Let's Get Lost (1988)

Chet Baker was a redneck pimp,junkie,thief,fantasist,fraudsman trumpet player.But most of all he was a junkie.Dope defined his life.For 35 years everything he did was directed towards getting his next fix.Like Serge Chaloff Woody Herman's baritone sax player,Baker turned other musicians on to junk.His role in the death of the brilliant young pianist Richard Twardzyck in the 1950s has never been completely resolved.Baker apparently fell to his death through an open window long after America had given up on him and like a hired gun he hawked himself around Europe playing for anybody who could pay him a few hundred bucks.Unfortunately,for many jazz lovers he appeared to cut a tragic even Byronic figure,an image he was more than happy to exploit,hence the conception of "Let's get lost",although the execution may have left him not quite so amused. His enervated,faltering trumpet playing has been hailed as sensitive and soul - baring,but the fact of the matter is he could never get his false teeth quite right as his gums shrunk due to his poor diet and drug abuse.He gave so many different accounts as to how he lost his real teeth that nobody knows for a fact how it came about. Coming to the fore at a time when so - called "Modern Jazz" was rife with heroin users,Baker was not strong enough a character to hold out against its use.Like his contemporaries Stan Getz and Art Pepper,he was soon hopelessly addicted.In Gerry Mulligan's innovative quartet both he and the leader were on the needle.Ironically,Getz replaced Mulligan on one recording when Gerry was "indisposed". Paradoxically,Baker was an incredible advert for the restorative power of decent junk because he actually lived to a reasonably ripe old age for a lifetime user even if he did look about 80 when he died. He comes over in the movie as a unbearably selfish egomaniac living in a permanent drug - induced stupor.He is a barely - living legend who chose to hurt everybody who ever tried to get close to him or help him. The brilliance of "Let's get lost" lies in the unflinching eye of the camera that shows us the facade of the Great Jazz Figure then goes on to de - construct it before our eyes,revealing the self - serving,lying desperate junkie underneath.It is not a movie to be enjoyed,but it is a movie to admire - a rare example of the documentary as a full three -dimensional portrait of a less than endearing subject.

Bruce Weber's obscure documentary (currently on two screens at New York's Film Forum) on Chet Baker is the best possible way for those who aren't terribly familiar with his work or who he was- like myself- and I'm sure will more than please his avid fans out there. For the former, Baker is one of the "cool" west coast jazz pioneers, who defied some expectations while still being dismissed by many east coast (NY) jazz aficionados. Truth be told, Baker isn't entirely my cup of tea (very talented, of course, though I won't be listening to him as frequently as Coltrane or Parker or even Armstrong). This out of the way, Baker the man is an endlessly fascinating individual, one of those artistic forces who made life a hell for those around him, but also was a real intuitive musician, who when not trying to fix his dental problem, or drug problem, or problem with the law in other countries, he could play his trumpet or sing his soft melodies any time, anywhere. It's a major credit to him that the quality of his performances of the period of the film's present tense (1987-88) is not too far from that of his prime in the 50s and 60s. But Weber isn't simply out to show him performing his songs. Like a jazzman himself, Weber is into improvisation with his choice in jagged but smooth angles with the camera.Aside from the intrigue that comes in showing Weber interviewing his past friends and fellow musicians (some who have simple stories like "he could play much faster than me, etc etc", and others that are darkly funny, like how he could have sex with a fellow musician's girlfriend in the dark without the other musician knowing after a five second lapse), ex-wives and female counterparts (it runs the gamut- those who care deeply about him, but have been hurt, and even a singer who is a bit more than bitter, but wise, to Baker's ways), and even his kids, we see the man himself with no punches pulled. Baker, with a face as chiseled as Clint Eastwood's and with twice the number of stories to tell, and a slightly wavering way of talking where one's not sure if he might slip into sleep mid-exposition. We see him talk of his time in the army, where he disarmingly (no pun intended) got out of duty while on a close-call avoiding the nut-house. We see his tales of being busted in Europe and spending over a year in jail. He even talks in a bittersweet tone about his kids and about fallen musicians and friends of his.Most captivating, though, is the issue of his teeth, which becomes Weber's Rashomon tool of technique. It's not enough that Weber already slips so well into an aesthetic that I've rarely seen anywhere else in documentaries, where we get a plethora of images in several seconds *without* montage, and scenes of Baker with friends/kids/admirers (Flea is one of them) knocking around town at night that are real but close to feeling like it shouldn't be this real. Weber also throws in the crucial element of Baker as a multi-layered man with more than one persona to him, notably to his ex-wives. He tells the story of how he got his teeth knocked out, fighting with five black guys in a bad drug deal situation on the streets of LA. It sounds simple enough, as one of those wacky but dead-serious stories those in the jazz world, or just music in general, end up having when dependent on drugs (in this case heroin). But one girlfriend/singer says something else, that it had to do with Baker being given a specific 'lesson', to "take away what's most important", which was his mouth. But then even another says something completely different, at least I think so, and it's here that Weber makes Let's Get Lost such a complex peek (just a peek) into this man.To be sure, there are times questions are asked and the response is just "lets not go into that", which is fair. Yet one comes away with Let's Get Lost with a pure impressing on who Chet Baker was, in a sense; he's a legendary musician in some circles, but also spent years on welfare when he couldn't play; he had one wife who was half Pakistani and half-Indian, who is rarely mentioned in the film; the kids don't show up much into the film until the last section, with more time spent around the mother(s) than Chet himself. But it all adds up to a sense, which is all that Weber could really get. It's cool as a good drink, and all about a man I won't soon forget.

