How helpful of the New York Times, last weekend their movies section was loaded with musical movie related items. A piece about the new Edith Piaf film, a piece on the multiple Sammy Davis Jr. biopics (hello André 3000 and Denzel Washington) and an revisiting look at the 1987 documentary about hipster jazz icon Chet Baker.
Edith Piaf (“La Vie En Rose”):
“The line between fact and cliché has always been rather tenuous when it comes to movies about famous musicians, considering that so many have tread the same self-destructive path,” the Times wrote in their piece on the film tracking the life of the legendary French chanteuse.
“I was actually more afraid at the prospect of playing a 47-year-old woman than an icon,” “Lae Vie En Rose” star Marion Cotillard told Time Out. The director, Oliver Dahan said, “I don’t believe a great artists has to be tormented,” but added these qualities are what sometimes make them vulnerable and often, special. The story itself uses Piaf’s cinematic biopic as a jumping point to discuss upcoming and past musical biopics; their success, their failures and their attempts on getting the story right (more on those later below).
Sammy Davis Jr. (Various):
“Seventeen years after he died of throat cancer, Sammy Davis Jr. is once again getting the entertainment world’s love he always craved,” wrote the Times. They noted there are four Sammy Davis Jr. films in pre-production right now including one which will star Outkast’s André 3000 (which will focus on his 1950’s affair with Kim Novak and how the then-controversial romance was almost career-killing for them both) and one which will involve Denzel Washington (to what capacity they didn’t say; we assume directorial or produce? Washington isn’t much of a SDJr. look-alike). “Beyond the drug problems and his love affairs, [Davis’s life] offers a vehicle to consider an American obsession: race,” Times stringer Pat Broeske wrote.
The piece also notes the horse race to be first out of the gate: “Capote” came first and earned almost $30 million. The 2nd Truman Capote bio, “Infamous” was almost a year late and it barely cracked $1 million. Remember Oliver Stone’s “Alexander”? Despite being horrifically awful, it effectively killed Baz Luhrmann‘s (“Moulin Rouge,” “Romeo & Juliet“) Alexander project.
Chet Baker (“Let’s Get Lost”):
“The jazz musician Chet Baker, who wanders through the documentary ‘Let’s Get Lost’ with the eerie deliberateness of a somnambulist, appears to be a man who knows a thing or two about dreams,” the Times posited. Bruce Weber’s near-fetishized look at the ravaged heroin-addict jazzman had been M.I.A. for almost 14 years, but New York’s Film Forum is now showing a restored print for a three-week stand. An interesting note about the docmentary is Baker’s slipperness and apparently many apocryphal claims (he died falling out of an Amsterdam window, conveniently the same year the film was released). Noted Baker biographer Hal Galper (“Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker”) calls Baker’s lies an inversely illuminating portrait of the elusive romantic crooner. “I though it was great because it was so jive. Everybody’s lying, including Chet. You couldn’t have wanted a more honest reflection of him.”
The Roky Erikson doc that we went on at length about, “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” opens this weekend in select cities. The Guardian actually speaks to the 13th Floor Elevators frontman and gets a few monosyllabic mumbles out of him.
Download: Edith Piaf – “C’est Lui Que Mon Coeur A Choisi”
Download: Chet Baker – “It’s Always You”
