At the Broad Theater in New Orleans on September 15, after the credits rolled on Stanley Nelson’s Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool–a documentary which limns the sometimes poignant, often mercurial and always profound life of jazz trumpeter Miles Davis – Nelson stood in front of the audience with Davis’s nephew, drummer Vincent Wilburn Jr., ready to speak with viewers about the nearly two-hour account of Davis’s phoenix-like rise, fall, rebirth and ultimate success.
When one viewer asked Nelson about viewer turnout, he responded with pleasure, voicing thoughts on the film’s continued success during its circuit throughout the country and stating his only regret–the absence of larger theaters. Wilburn, acting as a representative of Davis’s family, told the audience his story of watching the documentary for the first time. If at first Wilburn had any misgivings about the documentary, those misgivings were soon ameliorated, as Wilburn watched the film at two in the morning and began tearing up at the extreme care with which Nelson delved into Davis’s life. Around 4:00 a.m., after he’d finished the film, Wilburn called Nelson to express his gratitude. Nelson, awakened by the sound of his ringing phone and still groggy, answered Wilburn’s call, said he’d call back in the morning, before hanging up and returning to his much-needed sleep.
After the public Q&A session, when asked about his process of translating Davis’s life to the screen and the vast archive of visual material, Nelson replied, “We knew we wanted to at least talk about all the periods of Miles’s work. So what are we going to use to talk about the Kind of Blue period? What are we going to use to talk about the Bitches Brew period? What music are we going to use? If we’re going to talk about Kind of Blue, then we have to find visual material for kind of blue, and who’s around to talk about kind of blue. So, those helped us to walk through the outlines of the story.”
Though the general outline of Davis’s life was always in place, Nelson had to analyze the more complicated areas of the story, such as Davis’s drug problems and his history of domestic abuse, and depict these difficult topics with nuance. “We wanted to talk about Miles’s personality and some of the abusive relationships,” Nelson said. “We talked to Frances and Marguerite, but we couldn’t secure an interview with Cicely Tyson. Then it becomes a matter of how you weight it. We decided to use more of Frances because she was such a character. I know it was the right decision, but in some weird way, that limited the amount we could talk to Marguerite. When he started using drugs, and she says, ‘I don’t want to live like that; I’m out of here,’ we kind of know what she means because Frances has already talked about it.”
This is perhaps one of the largest problems facing documentarians–the question of how to effectively compile a lifetime full of complexities and translate this into a two-hour film, without reducing the film’s subject to a shallow reproduction. But, especially when discussing the work of a musician, documentary has its benefits. “You’re dealing with sound, you’re dealing with pictures, interviews where people are being emotional,” Nelson continued. “We can talk about how John Coltrane was set free by Miles, and you’re hearing Coltrane being set free while we’re talking about it. So, in that instance, as a viewer, you go, ‘Ah, I know what you mean. I get it.’”
With a market full of movies and biographies (including Davis’s own autobiography) claiming to delve into previously unexplored aspects of the musician’s life, Wilburn is familiar with the different interpretations of his uncle’s work. Speaking about the difference between Don Cheadle’s interpretation of Davis’s life–the Grammy-winning film Miles Ahead–and Nelson’s more objectivist approach, Wilburn said, “Don never set out to do a documentary. Herbie Hancock said, ‘Man, that was like if your uncle was having a dream.’ I commend Don for his directorial debut, the music – he won a Grammy for the music – and there’s positive sides to that. But, this is something different, and this is positive, too. And from day one, when I met Stanley and sat down with him, I felt something, like this cat’s serious.”
Donald Harrison, the jazz saxophonist from New Orleans, was also present for the screening and subsequent conversation. “Miles said Louis Armstrong was one of the most important musicians ever, or something to that effect,” Harrison said, when asked about the influence of New Orleans on Davis’s music. “When a person like Miles says something like that – he was honest in his assessment. He would play stuff from Louis Armstrong. These guys understood, not only New Orleans, but the ancient trajectory of our music, so they go all the way back to antiquity. This is just a stop along the way. When you listen, they put the universe in you. You can hear that, and you can feel that.”
Wilburn and Harrison both played with Davis at different points in his career. The consensus between them was that Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool was a film of some import, that Nelson succeeded in depicting Davis with all of his troublesome complexities intact.
Screenings of the documentary will continue at The Broad Theater (636 N. Broad St.) through September 19. For more information about the film or screenings, visit the website, here.
Harrison concluded the conversation with some advice for any burgeoning musicians interested in the life of Miles Davis. “If you want to be the best you can be,” Harrison intoned with a natural, spoken musicality, “this is a film you must see.”
