Let's Get Lost

Let's Get Lost could have so easily been done badly. Intense fandom doesn't often make for objectivity, and the tragic-artist-gone-to-seed narrative is so, so tired. But this film kicks those limitations right over. It's tough about the ugly facts of Chet Baker's life as a liar, user, and junkie. At the same time, it never allows the viewer to forget the intense beauty Baker created as a musician, and embodied as a young man of perfect allure.

There are images I'll never forget: the expressions of his family as they listen to his music, his ex-wife lost in remembered pleasure; his daughter, pained; his dead-ringer son, uncomfortably smiling. The older, ravaged Baker, in the back seat of a convertible with two women, murmuring to them like he's in a dream. The stills of he and his second wife, both so stunning and so clearly in love, burning for each other. And more than that, the music, aching and romantic, and always so lonely, always about longing for some woman in some place that's beyond reach.

I am grateful to Bruce Weber for creating this film. It's why I go to the movies like some people go to the mountains or the sea, to church or to some lover's arms: it got me lost.

This film is a must see for any Baker fan and even any Jazz fan. Baker really did redefine the 1950's jazz scene with his combination of mesmerising trumpet playing and angel like vocals. His instantly recognisable style has brought joy to many jazz fans over the years and even now his legend lives on some 16 years after his death in the most mysterious of circumstances.

This film tells a very candid story of Chet charting his terrible affliction with drugs as well as honing in on his god given talents. It is very highly recommended and is long overdue for a release on DVD as some fellow reviewers have alluded to. I will certainly be first in the queue to buy this must see title if and when it is re released.

In the 1950's, cool was the only way to fly, and Chet Baker was what James Dean always wanted to be. Those cool cat days, where the "cool" kids of today would be seen as jerks, sissies, geeks, nerds or worse, had a very restrictive behavioral code...you kept your icy cool at all times in a very narrow emotional range no matter what happened, and never acted beneath your age or silly or goofy, both of which are so commonplace in today's arrested-development kids of all ages. That detached air was the very essence of cool then, along with the ducktail hair, the jeans, the smokes rolled up in a t-shirt sleeve, the coffee bars, the hot rods, and the gals.....with their angora sweaters that balled up when felt up. Those were the glory days shown in this film that were so attractive to us then. Every day a salad day, but those soon turned into grass days and then into poppy days for poor Chet.

Chet was all of that cool cat essence early on, and so much more for jazz lovers, especially in his recordings with Russ Freeman arrangements and accompaniment. The Okie Adonis Baker had almost no education or sophistication and was so easy, soft and simple cool, too simple and easy.......and he became a living sucker perfectly ripe for the easy plucking by promoters, fellow musicians and fame-loving men and women alike. And was he ever plucked, but he didn't resist too much as his soft, sad personality was like a blotter....a reflection of what life happened around him but not a significant happening in itself, other than his unique musical expressions.

In the film, it was plain to see that the last 20 years of his life were the killer drug years, as in 1967-68 he was seen to still look and sound good. It all went downhill from there, but the soul-sensitive voice, the soft trumpet toning that was always more an extension of his voice than a separate instrument, were still intact and probably more sensitive and sadly expressive than ever. Yes, Chet was a sad man of obvious low self esteem common to kids raised in near poverty, but shame and embarrassment for his many flaws had been well beaten out of him by life at the end. He was, as were many in his world, of the character and in the environment that made him an easy target for any addiction that allowed him the freedom to lose himself into his music and be cooler to himself and to the vices common to his world.... fast women, hard drugs, and getting by on his talent alone without having to work hard for a living. Whatever was easiest and felt best was always what Chet did and, and as with many of the most talented in any endeavor, he failed at most of these except for his music, and his resulting God-may-take-me-at-any-time-who-cares? malaise was clearly present and almost pleading for it near the end when answering interviewer questions in a drugged-out stupor.

I think he fell out of that hotel window in one of his drug stupors and died from it, on purpose or not. Simple as that, knowing he was a deep-in-a-dream junkie. No embellishment to it for effect is probable, like he did so often for sympathy or for a few extra bucks he never seemed to save from working a thousand gigs all over the world in 40 years. I just hope his wife Carol and his 3 kids saw some money from the big nostalgia CD sales resulting from this film. They sure looked as though they could use it. From their share of the proceeds from my Chet CD collection alone, they should be a lot better off than they looked in the film.

