which he did to alleviate the joint pain caused by sickle cell anemia, but at that point, aren't you just making excuses for an abusive person? Maybe he was just a garbage person and a bully of a husband.
The critics don't seem to have been very kind to Miles Davis' legacy, with most preferring his early work, some even suggesting that if he had died in 1975, it wouldn't have mattered much. One critic claimed that he was infamous for missing more notes than any other trumpet player and another called him an "adequate instrumentalist" - so what's the deal, was he an overhyped musician, or someone more famous for his lifestyle and flair than for his music? Discuss amongst yourselves.
I suppose maybe it's impossible to condense 65 years of anyone's life into a two-hour doc, but there just seems to be so much missing here, I'm learning more from Davis' Wikipedia page than I really did from the film. Sure, I know who Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea are, but it's really tough for me to figure out what influence the collaborators had on Davis and vice versa, because I'm not a jazz musicologist. It's interesting to learn that Davis once shared bills with both the Steve Miller Band and Neil Young, and wanted to collaborate with Jimi Hendrix, but he also divorced his second wife because he thought she was having an affair with Jimi. During the periods of hiatus, Miles' lawyer worked out a deal where he got paid regularly by Columbia Records, even when he wasn't recording music - but this was probably not a good idea, it probably just enabled his addictions. This led to him suffering a stroke in 1982 after an alcohol binge, and his right hand was paralyzed for a while. Cicely Tyson had to come back from working in Africa and get him acupuncture treatments for three months so he could play the trumpet again.
See, this is the stuff I find interesting, I wish the documentary had included some of this stuff, instead of just footage of Miles playing the early jazz hits.
Also starring Vincent Bessieres, Lee Annie Bonner, Ron Carter, Benjamin Cawthra, Jack Chambers, Jimmy Cobb, Stanley Crouch, Cheryl Davis, Clive Davis (also carrying over from "DIonne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over"), Erin Davis, Gerald Early (last seen in "Sammy Davis Jr.: I've Gotta Be Me"), Mikel Elam, Gil Evans, Jo Gelbard, Juliette Greco, Farah Griffin, Herbie Hancock (last seen in "Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President"), Jimmy Heath, Ashley Kahn, Tammy L. Kernodle, Cortez McCoy, Sandra McCoy, Marcus Miller, Dan Morganstern, James Mtume, Reginald Petty, Joshua Redman, Eugene Redmond, Wallace Roney, Mark Rothbaum, Archie Shepp, Wayne Shorter, Mike Stern, Greg Tate (last seen in "Summer of Soul"), Frances Taylor, Quincy Troupe, René Urtreger, George Wein, Lenny White, Vince Wilburn Jr.,
with archive footage of Miles Davis (last seen in "Listening to Kenny G"), John Coltrane (ditto), Steve Allen (last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie"), Bill Boggs (also last seen in "Sammy Davis Jr.: I've Gotta Be Me"), James Brown (last seen in "When We Were Kings"), Marguerite Cantu, John Carlos (last seen in "Citizen Ashe"), Tommie Smith (ditto), Bryant Gumbel (ditto), Fidel Castro (last seen in "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali"), Arsenio Hall (ditto), Walter Cronkite (last seen in "Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists"), Betty Davis, Sammy Davis Jr. (also carrying over from "DIonne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over"), Billy Eckstine, George Harrison (last seen in "An Accidental Studio"), John Lennon (ditto), Paul McCartney (ditto), Ringo Starr (ditto), Jimi Hendrix (last seen in "Bitchin': The Sound and Fury of Rick James"), Thelonious Monk (ditto), Don Johnson (last seen in "When in Rome"), Burt Lancaster (last seen in "Frank Sinatra: One More for the Road"), David Letterman (last seen in "Sheryl"), Prince (ditto), Louis Malle (last seen in "Becoming Cousteau"), Johnny Mathis (last seen in "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan"), Jeanne Moreau, Richard Nixon (last seen in "Say Hey, Willie Mays!"), Yoko Ono (last seen in "Dean Martin: King of Cool"), Charlie Parker, Charlie Rose, Sly Stone (last seen in "Summer of Soul"), Philip Michael Thomas and the voices of Josh Hamilton (last seen in "Tesla"), Carl Lumbly (last seen in "How Stella Got Her Groove Back")
RATING: 4 out of 10 French film soundtracks
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