Ethan Hawke captures a plaintive Chet Baker in Born to Be Blue

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      If you know William Claxton’s hazy, black-and-white photos of jazz icon Chet Baker or the swooning Bruce Weber doc Let’s Get Lost, Robert Budreau’s Born to Be Blue recaptures that mood. In the new film, opening here Friday (March 25), Ethan Hawke tackles the trumpeter’s curious mix of insecurity and bravado—something that probably marks most people who succeed in the performing arts.

      “That’s certainly something I know a little bit about,” the veteran actor says, calling from a media stop in Toronto. “And it’s definitely true for Chet.”

      The film holds off on showing the instrumentalist’s unusual singing chops—a plaintive, vibratoless whisper with melancholy reticence. Hawke worked with trumpeter Kevin Turcotte to develop his body language and horn-miming skills, but the singing was strictly his own.

      “At the beginning,” Hawke continues, “the audience is still watching and judging the character. If we led with him singing, you might just think: ‘Well, that’s not a very good Chet Baker impression!’ In my research, I realized that a lot of work went into sounding as effortless as his singing did. His breath was incredible. He never seems to breathe, and it creates a kind of hypnotic effect.

      “As a great jazz critic once said: ‘It’s not singing; it’s the memory of someone singing.’ Chet was actually ridiculed for that, but those records still sell. He could be amazingly expressionless, and I believe that allowed people to project powerful feelings onto what was actually quite simple.”

      Serious jazzheads might be thrown off by the film’s odd chronology and insistence on balladry at the expense of up-tempo energy. But Hawke says the Canadian director’s film, mostly shot in Quebec (and also starring Callum Keith Rennie and Carmen Ejogo), is not going for a documentary vibe.

      “Robert’s not trying to do a biopic that’s overly concerned with who, where, and what year. It’s more like Variations on the Myth of Chet Baker. Like, [Italian producer] Dino De Laurentiis really did approach him about starring in a movie of his own life. Chet never did that, but we were riffing on what would have happened if he did.”

      The movie also hints at some of the beat-era concerns with race, class, and the commodification of art. Hawke put a lot of prep time into his role, maybe even more than was needed.

      “I would have liked to have three years to prepare for it,” he says. “With the logistics of filmmaking, you never know when and if something will come together. I would have wanted to really play my own horn parts,” he adds with a laugh, “although my trumpet teacher said I would need about eight years for that.

      “Honestly, I think actors just use this kind of thing as an excuse to go down another rabbit hole. I just inundated myself with this music and made it part of my life, which is really not work for me. But, you know, I was actually supposed to play Chet in a movie by Richard Linklater about 15 years ago. Rick always thought that if you’re going to make a theatrical version of Chet Baker’s life, it should be more like “Pull My Daisy”, Robert Frank’s funky collaboration with Jack Kerouac. Man, there have been so many almost movies!”

      The 45-year-old’s actual collaboration with fellow Texan Linklater is less funky than it is enduring, with him having worked on Boyhood and the long-running Before Sunrise trilogy over roughly the same period. Currently, he’s more into a western time-travel mode, having joined John Travolta for an 1890s revenge drama called In a Valley of Violence.

      “And I shot another one, with Denzel Washington in a remake of The Magnificent Seven. But I’ll keep changing it up. I’m like a cat, man: I’m just trying to land on my feet!”

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