A strange selection for the Earshot Jazz Festival, as it has nothing  to do with jazz, or any kind of music for that matter, “Howl” takes a prismatic approach to Allen Ginsberg’s poem, splintering it into biographical, interpretive, performance, and legalistic shards. It is adequate on the biographical  level, with James Franco giving a reasonable impression of the author’s first reading of the of  the poem at City Light’s bookstore. The problems begin when the camera cuts away from the reading to illustrate the poem with childish animated imagery. Not since Walt Disney debased Paul Dukas’ “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice with a silly Mickey Mouse cartoon has an interpretation gone so far to abominate a work of art. Some relief is offered on the occasions when the directors cut instead to the poem’s obscenity trial, which benefits from Treat Williams’ intelligent turn as the defense attorney and David Straithorne’s nasty trespass upon the  first amendment as the prosecutor.  Jeff Daniels is also very good as the ignorant literary expert who expounds upon the poem’s lack of literary value.  One of his funniest slips is comparing it unfavorable to another poem, “Leaves of Grass,” which was not a poem at all but the title of Walt Whitmans’s volume of poetry that was similarly condemned in its own time as obscene.   “Howl” ends with Franco’s Ginsberg  delivering a monologue on the contested passages in an excellent scene that brings us closer both to the man and to the poem. The film would have benefited from more scenes of this caliber and fewer interpretative cartoons.

Ornette: Made in America (Oct 29 – Oct 30)

I haven’t see Shirley Clark’s (The Connection, Portrait of Jason) 1885 film about Ornette Coleman, so here is Janet Maslin’s   New York Times review from February 1986:

SHIRLEY CLARKE’S ”Ornette: Made in America” is a hazy but inviting glimpse of the great modern jazz musician and his world. Miss Clarke’s methods tend to be as fanciful as Ornette Coleman’s are rigorous and abstract, but the collaboration between film maker and subject has its own kind of harmony. Mr. Coleman’s complexity remains far out of the film’s reach, as does his music; Miss Clarke seems chiefly intent on trailing Mr. Coleman and re-creating something of his aura, rather than detailing his life in any kind of narrative fashion. But the film’s vagueness never becomes damaging, perhaps because Mr. Coleman’s own presence is so subtly commanding.

”Ornette: Made in America,” opening today at the Public Theater, follows Mr. Coleman rather randomly through time and space. It is with him in Fort Worth for a performance of his ”Skies of America” with the Fort Worth Symphony, in Morocco for his 1973 expedition there, in Berkeley in 1969, and on Italian television in 1980. His music weaves unobtrusively through a series of interviews, conversational snippets and brief impressions, with commentary from sources as varied as Buckminster Fuller, William Burroughs, and the New York Times music critics John Rockwell and Robert Palmer (Mr. Palmer played clarinet with Mr. Coleman on the 1973 Moroccan venture).

Mr. Coleman’s relatives are also heard from, including his son, Denardo, who is now a member of his father’s band, Prime Time, and his sister, Truvenza Leach, who says, ”Ornette has always been different.” The few remarks from Mr. Coleman himself seem to bear that out, particularly the discussion of his plan, hatched several years ago, to undergo voluntary castration and rid his body of unwelcome sexual feelings. He settled for circumcision and sounds none the worse for wear.

Miss Clarke’s best material is her most straightforward; less successful are her attempts to fancify the footage and perhaps mimic some of Mr. Coleman’s musical effects. Images occasionally flash on and off the screen in a stroboscopic fashion that seems badly out of place. And the addition of little colored television sets around the faces of interviewees becomes similarly silly. So do scenes in which a small boy impersonates the lonely young Ornette outside the house where he spent his childhood. Mr. Coleman’s music and his mere presence convey a far stronger sense of his history than any such literal-minded imagery.  . 

Ed Thigpen: Master of Time, Rhythm and Taste (Nov 01 – Nov 03)

Ed Thigpen passed away last January at the age of eighty, in Copenhagen, where he had been living since 1974.  A jazz drummer who appeared on over  900 albums, he is best known for his work with Oscar Peterson and Ella Fitzgerald.  I can imagine no better tribute to Mr. Thigpen than Don McGlynn’s extremely personal  documentary that plays more like a friendly  visit than a historic document, although it is both.  The film begins with the drummer at his drums, showing his friend and director of the film a certain rhythm he has been working out.  Over the course of the picture, we learn about his life in music, from  Bud Powell encouraging  him to pursue his brush work to his  current work as  an educator and the leader of two bands.  McGlynn sticks close to him, even helping to carry his drums to a gig, where Thigpen reminisces on the days when he could set up his kit in a matter of minutes.  The film offers some clips from the past, but is more intent upon sharing the present, with many complete performances emphasizing the immediacy of the present moment.  What is perhaps most special about the film is the open-hearted honesty on the part of Thigpen regarding his life, his loves, his music, his religion, and his family. With so many  musicians obscuring their humanity behind the mystic façade of coolness, Thigpen’s gentlemanly  ordinariness is an inspiration to those who, having no interest in personality cults,  understand that it is enough to be a human being.