Roland's on Steiner in the Marina and The University Hideaway on upper Fillmore in San Francisco were my early hangouts in those days, and I can still feel Chet's mood near there on cool, foggy SF evenings that are so common there even if Chet is long gone, along with those old places. With enough time, his many failures in his personal war with life will be forgotten by all until only his great music remains to mark his legend.

Bruce Weber's obscure documentary (currently on two screens at New York's Film Forum) on Chet Baker is the best possible way for those who aren't terribly familiar with his work or who he was- like myself- and I'm sure will more than please his avid fans out there. For the former, Baker is one of the "cool" west coast jazz pioneers, who defied some expectations while still being dismissed by many east coast (NY) jazz aficionados. Truth be told, Baker isn't entirely my cup of tea (very talented, of course, though I won't be listening to him as frequently as Coltrane or Parker or even Armstrong). This out of the way, Baker the man is an endlessly fascinating individual, one of those artistic forces who made life a hell for those around him, but also was a real intuitive musician, who when not trying to fix his dental problem, or drug problem, or problem with the law in other countries, he could play his trumpet or sing his soft melodies any time, anywhere. It's a major credit to him that the quality of his performances of the period of the film's present tense (1987-88) is not too far from that of his prime in the 50s and 60s. But Weber isn't simply out to show him performing his songs. Like a jazzman himself, Weber is into improvisation with his choice in jagged but smooth angles with the camera.

Aside from the intrigue that comes in showing Weber interviewing his past friends and fellow musicians (some who have simple stories like "he could play much faster than me, etc etc", and others that are darkly funny, like how he could have sex with a fellow musician's girlfriend in the dark without the other musician knowing after a five second lapse), ex-wives and female counterparts (it runs the gamut- those who care deeply about him, but have been hurt, and even a singer who is a bit more than bitter, but wise, to Baker's ways), and even his kids, we see the man himself with no punches pulled. Baker, with a face as chiseled as Clint Eastwood's and with twice the number of stories to tell, and a slightly wavering way of talking where one's not sure if he might slip into sleep mid-exposition. We see him talk of his time in the army, where he disarmingly (no pun intended) got out of duty while on a close-call avoiding the nut-house. We see his tales of being busted in Europe and spending over a year in jail. He even talks in a bittersweet tone about his kids and about fallen musicians and friends of his.

Most captivating, though, is the issue of his teeth, which becomes Weber's Rashomon tool of technique. It's not enough that Weber already slips so well into an aesthetic that I've rarely seen anywhere else in documentaries, where we get a plethora of images in several seconds *without* montage, and scenes of Baker with friends/kids/admirers (Flea is one of them) knocking around town at night that are real but close to feeling like it shouldn't be this real. Weber also throws in the crucial element of Baker as a multi-layered man with more than one persona to him, notably to his ex-wives. He tells the story of how he got his teeth knocked out, fighting with five black guys in a bad drug deal situation on the streets of LA. It sounds simple enough, as one of those wacky but dead-serious stories those in the jazz world, or just music in general, end up having when dependent on drugs (in this case heroin). But one girlfriend/singer says something else, that it had to do with Baker being given a specific 'lesson', to "take away what's most important", which was his mouth. But then even another says something completely different, at least I think so, and it's here that Weber makes Let's Get Lost such a complex peek (just a peek) into this man.

To be sure, there are times questions are asked and the response is just "lets not go into that", which is fair. Yet one comes away with Let's Get Lost with a pure impressing on who Chet Baker was, in a sense; he's a legendary musician in some circles, but also spent years on welfare when he couldn't play; he had one wife who was half Pakistani and half-Indian, who is rarely mentioned in the film; the kids don't show up much into the film until the last section, with more time spent around the mother(s) than Chet himself. But it all adds up to a sense, which is all that Weber could really get. It's cool as a good drink, and all about a man I won't soon forget.

I remember seeing and loving this movie when it played at Film Forum in NYC back in the late 80's. It was recently re-released for a limited engagement so I took my wife to see it (again, at Film Forum). Almost twenty years later, it's just as beautiful and heartbreaking to watch. The brilliance of this movie is that you don't have to be jazz or Chet Baker fan to enjoy it -- my wife and I have a marginal interest in jazz and we loved it. It's a brilliant portrayal of how talent, youth and beauty are destroyed by excess, and you'll feel both awe and pity for the late Mr. Baker. DVD is supposed to come out at the end of the year -- rent it, you won't be sorry.