by Gill Pringle
One might argue that Canadian writer-director Robert Budreau has something of an obsession with jazz legend Chet Baker. Six years ago he made a short film about the mysterious 1988 death of the jazz trumpeter in Amsterdam, but still couldn’t leave Baker’s ghost to rest. His latest film, Born to Be Blue, stars Ethan Hawke in a bittersweet re-imagining of Baker’s life during the ‘50s and ‘60s.
With his movie star looks and squandered talent, Baker was dubbed the “James Dean of jazz”, one of the few white musicians to hold his own alongside Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis.
We chatted with Budreau, 41, during the 28th Tokyo International Film Festival where Born to Be Blue was screened in competition. Meeting on the 49th Floor of the imposing Mori Tower overlooking Roppongi and Tokyo Tower, we talked jazz, dentures, drugs and doomed love.
Ethan Hawke seems like a natural musician in Born to Be Blue. Did he take trumpet lessons?
“Ethan hadn’t really picked up a trumpet before. Fifteen years earlier he had wanted to do a Chet Baker movie with Richard Linklater which didn’t happen so he was very up to speed on Chet Baker and very interested so when we made an offer he was very interested and immediately started taking lessons.”
Was Ethan always your first choice?
“Yes, absolutely although it took a while to get to him for various reasons. But when he came on board, he was so passionate and such a partner. We were really fortunate getting Ethan.”
What has drawn you to Chet Baker, firstly with your short film and now with Born to Be Blue?
“I’m just very attracted to his character and all these inherent contradictions like the fact that he was this Oklahoma hick farm boy and yet he was known as the James Dean of jazz and the prince of cool in LA. And the fact that he sang all these beautiful love songs and yet he had a real difficulty in engaging in any real romantic relationships. As a character he is fascinating and I loved his music and that period in America. The fact that he lost his teeth and then had to dig deep and learn how to play again from scratch was also fascinating. There’s a lot of inspirational sympathetic qualities to him. A lot of my movies have been about male protagonists searching for some kind of redemption and this falls into that pattern of stories that have attracted me.”
How did you re-create Chet Baker’s missing teeth within Ethan’s perfect smile?
“Chet Baker was missing a tooth which is partly what gave him that unique sound. We had some special denture appliances made for him and we did some CGI. And then once Chet lost all his teeth [after he was beaten up], we had the perfect white teeth put in for Ethan which he was very excited about because it meant that he had really nice, perfect teeth.”
Was anyone arrested for beating Chet up?
“No there were no arrests but over the years he did give interviews to several major newspapers about that beating and oftentimes those stories have wildly differed so I don’t think even he really remembered what happened. The beating happened at a club called The Trident in Sausalito, north of San Francisco, and the beating was supposedly drug-related. That’s about all anyone knows for sure.”
Are you curious to see the Miles Davis biopic, Miles Ahead, starring Don Cheadle?
“Yes, very much. We did a sneak preview at the Hamptons Film Festival recently and a lot of people went to see the Miles film and then came to see our Chet film. I heard a lot about it but I haven’t had a chance to see it yet. Born to Be Blue is what we call a re-imagining which is where we mix fact and fiction but the Miles film is even more of a fiction, an experimental type of piece, from what I understand.”
Do you know why Ethan Hawke was equally drawn to Chet Baker, first in talks with Richard Linklater and now, becoming a reality with you and Born to Be Blue?
“I think Ethan was drawn to Chet for some of the same reasons I was drawn to him. I think Chet is just a fascinating character, full of contradictions. I also think the ‘50s and ‘60s was a very interesting time in America along with the music then. Ethan has very artistic sensibilities and he loves the beat generation. Chet Baker comes out of that cool world and Ethan has always gravitated toward that. I think it also gave him an excuse to really delve into jazz, and he is a big jazz fan. He’s done some singing in movies and on stage but never in this kind of way and I think he’s always wanted to, so it was a dream for him to finally do a Chet Baker movie.”
You focus on the ‘50s and ‘60s. Why did you choose to leave out the rest of his life during the ‘70s and ‘80s in Europe?
“I’d always designed the movie around that period in the US in the ‘60s where he lost his tooth and then later when he made his comeback, and then I also added a little bit of flashback to the ‘50s in black and white. That’s always really what I set out to do. I never had any interest in doing a 30 year traditional biopic kind of movie. I was very against that approach right from the start.”
It’s an interesting approach, as a film within a film?
“I got that idea because I heard that Dino De Laurentiis had approached him in Italy when Chet was serving time in Lucca. Dino had just finished one of his Fellini movies and he went to see Chet and optioned his life story and hired him to write the score. Chet wrote the score, they had a script and it was supposed to be a movie. Then Chet got out of prison and it fell apart. Chet ended up recording the score with Ennio Morricone and they did an Italian strings record. It all was very real but the movie just never happened although it got close. I just liked the idea of pretending it did.”
And the ladies loved Chet?
“Yes, he had three or four wives and two or three serious girlfriends, and perhaps three kids. There were a lot of women which is one of the reasons I decided to create a composite character and create one love interest with Carmen Ejogo [Selma, Sparkle, The Purge: Anarchy].”
Were you approached by any of Chet’s family whilst making Born to Be Blue?
“No, because Chet never wrote any of his own music, unlike a lot of other people like Miles Davis, so the family of Chet Baker doesn’t really control any of the music. The story is part of the public domain so there wasn’t really any need to work with his family.”
Why do you think Chet turned to drugs, chiefly heroin?
“I think like a lot of artists he was very insecure and drugs went hand in hand with his insecurities. He was just a very fragile, melancholy kind of a personality, and the women in his life were almost kind of motherly to him. I think Ethan did a really good job of capturing that dichotomy because simultaneously he can be very cocky and self-assured while masking the insecurity underneath. I think that was a big part of his weakness and why in the end he relapsed and went back to the drugs.”
And Chet was always looking for respect from the black musicians?
“I was really attracted to the race theme of the story. The fact that here was this beautiful white guy looking for the African-American respect, was very interesting to me. He did have several wives or girlfriends who were mixed race and he had a thing for exotic women.”
Carmen Ejogo is a knockout as the woman in Chet’s life. How did you meet her?
“We did a lot of auditions and then she came in and just blew us away. She’d just done Purge. She’s done a lot of supporting roles but I think she really stands out in this. A lot of people have seen the film, expecting Ethan to be good, but then they all want to know about Carmen. Everyone digs her performance. She’s shooting the Harry Potter sequel [Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) right now so I’m sure she’s going to continue doing good work.”
Is it a coincidence that there’s so many of these biopics about musicians all coming out at the same time?
“I think it’s just coincidence. Don Cheadle had been trying to do the Miles film for years and a lot of the other movies have gestated for years, so maybe they come in waves where a bunch of us have finally been able to get financing. There was a Hank Williams biopic, I Saw The Light, and then the Elton John and Queen biopics haven’t happened yet. I think people are continually attracted to these projects because music movies are really fun to do.
