Bird movie review & film summary (1988)
The film follows the general drift of Parker’s life, but does not pay much attention to specific details (it glosses over all but his last marriage, for example). It shows the kid growing up in love with jazz, and sneaking in to hear his heroes play. It shows the almost overnight acceptance given to Parker’s talent. It shows him joining bands, forming bands, taking delight in stunts like the time he toured the South with a band including Red Rodney, a white trumpeter who was passed off as “Albino Red” because integrated bands were forbidden. It shows him touring the West Coast and hearing some simple truths one night from Gillespie, who told him that the difference between them was that Diz took care of business, and Charlie took care of screwing up.
And it shows his relationship with Chan Parker, a white woman who loved jazz and understood Parker enough to be the best of his enablers - all of those who cared so much for Parker that they were willing to coexist with his drugs.
If Eastwood were not a major movie star, he would be known as one of the most successful American directors of the last 17 years (since “Play Misty for Me,” in 1971). His films are often bittersweet, and most at home in poverty. His heroes, usually played by himself, are loners who depend upon a strong personal code in the face of an uncaring world. The difference between Parker and the other Eastwood protagonists is that Parker was an artist, and so on top of all the other adventures and struggles there is the music, which comes from somewhere inside, and is inexplicable.
“Bird” wisely does not attempt to “explain” Parker’s music by connecting experiences with musical discoveries. This is a film of music, not about it, and one of the most extraordinary things about it is that we are really, literally, hearing Parker on the soundtrack.
Eastwood and Lennie Niehaus, his music coordinator, began with actual Parker recordings, some of them from Chan Parker’s private collection.
They isolated the Parker tracks, scrubbed them electronically, recombined them with contemporary sidemen, and created a pure, clean, new stereophonic soundtrack on which Parker’s saxophone is unmistakably present.
