Page 30 - ATODAY NEW

A30
PEOPLE & ARTSMonday 4 April 2016
Don Cheadle channels Miles
Davis to make directorial debut
SANDY COHEN
AP Entertainment Writer
WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif.
(AP) — Standing on “The
Tonight Show” stage with
his trumpet in hand, Don
Cheadle wondered to himself
why he agreed to this. What
was he thinking when he said
he’d perform with the show’s
Don Cheadle, the star, director and co-screenwriter of the Grammy-winning house and present, an inventive
film “Miles Ahead,” poses for a portrait at the London Hotel on band, The Roots?
Wednesday, March 30, 2016, in West Hollywood, Calif.
Associated Press
his perfectly tailored suit.
Cheadle had been diligently
studying the trumpet to play
Miles Davis in his new biopic,
“Miles Ahead.” He spent a
decade mired in Davis as
he developed, produced,
co-wrote and eventually
directed and starred in the
film. But this wasn’t a movie
set — it was a live TV show.
And he was Don Cheadle, not
Miles Davis.
Band leader Questlove called
out a key and music style —
“Blues, B flat” — and Cheadle
lifted the trumpet to his lips. of its green light meant
“I just started playing and
just kind of soloed. And I
surprised myself,” Cheadle
said in a recent luncheon
interview. “It felt like: Go
ahead, put the horn to your
mouth. Why have you been
doing this? Play!”
Cheadle had been a Davis
fan since his teens, when
he played the alto sax and
considered a career in music
instead of acting. But he was
never interested in portraying
the jazz icon on screen.
“I wanted to be Miles Davis,
not depict Miles Davis,” he
said. “I wanted to actually go
through the exercises and be
in the creative space that he
seemed to live his entire life
in.”
Cheadle wanted to feel that
unbridled, insistent energy.
That’s what should fuel any
movie about Miles Davis. So
he pitched a sort of “heist”
film, where “what’s being
stolen to be his own voice
and his expression and his
creativity and he has to fight
to get that back.”
“Miles Ahead,” open now in
New York and Los Angeles
and across the country April
22, juxtaposes two periods
in Davis’ life: his relationship sent kids to college and
with his first wife, dancer
Frances Taylor (Emayatzy
Corinealdi), and a multi-year
span of drug addiction and
creative stagnation about a
decade after their divorce.
Cheadle wanted the story to
feel like a piece of music that
flowed in and out of its past
approach that would require
Davis-style creative audacity
for a first-time feature
filmmaker to achieve. So
Cheadle approached the
Nerves threatened to rumple
have.
He was in full costume and
character when Corinealdi
first came on set and never
broke to introduce himself as
her director and co-star. He
addressed her as Frances.
“The fact is he’s a first-time
filmmaker, but it never felt
that way,” she said. “He was
always in control.”
There were, however, some
things he couldn’t control,
like the movement of the
Marvel Universe. After
laboring for years to get his
Davis biopic made, the timing
Cheadle would miss half the
film’s pre-production because
of previous commitments to
“Avengers.”
“They’re in first position on
everything,” he said. “I was
on that movie before I was
on ‘House of Lies.’ And thank
you, Marvel, because it allows
me to do all this other stuff,
and I like those movies.”
Cheadle can again be seen
as his Marvel character,
War Machine, in “Captain
America: Civil War,” opening
next month.
Because “Miles Ahead”
took so long to come to
fruition, enduring various
rewrites and false starts
and a worldwide economic
recession that made some
financing evaporate, Cheadle
had Miles on his mind for
a long time. He was there
as Cheadle made multiple
Marvel movies and earned
repeated Emmy nominations
for playing Marty Kaan on
“Lies.”
“In this period of time, I’ve
buried a parent,” Cheadle
said. “There’s just been so
much that has happened
while we were trying to get
this going that, in some ways,
probably found its way into
the movie.”
Perhaps just as much, Davis’
creative fire found its way
into Cheadle. It’s a feeling he
calls “Meta-Miles.”
“That’s so what I wanted to
induce from this process and
understand and make a part
of my process: Be scared. Be
movie as its subject might on the edge of your creativity.
Be willing to fall flat on your
face and be in an unknown
place,” he said. “If you’re
doing that, you’re probably
growing.”
So far, that approach has
allowed him to direct and
star in a biopic of an icon and
play a trumpet solo on live TV,
but it hasn’t removed every
creative fear.
When “Miles Ahead” was
making its world premiere on
closing night of the New York
Film Festival, Cheadle was so
nervous, he felt he might lose
his composure.
“It was my 19-year-old
daughter who actually kind of
got my head right about it,”
he said. “She’s like, ‘Dad, I was
9 years old when you started
this. I remember sitting on
your lap and you writing on
the computer and putting me
to bed and humming Miles
Davis to me... And now I’m a
woman and you’re here and
you did it. You should feel
good.’
“I was like: You know what,
I’m going to do that.”