‘Bird’ Flies Into (Yawn) Cannes : Eastwood Takes the Limelight at Film Festival

It’s hard to watch a man drink and drug himself to death at 8:30 in the morning. But that was the drill here Saturday.

Press screenings for films in official competition start early, and director Clint Eastwood’s “Bird” was no exception. The movie was remarkable for its length (2 hours, 43 minutes), for its look (darker than a bad alley off the Rue d’Antibes) and for all the things it left unsaid about whatever demons drove saxophone genius Charlie (Bird) Parker to the heights of creative frenzy and to the depths of dissolution and death in 1955 at the age of 34.

The bad stuff is all in there: heroin, hard liquor and too many nights with too many women. The music’s all there too. Eastwood used long sequences from almost two dozen be-bop classics, most of them rebuilt by music supervisor Lennie Niehaus and other musicians around cleaned-up Parker tracks that were electronically lifted from old recordings.

But where was the rest of Charlie Parker? More than a few people came away from Saturday’s screening, the film’s first public showing, with that question on their minds.

“Why was there not more of the childhood and the pressures that drove Parker to drugs? Racism was very strong then, and that was not shown,” a French reporter challenged Eastwood at a mass press conference following the screening.

“That’s another story. To do a biography, you can only do a certain segment of a person’s life,” replied Eastwood, who focused on an anti-drug message and on Parker’s stormy relationship with his wife, Chan Richardson, who is played by Diane Venora.

Eastwood was unflappable, but not necessarily persuasive. Even the publicity kits told us, at least, why Parker was called “Bird,” just that kind of detail that got lost in the movie. It’s short for “Yardbird,” a nickname supposedly picked up in his Kansas City youth, when he ate a lot of chicken and hung around the courtyard of the Reno Club, a hot spot for jazz musicians.

But again the big question came up: Exactly what pushed Parker to drugs and drink?

“A lot of people felt that maybe he had to indulge to get some super high,” ventured Eastwood, touching on an uncomfortable issue that many of the movie’s first viewers apparently felt had been dodged. How did the music and drugs get mixed up together? Did the same pain drive Parker to both? What was the source?

The deepest thoughts on the point came from Forest Whitaker (“Good Morning, Vietnam,” “Platoon”), the young actor who plays Parker in his biggest film role to date.

Elaborating on a line from the Joel Oliansky script, Whitaker said his own research revealed Parker to have been both blessed and beset by extraordinary sensitivities--to sounds, to people, to pain in the world around him. “He had to garner certain ways of feeling in order to survive,” the actor explained.

It might have been nice to speak more privately with Whitaker about that research. But Warner Bros. French representative said Whitaker was “too busy doing interviews” to do an interview. Translated loosely: “Get lost.”

It might also have been interesting to hear Eastwood elaborate on some behind-the-scenes maneuvers at the studio. He pointed out that he had influenced Warners’ earlier decision to back “ ‘Round Midnight,” Bertrand Tavernier’s jazz film, and said he got the “Bird” script away from Columbia Pictures by pressing Warners to swap for a project he didn’t name. Unfortunately, the curious may never know what Warners gave up to get “Bird.”

That’s because a festival moderator used up much of the 40-minute press conference with questions of his own (“What was it like working with Mr. Eastwood?”), and the answers were so dull (“I enjoyed working with Clint very much,” said supporting actor Michael Zelniker) that half the crowd left well before it ended.

One celebrity who did speak his mind at Cannes was David Lean. “I just hope we march on and do big films. ‘My Beautiful Laundrette,’ delightful as it is, won’t carry our industry,” Lean told British movie people, who gathered at a black-tie gala to celebrate his 80th birthday.

Lean, director of such big films as “Dr. Zhivago” and “Passage to India,” also had some choice words for those who crossed him during his long career.

At the top of the list was Dino De Laurentiis: “Unfortunately, the producer” of “Mutiny on the Bounty,” a cherished project that was developed by Lean and writer Robert Bolt (“Dr. Zhivago,” “A Man for All Seasons”), but eventually turned over by De Laurentiis to another director.

Lean also hit the movie industry’s “money men” who are taking over the film industry: “I think it’s time all of us movie makers banded together to get rid of some of the crooks. Every film maker I know has had hands in his pockets. It’s really dreadful. It’s flourishing today.”

The British, including director John Boorman and producers David Puttnam and Jake Eberts, seemed to love most of the salty speech.

The good news, according to Lean, is that Columbia soon plans to release a fully restored, 3-hour, 36-minute version of Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia” to theaters in Los Angeles, New York, Washington, Boston and England. Lean said he asked his accountant if “Lawrence” had ever gotten into profit. It had, he was assured--15 years after its release in 1962.