McGlynn is happy to have an opportunity to show all three films--which were made over a period of about fifteen years--in proximity. "They were all musicians who started out of the Central Avenue jam sessions, and all went on to touring with big bands and finding their own voices in the late Forties," he says of his subjects. "Of course, back then, they all played together." That relationship and McGlynn's overall appreciation for these musicians made the trilogy a true labor of love for him.
One senses that McGlynn is a careful and thorough researcher--a kind of visual archaeologist who enjoys scratching in the dirt for signs of the past. "I'm a huge movie fan and a film historian. I'm also a music enthusiast," he says. "Digging up unusual clips is a fun part for me." But each film presented its own set of production obstacles. "In the case of Art Pepper, there was no archival material," McGlynn says. "Of course, he was with us then and eager to speak about his life. The film about Dexter was exactly the reverse." That film, he says, "was shaped around clips, and the challenge was to make him the central figure."
Art Pepper, McGlynn's first documentary feature, was released in 1982 and is the only film in the trilogy to feature a live subject, although Pepper was ill at the time it was made. "He was so open," McGlynn says. "It was unbelievable to me how naked and direct he was about the film--how lucky I was to have him as my first subject. Normally, people are so reticent. He had just had this terrible operation and had a big hernia thing bulging out of his stomach--it looked like something out of Alien--but he still said, 'Okay, I'll show you that.' He knew he wasn't going to live much longer. He died about a year and a half after the film."
Mingus, released last year, is perhaps McGlynn's finest accomplishment. The comprehensive portrait, packed with rare concert and interview footage, took nine years to make. Along the way, McGlynn pieced together a sensitive picture of an complex figure known for his voracious appetites, hot temper and seething social consciousness.
Why nine years? McGlynn contends, to no great surprise, that his greatest roadblock in making the film was financing. "I was doing documentaries about more mainstream music--the Mills Brothers and Spike Jones," he says, "so it was a good time to go back to jazz. When I began pursuing the idea in the late Eighties, it looked like it would be financed." That money fell through, but McGlynn didn't panic. "I'd go to the festivals, and I found out that lots of highly regarded films went through a similar saga in order to be made," he says. "And usually, those are the films with the greatest passion."
Then there was the matter of amassing material for the film. "For Dexter, everything was sitting with Danish television, but with Charles, it was all over the place," McGlynn says. "The difficulty was in locating it and getting legal clearance to use it. I had to find it, watch it, talk to them about it and then decide--am I going to use this? People in many countries are not used to licensing material--and sometimes they didn't even know where it was or didn't know they had it, or they were not equipped to do a deal. I had to be patient with them, walk them through it."
McGlynn says the most positive argument in favor of taking nine years to make a film is the creative breathing space that is allowed for. In his case, it simply gave him time to shape Mingus into a more highly personal venture. "A symphony would have a motif that's repeated throughout.
"I tried to structure it like a musical composition," he says. "That's what unifies the movie." Plus it was something he cared about deeply. "I doubt I'd have made a film if I didn't love him so much," McGlynn continues. "I guess my two favorite composers are Duke Ellington and Mingus. When I first started listening to Ellington, everyone was laughing at me for listening to that old big-band stuff, but now people consider him a national treasure, like Charles Ives. Time is working that way for Mingus--he's starting to get a reputation.
"We do give a picture of Charles [Mingus] that's not just the angry-man part of his personality. One writer said I went too easy about his aggressiveness, but I don't know: We have him knocking out Juan Tizol, punching Jimmy Knepper, complaining about the lousy stage sound..." And as McGlynn points out, the bassist had many theretofore unexplored softer facets. In the film, for instance, Mingus and longtime drummer Dannie Richmond are shown trading fours in an intimate manner so tuned in that it seems like an elegant conversation, completely devoid of discord or wrath. And his first wife, Celia, at one point remembers how Mingus would reach over in his sleep and play her like a bass fiddle in the middle of the night.
"I think I showed that he could be funny, warm, romantic and very passionate and that he was also concerned about social issues--civil rights," McGlynn says. "The challenge was to create a reflection of how varied and complicated he was. It was lucky that his music is complicated, too--I could use it as a positive element to move the footage. The footage was varied, and that's the way his music was, too."
--Froyd
Denver Jazz on Film Festival, May 22-25, Acoma Center, 1080 Acoma Street, and Shwayder Theater, Robert E. Loup Jewish Community Center, 350 South Dahlia Street, $55-$65 festival pass ($30 for five-use passes; $7 single shows as available), 592-1168.
