Eastwood Gives ‘Bird’ Wings : Legendary Saxophonist Charlie Parker Is Subject of a Movie

“The first time I heard Charlie Parker,” says Clint Eastwood, “I was overwhelmed. Living in the Bay Area, I had been following the big resurgence of traditional jazz--Lu Watters, Bob Scobey, Kid Ory and all that--but hearing Bird, even though I couldn’t understand him at first, really turned me around.”

Eastwood is leaning against a dilapidated Ford parked outside a brownstone house on West 52nd Street, near Fifth Avenue--the fabled block whose small, shoebox-shaped nightclubs have played host to half the great names in jazz history.

This is, of course, not the original 52nd Street, but a strikingly real reconstruction on the lot at the Burbank Studios. Shooting began here last week on “Bird,” the long-awaited motion picture about the legendary saxophonist Charlie Parker, that Eastwood, who once played piano in Oakland for beer and tips, is producing and directing.

“Bird,” by Eastwood’s own admission, is a labor of love and is being shot on a modest budget.

“This is a small, very personal story,” he says. “It’s funny--Americans have two original art forms--jazz and the Western movie. When you go to other countries you realize these are the two things that have the most influence around the world.”

Eastwood’s background in and around jazz has long been an open secret. “My mother was a great Fats Waller fan,” he said, between takes. “By the time I was 15 or so I had learned enough to play at the Omar Club on Broadway in Oakland, where the laws were real loose and they’d let me play for free meals. At school the only instrument available was a fluegelhorn, which wasn’t considered so hip in those days, but I did play horn a bit; however, mostly I concentrated on ragtime and blues piano.” (Eastwood can be heard at the piano, along with Mike Lang and Pete Jolly, as part of a three-keyboard boogie-woogie number on the sound-track album of “City Heat.”)

He remembers vividly his first exposure to Bird. “That was an incredible Jazz at the Philharmonic concert--Lester Young, my first reed idol, was also there, as well as Coleman Hawkins, Flip Phillips, Howard McGhee, Hank Jones. Later on, I was exposed to people like Dave Brubeck, and then, while I was in the Army at Ft. Ord, I’d go to hear Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker.”

It was at Ft. Ord that Eastwood met Lennie Niehaus, an ex-Kenton alto sax player. Their friendship eventually led to jobs for Niehaus, who wrote the music for a series of Eastwood films: “Tightrope,” “City Heat,” “Pale Rider,” “Heartbreak Ridge.” When the “Bird” project got under way, Niehaus took his sax out of mothballs in order to teach Forest Whitaker, who plays the title role.

The decision to film “Bird” grew out of a convenient exchange of scripts. “Columbia had the script with Richard Pryor in mind,” said Eastwood, “but word got out that Pryor was no longer interested. It turned out Warner Bros. had another script that Columbia wanted, so it was arranged to make a trade.”

The script, by Joel Oliansky, concentrates mainly on Parker’s last years, and on his relationship with Chan, the last woman in his short and star-crossed life (he died in 1955 at 34). Diane Venora, a 1977 drama major from the Juilliard School who had a small role in “Cotton Club,” is playing Chan.

Red Rodney, the white trumpeter who toured with Parker, has worked on the sound track, served as a consultant and will be enacted in the movie by Michael Zelnicker. Dizzy Gillespie, who with Parker pioneered the be-bop revolution of the 1940s and whom Bird once called “the other half of my heartbeat,” will be played by Sam Wright.

The quest for authenticity in “Bird” has been remarkable. Eastwood sent for the real Chan (known as Chan Parker during the years she spent with Bird) to leave her home outside Paris and serve as a consultant. She spent many hours in consultation with Venora, whose strong resemblance to the youthful Chan is coupled with a fierce dedication. Chan devoted a no-less-protracted session to filling in Whitaker on Bird’s personality.

