Let's Get Lost (1988)

the audience applauded

Best movie ever!

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

"What's the problem here?" The voice, querulous and groggy, emerges from the darkness, aborting a smoky run-through of Elvis Costello's 'Almost Blue'. Bruce Weber's Oscar-nominated documentary concerns itself with the same question: what gnaws at Chet Baker, and just how did the feted pretty boy of the West Coast 'cool school' end up such a frail, hollow-cheeked wraith? The most obvious answer is: junk.As fellow jazz trumpeter and addict Miles Davis observed in his autobiography, "musicians were considered hip in some circles if they shot smack"; the logic being that heroin might bestow some of the genius of Charlie Parker or Miles upon the user.Though a fine player, Baker may have privately worried that he would never be taken as seriously as Miles (who predictably accused him of aping his licks). More than likely, he thought he needed a poppy or three to keep up: the serial seducer seduced - out of his looks and his teeth (courtesy of an unprompted assault from drug dealers, so he said), though hardly out of talent or charm. Nor intelligence: those baby blues still burn with roving, wily intensity.A combination of cheekbones and intuitive musicianship (his intimate, androgynene croon being just as potent as his way with a horn) had originally propelled the former Gerry Mulligan Quartet sideman into the pantheon of jazz greats. But arguably it was William Claxton's famous photos of him relaxing between takes in the studio ("he looked like a Greek God") that sealed the deal: a classic example of the fully-packaged star. A white one. A very marketable jazz Elvis. Italian B-movie roles and sell-out concerts were his for the taking. By the time Let's Get Lost first emerged in 1989, he'd accrued a new generation of admirers for whom the legend of Baker's turbulent rise and fall only added to his cult appeal.And there is a circularity here: Weber's studiedly monochromatic profile, all inky shadows and searing white-outs, replete with 'authentic' crackles on a modern soundtrack, was released during a decade in which 'cool', that most chimerical of concepts, had once again become a commodity, a negative onto which advertising execs and filmmakers etched received, homogenised visions of sleek 1950s style.Baker is being sold twice over - first by opportunists, second by grave robbers. Albeit, slightly premature ones: unlike James Dean or Neal Cassady, this 'doomed, beautiful youth', a living Kerouac creation, was still very much alive at the time Weber dug him up, and the prince-turned-skid-row denizen is not an altogether pretty picture.A portrait emerges of an arch manipulator who conned his way out the army, then into the hearts of a string of emotionally and physically abused wives, lovers and friends. Fellow trumpet player Jack Sheldon talks of how Chet screwed his girlfriend, literally under his nose, while he wasn't looking. As in life, in art: here he is again, reducing Natalie Wood to silent orgasms with his playing in 1960's All The Fine Young Cannibals, while her jealous date smoulders beside her."Chet cons people" is the consensus from more than one party. "He has the ability to elicit sympathy - and it's all a big act." The story of what happened to Baker's teeth is similarly dismissed as "Typical Chet, gaining sympathy for himself. Someone kicked his ass for his manipulating ways".It's no surprise to discover that these wounded women, rather than focus on the common enemy, an absent father to children by different mothers, reserve most of their spleen for each other. Ruth Young for instance, Baker's torch-singing girlfriend for 10 years, is "that bitch - his downfall." Interviewed separately, Baker lets it all wash over him. Mainly, because the adoring, highly partisan Weber (for whom Baker's iconic, homoerotic appeal was obviously meat and potatoes) hardly ever gives him a good grilling, happy to let the former jailbird seduce him along with everybody else."Sometimes Chet would tell a story and we would be spellbound, but the next day we'd find out it wasn't even true," says Weber, who would simply prefer to be in love, and fascinated, with his quarry. "It was about being illusioned and disillusioned and illusioned again by a hero". The irony, of course, is that the filmmaker, whose hugely influential black-and-white fashion photography exemplifies a certain 1980s aesthetic, seems so oblivious to the fact he's being taken for a ride: the manipulator manipulated.This is a swooning postcard from one poser to another, woozily segueing as if in an opiate stupor between interviews, verite-style recreations, archive footage and new studio performances (these latter scenes all but nudge us to check out how much Chris Isaak and Red Hot Chilli Peppers bassist Flea resemble Weber's hero). The approach might well echo jazz's free-form schematics, but unkinder descriptions might also include 'rambling and shapeless'.The music, of course, is sublime, and it's as immaculately framed as you'd expect - though the best moments are those apparently caught on the fly; the unstaged and unframed: Baker in a nightclub patiently indulging young, wide-eyed jazz acolytes with warmth and humour; his appearance at a Cannes music festival. Pleads the promoter (after Baker stops playing because people aren't listening), "So many people want to hear you, and may never get the chance again!" Comes the deadpan reply, "I ain't dead yet." That would happen a few months after filming ended, on Friday 13 May 1988. Aged 58, he had fallen out of a second-floor Amsterdam hotel window, hitting the pavement like a bum note. The local press reported that a 30-year-old man had been found with a trumpet. Even in death, he seduced them out of truth.

Photographer Bruce Webber's Let's Get Lost featuring trumpeter Chet Baker on his last legs is like looking at a car wreck. The devastation is riveting. The highly talented Baker burned out and as we eventually find out still using, matter of factly goes over a self destructive career that also saw success as a singer with some film acting thrown in. But for Baker the heroin was every bit as important as the horn. Family, friends and gigs all took a back seat to it and interviews with ex-lovers, band mates and even his mother recount the disappointment he was to all. Lost' form is overly stylized at times and Webber allows some scenes to run over ( a ride with friends in a Caddy convertible is far too long) but with the enigmatic Baker (vacillating between lucid and in a fog) at its center it remains absorbing most of the way. Critical assessment is pedestrian and comparisons to Miles Davis just doesn't wash since Baker's career peaked early and never recovered due to his substance abuse. His unique singing style (My Funny Valentine) is what he is remembered most for today and while this is a film that comes to praise Baker where it can (Webber and he seem to bond during the filming) it ultimately buries him, announcing in post script that a year later he will fall to his death from an Amsterdam hotel window. As Chet would have said, "What a drag, man."

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.

See this film. Amazing to see how destructive genius can be. The film looks great, outstanding sound-track, great editing. I'm not really a jazz fan, but I loved watching and seeing this movie. It's going to be re-released this year.