We have to be grateful to Bruce Weber for giving us this film. Monetary gain could not have figured in on it, as jazz, in spite of the great artists it produces, could never attract the amount of people to make a venture like this profitable. The big bands of the thirties and forties had jazz musicians as members, and did incorporate some jazz solos in their arrangements, but could not be considered a jazz venue. They generated millions of dollars, because the dancing public was so vast, there was no TV, and the leaders were groomed to be lionised like movie stars. (See "The Trouble With Cinderella", Artie Shaw's autobiography on his disenchatment with stardom. Jazz was played in small clubs seating at the most two hundred people, while dance halls could accommodate as much as fifteen hundred dancers. Any footage of an important icon like Chet is welcome, but some scenes are not what they seem. The recording session is a staged event to simulate a record date. The opening scene on the beach sans Chet is gatutitous. Maybe Weber wanted to show the local Southern California beach scene that Chet loved. The scene in an amusement park with a stoned Chet on the "Dodgem" cars is puzzling. "Chet's women" add a great deal of interest to the film. His mother describes how the toddler Chet was transfixed by the sound of the big bands on the radio. Ruth Young daughter of a wealthy Hollywood producer, smitten with Chet and jazz, describes with an unusual lack of bitterness, the insane life of loving a junky, who was really in love with her inheritance and heroin, and made short shrift of her money to finance his drug taking. She sings briefly in the film and I thought showed great promise, but she failed to seek a career in music. Diane Vavra had no money for Chet to squander, but she filled in as someone knowledgable about music to help Chet. Carol Baker, "the long suffering wife" (and how she suffered) gave Chet three beautiful children, who Chet barely noticed, or provided for in his chaotic race to the grave. With all that said, what about the music? Well I can tell you that in an era of great heroic trumpet superstars, like Dizzy Gillespie, Roy Eldridge, Maynard Ferguson, and many others, who could dazzle you with notes in the highest register of the trumpet, and improvise incredible melodies in the upper register, and "scream" above a roaring fifteen piece band, Chet was not in that mode at all. He rarely practiced, had no high register, but wove a soft filagree of delightful improvisations on standard popular songs. In my opinion he reinvented trumpet playing in the fifties. His playing said, "Dizzy's great, but I do it this way." His movie star looks did not hurt his appeal one bit, and his singing which has many detracters, I think will prove to be more appreciated in years to come. I loved every note he played and sang when I first heard him in the fifties, and my appreciation and love for this man, grows every year.

This film is long overdue to be remastered and released on DVD. The VHS transfer seems quite lazily done. The opening title pretty much goes off the screen on my TV. Would love to see this film in all its glory once again.