MAGNET contributing writer Jud Cost is sharing some of the wealth of classic films he’s been lucky enough to see over the past 40 years. Trolling the backwaters of cinema, he has worked up a list of more than 100 titles—from the ’20s through the ’80s—that you may have missed. A new selection, all currently available on DVD, appears every week.
Bird (1988, 161 minutes)
Charlie Parker was the cornerstone of the dazzling, post-World War II modern jazz idiom called be-bop. Known as “Bird,” Parker played the alto sax like no one else. But while his mercurial improvisations defied gravity, his personal life, beset by heroin addiction and alcoholism, remained earthbound. Director Clint Eastwood tells Parker’s story in the unflinchingly honest manner it deserves.
Bird opens with Parker in full flight, playing “Lester Leaps In” at some smoky nightclub full of hip girls and the artsy, intellectual crowd who lapped up the be-bop revolution, deemed too difficult for mass consumption. The tune was the unofficial theme of tenor-sax legend Lester Young, a half-generation older than the be-boppers, and the scene represents the symbolic passing of the torch to this fiery new generation.
Years later, in 1950, it’s a rainy night in New York City as Parker (Forest Whitaker) stumbles into his darkened apartment. He’s just finished a session for Charlie Parker With Strings, what would become his most popular recordings. “You’re awake,” he says to his wife Chan (Diane Venora), sitting on the couch. “Halfway through the session, guess who dropped in on me? My ulcers. I gave ‘em some codeine, but they wouldn’t go away.”
“What else happened?” asks Chan, clearly depressed. “The strings went into ‘Easy To Love’ and I started playin’ ‘If I Should Lose You.’ Wouldn’t fit, not even when I tried to make it fit,” says Parker, angrily ripping off his suspenders as he slumps into an easy chair. “Wouldn’t nobody have noticed except Dizzy Gillespie. But Dizzy Gillespie’s on the road. He would have chided me.”
“Is that all?” she asks. “Naw, I’m glad you didn’t bolt the door. I expected I’d have to talk my way back in here.” Chan heads for the kitchen, saying, “I’m hungry.” He follows. “Oh, we have decided to humor him this evening,” says Parker peevishly. “Work that psychology on him. He’s just a god damn overgrown adolescent, anyway, dangerous when contradicted!” “God, you’re weird,” she says. “Is that what they say in Westchester?” he shouts. “This is getting ugly again,” she says as thunder rattles the dishes on the counter. “Maybe I should have bolted the door.”
Years earlier, an alto player who’d once snubbed Parker onstage, greets a doorman outside a jumping 42nd Street club. “Going inside to hear the new guy?” asks the doorman. “Ain’t no new guy,” says the alto. “That’s just Dizzy Gillespie drummin’ up publicity. I heard Parker in Kansas City when he couldn’t play ‘Come To Jesus’ in whole notes.” After a blistering set, Gillespie teases the crowd, “What do you think of Yardbird?!” As Parker’s former adversary walks home, he removes his horn from its case, asks it, “What do you think of Yardbird?” and tosses it into the river.