Parker’s chaotic life involved at least one legal marriage, back in his Kansas City teen-age years; involvements with several other women; a son now in his 40s, and a daughter by Chan whose death in infancy was one of the many traumas of his later years. Some years after Parker’s death, Chan married another alto saxophonist, Phil Woods, who at one time was hailed as the next Charlie Parker. After their breakup she settled in France.

Parker died at 34 of a seizure he suffered while visiting the East Side home of a jazz patron, the Baroness Nica de Koenigswarter. (The New York Daily News ran a headline: “Bop King Dies in Heiress’ Flat.”) He had been destroying himself for years through drugs, drink and pills, but there were periods when, after straightening out, he was a relatively normal and consistently amiable human being.

Despite the tragic end, there was much in Bird’s career that will provide light relief. Part of the story is a Jewish wedding he played as a favor to Rodney; later there was the famous trip south, with Rodney as a sideman forced to pacify the rednecks by pretending he was black (no Southerner would tolerate an integrated band), trying to prove it by calling himself “Albino Red” and singing the blues.

Although most of the action is concentrated in those later years, there will be some brief early scenes showing Parker’s evolution as a youngster in Kansas City, spurned at first for his supposed incompetence, later idolized by his peers. The problem of finding a youthful counterpart to play a 16-year-old Bird at the Reno Club in Kansas City was neatly resolved when Whitaker told Eastwood: “I have a 16-year-old brother who looks just like me. Why don’t you use him?” Accordingly, Damon Whitaker was hired to play the embryonic Bird.

The inevitable question arises: Why another movie about a junkie jazz artist? Eastwood, who is well aware of the negative side of “Lady Sings the Blues” and even “ ‘Round Midnight,” replies: “The central fact is that he revolutionized the way everyone plays the saxophone. I’m interested in what made the man tick in his relationships, and what made him so amazingly inventive.

“Not only that; Bird was a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do person. Red Rodney told me that when Bird caught him using, he was furious, even threatened to beat him up. He told him, ‘You can’t do this! It doesn’t make you play better!’ So maybe there is a message. I won’t say I’m making an anti-drug film, but if it turns out that way it won’t break my heart.”

Forest Whitaker, 26, an earnest young man from Longview, Tex., seems to be an apt choice to play Parker. Though a little taller and heavier, he has the same malleable features. As Eastwood puts it, “He has a sort of pathos quality along with an ingratiating smile.” Moreover, his musical background equips him for a deep understanding of the role.

“I studied opera at USC Music Conservatory,” Whitaker says, “and even though I went to drama school soon after, I have never lost my interest in music. I played trumpet for a while; my father listened to records by Bird and all the great people.

“Because I can read music, and understand the structure and fingering of the various horns, I’ve been getting along fine studying with Lennie Niehaus. I can play ‘Lover Man’ and some of the other things off Bird’s records. Of course, you won’t hear me in the movie, but at least it will look right.”

What will be heard in the film should be effective. In an engineering coup, Parker’s solos have been isolated on the original records, and other musicians such as Red Rodney, Jon Faddis, Ray Brown and Monty Alexander have been brought in to update the sound quality. Charles McPherson, the Bird-inspired alto soloist from San Diego, also has done some recording.

For Whitaker, among whose credits are “Platoon,” “The Color of Money” and “Stakeout,” portraying Parker will be challenging.

“I listen to Bird’s music most of the time,” he says. “I’m trying to find out some of the keys to his heart, to let his music become a part of me. Here’s a man who was a genius, who influenced the whole spectrum of music, at a time when it was hard for a black man to gain the acceptance he deserved.

“He was a remarkable individual who seemed able to adapt himself to deal with any type of person. There was a certain duality about him that I have to capture.

“Yeah, he was a heroin addict, but what matters is that he created so much magnificent and unprecedented music. It was amazing that he and Dizzy could play together in such perfect sync, even though their lives were so very different.

“I just hope this movie will show how much artists like Bird and Dizzy and Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell contributed. I hope people will grasp the magnitude of what went into their innovations.”