Weber’s fascination with Baker showed itself in his first film, Broken Noses (1987). Its protagonist, Andy Minsker, a young boxer, looks just like Baker when he was Minsker’s age. Minsker appears in Let’s Get Lost, too, sitting next to the jazzman, who, at the age of 57, shows the results of a lifetime of addiction in 1968. Baker was badly beaten up and lost his teeth — a disaster for a trumpet player and an event talked about several times in the film. His damaged mouth affected his career as well as his looks. It was three years before he could play again. According to Weber, Baker’s image “helped him get by when nobody listened to his music. There was a mystique around this guy, who was incredibly good-looking and cool, especially for a white musician. He was vain but he never wanted anyone to know it. He was the kind of guy who would never look in a mirror if there was anybody slightly in the neighborhood.”
Weber sometimes foregrounds Baker’s music in sessions or gigs, or uses it as ironic background to enactments or interviews. Baker sings “Just Friends” as an ex-lover talks, in close-up, about their relationship. Weber “wanted to make it seem, with all the close-ups, that the viewer was in the front seat. You look back and see Chet in the car.” Baker’s in that car or in a restaurant, haunting the film as he haunts the women who loved him. They talk about his charm, his unreliability. His children, now grown, say they hardly ever saw him. In one scene, the camera pans across Baker’s mother, children and estranged wife while he sings “Blame it on My Youth.”
The camera pursues Baker, who usually ignores its gaze. Nodding, his eyes frequently closed, he sits uneasily in the frame. Let’s Get Lost studies its subject but is just as much something to be studied, chasing as it does its elusive object of desire. At the end of the film, Weber asks him, “Will you look back on the film as good times?” It’s an uncomfortable moment. Weber suddenly exposes his own need. Baker comes to attention and looks steadily at the camera. “How the hell else could I see it, Bruce? Santa Monica. That scene in that hotel. in the studio. On the beach. It was so beautiful. It was a dream. Things like that just don’t happen. Just a very few.” As much as anything else, it’s his comment on the movie he’s in, a movie that achieves its intensity by looking for, and at, a man who spent much of his life getting lost.
Earlier in the film, a young man begs Baker to sing to people who might never hear him again. “I’m not dead yet,” Baker answers. But he’s dead now, having met an end that his friends might have expected and feared. Weber says Baker never got to see any of the footage. In May 1988, his body was found on a street in Amsterdam. The police say he committed suicide or fell out of his hotel window.
D is for Dictionary
Definitions
Appetist [ap-pa-tist] n. A well-adjusted enjoyer of food, frequently used in reference to women, occasionally men. A person with a healthy desire to eat; a person who does not worry excessively about food intake; a person who does not diet constantly; someone who enjoys food thoroughly and in moderation.
Catful [kat — ful] adj. A human being whose behavior is reminiscent of a playful or contented cat.
Catfeasience, catfeasient [Kat-fee-zens/zent] n., adj. Willful, arbitrary and malevolent behavior reminiscent of a cat who scratches furniture, doesn’t use the litterbox and is generally incorrigible, as in, If he continues to curse me at parties, his catfeasience will force me to leave him. As an adj., she carried herself with a catfeasient air that drove many away.
Hateless [hate-less] adj. Constitutionally, genetically, or environmentally incapable of severely irrational or violently negative reaction. In the past, derogatively connoted, see: Pollyanna, idealist, idiot. Today, it is considered that one who is hateless may be a secular saint. Very rare, as in: Nelson Mandela is basically hateless.
Hyperchondria [hi-pur-khon-dree-a] n. The state of feeling physically sound; an experience of total, thorough well-being, one in which a person has no physical or psychological complaints; a condition in which one feels superhealthy or superfine; an overabundance of health; in extreme cases, hyperchondria may indicate delusion, but the person will not want to acknowledge a problem.
Intergaze [in-ter-gaz] v. A look which passes between two people or more that occurs in passing or during intense moments; a visually understood look of instant recognition; a quick appraisal; a fast acknowledgment between sympathetic equals, as in: During dinner, his nephew and niece intergazed and decided not to approach him about their father, his prodigal brother.
Jellyrollreversal [ghel-ee-row-ree-vur-sul] n. A gender reversal or role adaptation; primarily domestic; a gendered adaptive variance; an agreed-upon gender variation, as in: He takes care of their children, she goes to the office, but their jellyrollreversal is no compromise. Probably a combination of two terms, bon temps rouler (let the good times roll) and jellyroll (a donut-like pastry whose center is filled with jam). During the 1970s, Americans sought words and expressions for new living arrangements. It is believed that jellyrollreversal was first used by a musician, who, in the late 1970s, upon noticing a man in an apron diapering his daughter, retorted, A jellyrollreversal.
Liberal [lib-a-rul] adj. Cool; hip, able to chill; free and freedomloving; uninhibited and unrestricted, as in: The guy is a liberal dancer. Or, Yo, that’s liberal!
Multitidian [mul-tah-tid-ien] adj. Many events or things that occur over and over, usually in a day. Regular repetitions that are accepted in a day, as in: I was used to the multitidian phone, but now there’s the cell.
Plaintitude [plen-ti-tood], plaintitudious [plen-ti-tood-i-nus] n., adj. The sense of an action or act that, performed daily, is fulfilling to the actor in its regularity; a sense that ordinary routine is sufficient, as in: The plaintitude of breakfast consoles me.
Protemporary [pro-tem-pur-ee], protemporaneous [pro-tem-po-ran-ee-us] n., adj. An advocate of the new and passing; a person who is not fixed in attitudes or habits; of a group who supports and extols the passing whims and fancies of its day; at its extreme, bordering on anarchy, as in: She follows no dictates that I can discern, her protemporaneous style is too fast for me. Not to be confused with contemporary, which emphasizes a blending into and with one’s time. Closer to atemporality, in flavor.
Pseudoist [soo-doe-istl] n. One who supports falsehood and falsity in all things; one who is always false; a person incapable of telling the truth; one who believes in the superiority of lies, as in: Donald Rumsfeld’s portrait, like Dorian Gray’s, is hidden in a room, a wreck, since it is that of a mean, persistent pseudoist.
Superreflection [soo-pa-re-flek-shun] n. The state of pondering a thought; a condition of introspection; the most intense kind of thinking in which thought mirrors thought, as in: At times like these, Gwen insisted, her superreflection caused a kind of vertiginous insight.