Both situations provide meaningful insight into how you should best share your talent and abilities with, and leave your mark on, the world. Fast forward more than a year later and the finished product, Miles Ahead, will make its debut this weekend at the New York Film Festival.
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Unlike most films based on real people, Don Cheadle’s Miles Davis yarn is not a rags-to-riches fable about the pitfalls of fame (Straight Outta Compton), nor does it put certain milestones of his life under the microscope (Steve Jobs). The biopic, which Cheadle also directed, focuses on Miles Davis” return to music after disappearing from the public in the late “70s. “Ewan McGregor plays reporter Dave Braden and the movie details the pair’s attempts to save a recording of Miles” latest arrangements which had been stolen. Miles is still suffering from chronic pain, as a result of his degenerative hip condition, and seems more interested in taking drugs than making his comeback. While it does have the air of awards-bait, the legacy of Miles Davis is one of the most accomplished and fascinating stories that has yet to be told on film, and Cheadle may be the one to do it. (Somewhat surprisingly, “Miles Davis Properties LLC” is listed as one of the “presenting” entities.) The other, framed as flashback, is the story of his tempestuous marriage to first wife Frances (the marvelous Emayatzy Corinealdi, of Middle of Nowhere), whom he considers the great, lost love of his life. Frances serves as the representative combination of life and art that Miles never managed to fully grasp earlier in his career, and is still desperately trying to obtain. “I didn’t want to be, ‘We’re in the ’60s, so now we have to use the music that he did with the supergroup, ‘ or ‘We’re now coming into the ’70s, so we have to use Bitches Brew, ‘” he continued, later adding that jazz musician Robert Glasper helped to recreate a few Davis musical moments to fit the filmic cues Cheadle needed.
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Cheadle’s answer was flawless since the movie reminds audiences that Davis was scary for most people and anyone who interviewed him was terrified of him and happy to survive the ordeal. After the casting news was revealed, different producers reached out to the actor, in order to figure out the best way to make the biographical drama. “I was born”, said Cheadle’s Davis in a terse response to the writer’s question about his past”.
