By James Mottram
How did Miles Ahead come about? “This was a movie that I was told that I was going to do by Vince Wilburn, Miles’ nephew, when he was being interviewed at The Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony with Miles. He announced it to the reporters! He said that there was going to be a film of his life, and that I was going to star in it! He hadn’t told me yet! And I was summoned to come and meet the family and try to work it out. They pitched me stories that I wasn’t really interested in making, because they felt standard and biopic-y. I was like, ‘This is one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. Don’t we have to be creative and dynamic and tell the story that feels like his music? Improvisational, electric, fire?’ I said, ‘I want to do a movie that Miles Davis would want to star in! I don’t want to necessarily check off every point in his life. I want it to be gangsta, I want to do a heist movie, and I want it to be fire.’ They were like, ‘Wow, that sounds like a great idea.’ I said, ‘Great, if you guys can get me on that, then let me know and I’ll do the movie!’ And I was almost at my house, and I literally pulled over and went, ‘Who is going to come in and pitch that? Who will do that?’ So I picked up the phone to call them, and the phone was ringing and they were calling me, and I was saying, ‘I have to do it’ and they were saying, ‘You have to do it!’ at the same time. That was ten years ago.”
Did they think that your eventual approach was crazy, weird or original? “I think some parts of all of that. Ultimately they said, ‘Show me.’ When I came in and pitched it, they said, ‘That sounds really interesting and cool, and like Miles, but who is going to do that?’ But it became pretty evident that it was nobody, unless I did. This was my idea, and my creation, but I was only looking to craft it, and not necessarily direct it. The responsibility kept on being heaped on, until it was the only way that we were going to get it done. I tried to give it away several years ago.”
What is your earliest memory of Miles Davis? “Porgy And Bess. My parents had the album, and I just loved the way that the music was constructed. Something struck me about the fact that it was also a show. The show music had this jazz treatment. I was into acting at the same time. It was like, ‘Wow, what an interesting application of this sort of art-form onto this other art-form.’ It was just beautifully constructed music, and I put it in the movie too.”
Did you strain your voice while perfecting Miles’ famously raspy tones? “No, I needed to figure out where to put that and how to support it so I didn’t kill myself. I was glad at the end of the day to drop it, but strategically, doing it was necessary. I just had to figure out how to do.”
Did you ever meet Miles Davis? “I did not. I saw him perform in 1982. I was 17. It was the ‘We Want Miles’ tour. It was right after the period that this film depicts. It was right after The Man With The Horn. We wanted to see it; it was a fusion night, and Miles Davis was the headliner.”
Will there be a revival of his music? “Hopefully, this is a delivery system for that kind of spirit. That was one of the main points. Our composer did a re-imagination album out right now of Miles’ stuff, and the soundtrack is out, so hopefully there will be a groundswell.”
Were there other film projects that you came close to directing? “No. I was booked on these Marvel films and booked on House Of Lies, and the way that they were slotted, there was never any time to prep a movie. Or even shoot a film. Things would come up, but the timing of this worked out. We had a clear path for a number of months. I was like, ‘We can either go right now, or we can maybe never come back to this.’ It started to feel like a mandate.”
What made you cast Ewan McGregor as the journalist who comes to interview Miles, and then figures heavily in the film? “Many reasons. One, because he’s a great actor. As I said, historically, those characters were in Miles Davis’ life. Also, the vicissitudes and the reality of what the film industry is, it was necessary for the financing to have a white actor in the film as well. That’s the reality of the business. The movie was seen as niche, it was seen as jazz – everything that made people feel that it was a narrow focus, and that there would be an inability to sell it overseas. These stories we know – to put a white actor’s face on the poster. All these things were the mythology that we were told that we were coming up against while we were trying to make this movie. But I would never want to have this film without him, now that I’ve gone through this experience with him and seen it. I was so delighted and thankful that Ewan wanted to come play. But these are the kind of things that we were coming up against over this 10 year-period.”
Did directing give you the chance to finally gain full control over a project? Was that attractive? “Yeah, and I guess conversely, if you’re someone like me who worries a lot, you also don’t have any excuse. You have no cover, and you don’t have anyone to point to and say, ‘Well, if only…’ You are the whole thing. So it was a very vulnerable position that I found myself in every day. It was a lot of responsibility doing it in this way with this budget and this schedule. I would not do it like this again.”
So have you got the bug to direct again now? “I stepped on that bug and scraped it into a mud-swipe and kicked it into the swamp!”
Where would Miles Davis be today if he were alive? “I think that he would be trying to play with Kendrick Lamar and Alabama Shakes and D’Angelo and Kamasi Washington. Right before he died, he was working with Prince. There is unreleased music that he has with Prince. That’s why the social music aspect of it was something that was important to put in there; that’s how he talked about his music. It wasn’t jazz. That was a box that other people needed him to fit in, to feel comfortable about how to talk about him. He was always about the sonics of the day, and the instrumentation of the day; whatever was happening at that moment was what Miles was trying to deal with.”
You mentioned your Marvel experiences earlier. Have they been fun? “It’s very different to what I did. You can obviously pay for four Miles Ahead movies with the craft service budget for these movies. But it’s playing make-believe at the highest level. We get to do that thing where you ran around as an 8-year-old kid flying and doing stunts. It is kinda cool to scale it up some times.”
After this experience, what’s next? Do you want to go back now and act? “I’m not sure about the series, House Of Lies, if we’re going to return. We had a finale this year that felt like a satisfying way to go. There is more that can be done, for sure. But five years is a great amount of time. If we have another one, it would be great to come back and do that, but I don’t know…it’s the timing of it and how everything is falling down. And as a result of this film, a lot of different things are being presented to me. So I just have to figure out which way to go.”
Miles Ahead is screening as part of GOMA’s “Get What You Want: Music Cinema” programme, which runs from September 2-October 2. To buy tickets to Miles Ahead, click here.
