Documentary on the life of jazz trumpeter and drug addict Chet Baker. Fascinating series of interviews with friends, family, associates and lovers, interspersed with film from Baker's earlie... Read allDocumentary on the life of jazz trumpeter and drug addict Chet Baker. Fascinating series of interviews with friends, family, associates and lovers, interspersed with film from Baker's earlier life and some modern-day performances.Documentary on the life of jazz trumpeter and drug addict Chet Baker. Fascinating series of interviews with friends, family, associates and lovers, interspersed with film from Baker's earlier life and some modern-day performances.
- Nominated for 1 Oscar
- 3 wins & 4 nominations total
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaFour months before the film's release in September 1988, Baker died under mysterious circumstances in a fall from his hotel room window in Amsterdam. It's been variously speculated his death was an accident, suicide or revenge by drug dealers to whom he owed money.
- Quotes
Jack Sheldon: Chet, he never practiced at all. He could just play and he knew every song. He could just play any tune and he knew the melody, he could play jazz to it, and he always knew where he was. And it was real hard for me; I never knew where I was and I would always forget what bar we were in... in fact, where are we now?
- SoundtracksAlmost Blue
By Elvis Costello
Aside from the intrigue that comes in showing Weber interviewing his past friends and fellow musicians (some who have simple stories like "he could play much faster than me, etc etc", and others that are darkly funny, like how he could have sex with a fellow musician's girlfriend in the dark without the other musician knowing after a five second lapse), ex-wives and female counterparts (it runs the gamut- those who care deeply about him, but have been hurt, and even a singer who is a bit more than bitter, but wise, to Baker's ways), and even his kids, we see the man himself with no punches pulled. Baker, with a face as chiseled as Clint Eastwood's and with twice the number of stories to tell, and a slightly wavering way of talking where one's not sure if he might slip into sleep mid-exposition. We see him talk of his time in the army, where he disarmingly (no pun intended) got out of duty while on a close-call avoiding the nut-house. We see his tales of being busted in Europe and spending over a year in jail. He even talks in a bittersweet tone about his kids and about fallen musicians and friends of his.
Most captivating, though, is the issue of his teeth, which becomes Weber's Rashomon tool of technique. It's not enough that Weber already slips so well into an aesthetic that I've rarely seen anywhere else in documentaries, where we get a plethora of images in several seconds *without* montage, and scenes of Baker with friends/kids/admirers (Flea is one of them) knocking around town at night that are real but close to feeling like it shouldn't be this real. Weber also throws in the crucial element of Baker as a multi-layered man with more than one persona to him, notably to his ex-wives. He tells the story of how he got his teeth knocked out, fighting with five black guys in a bad drug deal situation on the streets of LA. It sounds simple enough, as one of those wacky but dead-serious stories those in the jazz world, or just music in general, end up having when dependent on drugs (in this case heroin). But one girlfriend/singer says something else, that it had to do with Baker being given a specific 'lesson', to "take away what's most important", which was his mouth. But then even another says something completely different, at least I think so, and it's here that Weber makes Let's Get Lost such a complex peek (just a peek) into this man.
To be sure, there are times questions are asked and the response is just "lets not go into that", which is fair. Yet one comes away with Let's Get Lost with a pure impressing on who Chet Baker was, in a sense; he's a legendary musician in some circles, but also spent years on welfare when he couldn't play; he had one wife who was half Pakistani and half-Indian, who is rarely mentioned in the film; the kids don't show up much into the film until the last section, with more time spent around the mother(s) than Chet himself. But it all adds up to a sense, which is all that Weber could really get. It's cool as a good drink, and all about a man I won't soon forget.
- Quinoa1984
- Jun 10, 2007
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Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Official sites
- Languages
- Also known as
- Давайте потеряемся
- Filming locations
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Gross US & Canada
- $15,059
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $5,093
- Nov 3, 2024
- Gross worldwide
- $553,794
- Runtime2 hours
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1