The most exhilarating experience I had in a cinema last year was when I saw a movie that was made when I was twelve; about a guy who seems to have treated everyone around him very badly indeed; but who managed to produce some of the most elegant and meditative music ever recorded.
Chet Baker, in ‘Let’s Get Lost’, Bruce Weber’s pseudo-documentary/pseudo-tragic-romance film, acts out the title, lives to excess, and then dies, just as the movie is being completed.
We see him behaving badly, playing his trumpet, behaving badly, looking amazing, behaving badly, driving down Sunset Boulevard, behaving badly, making cigarettes look far cooler than they should, behaving badly, and producing exquisite sounds that are the reason we wanted to see the movie in the first place.
It is, as I said, an exhilarating ride – the breeze hits Chet’s face from the front of his convertible, the pathos of his dysfunctional parenting hits us in the gut, the music beguiles us in the space between spaces, and we are confronted by the paradox of art: some people can make very beautiful things, but can’t get out of bed in the morning.
‘Let’s Get Lost’ gets its television premiere tonight on the Sundance Channel; and Weber’s newest short film ‘Liberty City is Like Paris to Me’ shows up online next week before Sundance screens it on the 27th August.
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(Image above: Michael Symonds ©Michael Symonds. All rights reserved)
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I didn't see it but what annoys me about it (already) is this.. if he played a mean trumpet and was not a nasty/ ignorant person would someone have made a movie about him?
I realise this juxtaposition is what makes it interesting, but at the same time I think this is another example of our (humanity's) fixation on the negative. A Schadenfreudian tangent perhaps (“man he's a genius! -ah but ha ha he's a pig and an idiot! At least I'm better than that!”
I'm as guilty of this 'negative fixation' as anyone else, but I do try to recognise it and understand it and assess for myself exactly why I “like” it and/or if it's something innate or just an easily learnt reaction, which could be unlearnt.
I don't buy the tortured artist theory. I realise tortured artists exist, but “society” chooses to appreciate work on the whole from “bad boys & girls”, or those who have suffered. It may be something that informs the work at times, but it isn't a prerequisite (as they would have you believe) by any means.
As a result, people expect it in an “artist” and don't appreciate it when an artist is not a pain in the ass. As a result, more wanton shall we say “troubled souls” emerge to follow the expected trajectory.
Just about any film biography especially follows the same hoary old storyline: Childhood trauma, early recognition, life of grime/ drugs/ drink as “The Art” soars, death in a dingey dump.
Are all artists like this?
You would be forgiven for assuming so.
I didn't see it but what annoys me about it (already) is this.. if he played a mean trumpet and was not a nasty/ ignorant person would someone have made a movie about him?
I realise this juxtaposition is what makes it interesting, but at the same time I think this is another example of our (humanity's) fixation on the negative. A Schadenfreudian tangent perhaps (“man he's a genius! -ah but ha ha he's a pig and an idiot! At least I'm better than that!”
I'm as guilty of this 'negative fixation' as anyone else, but I do try to recognise it and understand it and assess for myself exactly why I “like” it and/or if it's something innate or just an easily learnt reaction, which could be unlearnt.
I don't buy the tortured artist theory. I realise tortured artists exist, but “society” chooses to appreciate work on the whole from “bad boys & girls”, or those who have suffered. It may be something that informs the work at times, but it isn't a prerequisite (as they would have you believe) by any means.
As a result, people expect it in an “artist” and don't appreciate it when an artist is not a pain in the ass. As a result, more wanton shall we say “troubled souls” emerge to follow the expected trajectory.
Just about any film biography especially follows the same hoary old storyline: Childhood trauma, early recognition, life of grime/ drugs/ drink as “The Art” soars, death in a dingey dump.
Are all artists like this?
You would be forgiven for assuming so.