Another Miles documentary is coming out.

[Dmitry]

Miles Davis: Birth Of The Cool (2019)

https://media.dream13.com/miles-davis-birth-of-the-cool-2019/

 

It's going to premier at the Art and Design Film Festival here in Providence, which is interesting even without the Miles film. I'm considering buying a full -ride ticket:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2019-art-design-film-festival-miles-davis-birth-of-the-cool-tickets-57846459317?utm_source=Columbus%2BTheatre%2BInfo&utm_campaign=4ccd381a00-mar122019&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e5b44da105-4ccd381a00-125693281

 

[JSngry]

I'd be more interested in a film about Death Of The Cool, who's got that blood on their hands?

[Dmitry]

 

[Rooster_Ties]

Saw a screening of "Birth of the Cool" here in DC yesterday (AFI Documentary Film Fest).

It's good, but of course left out a few things I would have like to have seen (or seen more of).  2nd quintet doesn't come up until 75 minutes into the whole 115 minute affair (so everything from 1965 and after is crammed into the last 40 minutes.  Not too uprising (I think every Miles doc has done that).  I could list a number of complaints (mostly having to do with omissions), and things I might have done differently -- but overall I'd still probably give it a 7.5/10 (or maybe slightly begrudgingly an 8/10).

There's zero new performance footage of any note, and only a handful of footage that was new to me.  LOTS of great photos though, easily 20% of which I'd not only never seen, but were from circumstances/photo-shoots I'd never seen.  And there were LOTS of photos (periodically number of bursts of fast-paced editing/montages of stills).

Frances Davis gets a fair bit of screen-time (not any more than she deserves), but at least 4 times her comments elicited massive groans from the packed house audience of roughly 200 people that I saw it with.  Most of the usual suspects in terms of musicians with on-camera interviews.  NO WYNTON, thank god, but Stanley Crouch does show up for 3 very short segments (which were honestly short enough, that he didn't totally piss me off).  Santana too, but thankfully less screen-time that he got in the recent Coltrane doc.

I was hoping for more, but it still didn't disappoint.  It's supposed to get a general release in maybe another month or so (I think), and I'm thinking I may go back and see it again.  There was enough profanity that surely the version they show (in the Fall?) on PBS will either have to have 10-12 big bleeps, or else 3-4 minutes of editing.

The whole thing felt like it could have used 30 more minutes to cover some lost territory:  Miles Smiles was the only 2nd quintet session touched on (and even then, no specific albums were even mentioned), and "Footprints" was the only tune from that era that got any coverage.  Then straight into Bitches Brew (so no real Filles... or ...In The Sky coverage) though that music did get played in the background kind of prominently - just no mention of the context).  No In a Silent Way, and no Jack Johnson soundtrack (not even in the background music, which kind of surprised me), but On The Corner got a halfway decent (extended) discussion (considering the 'general audience' nature of the doc, it was more than I was expecting).  Nothing about Aura, and his post-80's comeback was essentially represented by some early 'come-back' footage (and the story of him coming back), and then they jumped into him switching labels form Columbia to Warner, and Marcus Miller talked about coming up with "Tutu" (the song specifically).  No Doo-Bop. But a good dive into his visual art towards the end.

I won't say the whole thing felt rushed, but when you consider the sheer volume of material they had to cover, some of the progression seemed overly sped-along more than a few times.

Clearly it's easy to nitpick something like this, for a subject a bunch of us are steeped in -- and I'll repeat that I'd still give it a 7.5 (or 8) out of 10, as a general-interest sort of thing.

The earliest footage was of Miles playing to scenes projected from Ascenseur pour l'échafaud -- which I guess I vaguely remember having seen before (though I remember seeing stills of him playing in front of the footage, and didn't realize there was actual footage of Miles doing that).

I was kind of surprised they **DIDN'T** use any of what I think(?) is the earliest known footage of Miles, of which "Round Midnight" seems to exist almost complete, and is with a larger "Gil Evans Orchestra"-size group.  There was some brief footage of him setting up before an actual broadcast of some sort, which might(?) have been related to this same footage (it's been so long since I've seen it, I can't remember what Miles was wearing, but the time-frame looked right), but no actual performance footage.

http://www.plosin.com/milesahead/Sessions.aspx?s=571218

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the earliest known performance footage of Miles? - this German thing from 1957 (which I mis-remembered as being French).

I'll be interested in hearing other people's impressions of this new documentary.  I think they did well my Miles, but it still fell slightly short of being 'superb'.  They didn't sugarcoat his treatment of women, nor his drug usage -- and I thought the coverage there was appropriate (neither topic was given short shrift. but they didn't overemphasis it to the detriment of covering other things either).

There were about 4-5 friends of his, some going back to his East St. Louis days, and some who still new him in his later years.

One tiny detail that was nice to hear was that the location of his father's farm (outside of East St. Louis) was south of Belleville, IL -- in (near) the tiny village of Millstadt, IL (population 4,000 currently) -- which is where my family occasionally went for fish fries when I was growing up (elsewhere in the town, NOT at Miles' father's farm - clearly).

Both my parents grew up in East St. Louis (and were white), and my father and Miles were born about 1 year apart (almost to the day), and both Miles' father and my father's father were dentists in East St. Louis.  But their paths likely never crossed (not even the tiniest bit, probably), given the color-divide.