Bird

To be shown: 3 March 2008
To be introduced by JFS President, Geoffrey Coppock

USA 1988.
Director: Clint Eastwood.
Starring: Forest Whitaker, Diane Venora.
Certificate 15. 161 minutes.

Synopsis

Clint Eastwood waited many years to make this film, his personal tribute to legendary jazz saxophonist, Charlie "Bird" Parker. A lifelong jazz fan and himself an accomplished jazz pianist, Eastwood first saw Parker play in 1945 in Oakland, California, and became fascinated by the man and his music. The screenplay was written by Joel Oliansky and is based on the memoirs of Chan Richardson, who ultimately became Parker's wife. The film is constructed as a collage of scenes from his childhood in a broken home in Kansas City, through his marriage to Chan, to his early death, aged 34. There is a strong jazz rhythm to the film as the narrative leaps back and forth. Music properly dominates the biopic, explaining Chan's long-suffering love for Parker and his whole outlook on the world; but there is more to the film than just music. There is the human dimension in the moving story of a brilliant musician, who was also a vulnerable, disturbed and ever-changeable human being, and his relations with the people in his life. His tale is told against the social background of the time, made more effective by the matter-of-fact manner in which narcotics, racism and the life of a touring musician are reported.
At the heart of the film are two dazzling performances by Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland) as Parker and Diane Venora, as Chan. Whitaker really lives the part, and convincingly displays the many sides of Parker's genius. Venora's performance is equally striking, progressing from the hip, sassy, dancer's walk of her courting days to the set face and shoulders of the woman whose hopes and dreams have been slowly betrayed.
This is not a happy film, but the story is fascinating and brilliantly filmed. Forest Whitaker won the Best Actor prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his performance as Charlie Parker and was nominated for a Golden Globe. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given some of its portrayal of American society of the period, the film was not successful at the US box office, and Eastwood's own fans were non-plussed by this departure from his normal style of film.

Notes

"I have always felt that there were only two really authentic American art forms and that would be jazz and the Western movie" - Clint Eastwood.
"There are no second acts in American lives" – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Clint Eastwood made the film through his production company, Malpaso. It is said that when he turned to directing he used his "leverage" as a movie star to make films on topics that he wanted to explore. His normal pattern of alternately acting and directing was disrupted by the lack of success of "Bird" at the box office.
The project was originally intended for Richard Pryor at Colombia Pictures eight years earlier. Clint Eastwood persuaded Colombia to trade it to Warner for "Revenge" (1989) of which Eastwood was originally the director.
When Eastwood approached Chan Parker, on whose memoirs the script was based, for input she gave him a collection of lost recordings unlocked from a bank vault. The telegrams used in a key scene in the film are the actual ones that Parker sent
The saxophone music played in the film are the original Charlie Parker recordings, but the body and fingering is performed by Charles McPherson, who had to learn to breathe exactly like Parker did in the recordings.
Charlie Parker was one of the most significant figures in the history of jazz and one of the key players in the evolution of a style of music called "bebop" which revolutionized jazz playing. Parker began his recording career in 1939, but made no records between 1940 and 1944, a long gap in view of his early death.
Parker's nickname "Yardbird" or just "Bird" was given to him by fellow musicians, but its actual origin is not known. It is apt, however, as his music simply flew
Parker's early death, brought about it is said "by every kind of excess" was not unusual in the jazz world. The doctor who pronounced him dead (at age 34) said that he had the body of a man of 60.