OMG Digital Magazine Issue 255 20th April 2017 | Page 47

OMG Digital Magazine | 255 | Thursday 20th April 2017 • PAGE 47
Film on Jazz Legend
MILES DAVIS
to screen at
Tobago Jazz Film
Festival
With the countdown on for the first Tobago Jazz Film
Festival, with its strong emphasis on music - one of
the films to look out for is Miles Ahead by Hollywood
actor and first-time director, Don Cheadle, based on a
moment in time in the life of iconic jazz legend, Miles
Davis.
The Tobago Jazz Film Festival (TJFF), from 21 - 25
April, is presented by the trinidad+tobago film festival
and corporate sponsor, Flow, as part of the Tobago
Jazz Experience. The Festival includes a workshop for
Tobagonian filmmakers and three nights of free movies
at Shade Night Club, Mount Irvine Bay Resort and Waves
Restaurant and Bar.
With Don Cheadle at the directing and acting helm,
Miles Ahead is no ordinary biopic. It’s a madcap caper
and no-holds barred portrait of an artist in crisis, in the
midst of a dazzling and prolific career. According to
film critic Roger Ebert: “Cheadle’s performance is pure
elegant vulgarity. He curses as if he is speaking poetry.
He carries himself like a man who has lived a thousand
lives. He cares less about Miles’ cool than he does about
the tragedies he’s inflicted upon himself and others.
Cheadle, who also co-wrote the film, said he wanted to
make a movie “about this dude as a gangster — ‘cause
that’s how I feel about Miles Davis. He’s a G. All those
apocryphal stories about how bold and dynamic he
was, the gangster shit he’d do ... I just thought, let’s do a
movie that Miles Davis would say, ‘I want to be the star
of that movie. Not the one about me. The one where I’m
the f--ker running it, and I tell everybody what happens.”
Hence Miles Ahead, is less a factual, linear story of Davis’
life, but rather an attempt to cast Miles in a caper flick
that he might liked to have been part of. the abuse. But let’s also talk about the music. Because
that’s just as big a part of who he was. The irreverence
for rules, the restlessness, the mindset of “I just invented
cool jazz — OK, what’s next? That’s what made him a
great artist. You can’t leave the music out.”
In a 2016 interview with Rolling Stone magazine,
Cheadle explains how his reinterpretation of the Miles
Davis story came about. “... we suddenly begin to realize
that one of the most interesting parts of his life isn’t
when he’s reinventing music several times over, it’s
when he’s not making music. He’s sitting in this house
by himself, he’s recovering from this hip injury, he’s
indulging in self-destructive behavior and he might be
dying. What’s going on