“Miles Ahead” features Cheadle as Davis and Ewan McGregor as Dave Brill, with Emayatzy Corinealdi as Davis’s muse and first wife Frances Taylor (who Davis infamously abused).
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He raved about Cheadle, that not only had he “created this from nothing and found the financing and found the cast and directed it and acted it but playing one of the most iconic musicians ever… the pressure that must be on your shoulders”. Cheadle will also direct and co-produce the picture he co-wrote with Steven Baigelman, Stephen J. Rivele, and Christopher Wilkinson.
“I was basically told I was going to do it”, he joked again before getting serious. The screening marks the film’s world premiere.
The movie’s main thrust is encapsulated most elegantly by the film’s final scene: a out-of-time jam between Cheadle-as-Miles and an all-star band led by the film’s musical director Robert Glasper. “We’re going for next year”, said Bernard, who already has “Truth”, “Grandma” and “Son of Saul” in this year’s awards race. 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”.
After a slug to the face and a few brusque early conversations, Ahead becomes something of an offbeat buddy comedy between Davis and Brill as they buy cocaine in a Columbia University dorm, get loaded, and set off in search of a stolen tape recording, which culminates in a boxing-match beatdown and guns-blazing vehicle chase. What he wanted to make, he continued, was “something that was different and more dynamic than something that a documentary could do a lot better”.
Grammy- and Oscar-winner Herbie Hancock, who recorded with Davis, provided the “Miles Ahead” music. I see stories in my mind when I listen to his music. “And its spot in the New York Film Festival puts it at a level of awareness that you couldn’t buy”.
Cheadle said he had long wanted to make a movie about Davis, but that it all came together when the musician’s nephew, Vince Wilburn, announced that the actor was set to portray him during Davis’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006.
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There are several high profile movies on music legends on the way. “I thought (his) fighting to come back, and trying to find (his) voice…was relatable to everybody”.
