Spreading the Jazz Gospel of Thelonious Monk : THE MOVIE : Clint Eastwood persuaded Warners to come up with a fistful of dollars for poignant film on legendary pianist

The story of the making of “Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser” took a lucky turn about two years ago, when a pair of documentary makers hooked up with one of the most powerful men in the movie business.

“I was in Kansas City, doing research for the film ‘Bird,’ ” jazz fan and one-man film industry Clint Eastwood recalled, “when I happened to see a poster on the wall at the Musicians’ Union, advertising a film called ‘The Last of the Blue Devils.’ I went to see it, and was very much impressed by all this classic footage Bruce Ricker had put together with Count Basie and other musicians of the Kansas City era.

“I contacted Bruce and asked if he’d be interested in my helping with the distribution. I got Warner Bros. to release it in France and other places where it had never been seen. Later on, Bruce came to me and said, ‘We have this astounding material on Thelonious Monk; would you like to see it?’

“I had never seen Monk in person, but of course I knew his records and had followed him through those same years of which Bird was a part. I liked what I saw so much that when it turned out Bruce and Charlotte Zwerin needed financing, I went to Warren Lieberfarb, who’s the head of Warner Home Video, and told him I thought this was a worthy project.”

Eastwood became executive producer of the project, and Warners came up with $400,000 to purchase the footage and to pay for the music rights.

The result: a poignant new 90-minute film about the legendary pianist and composer. Already a hit in New York, where it has been running for eight weeks, “Straight No Chaser” opened Friday at the AMC Century City 14.

Thelonious Monk was a brilliant, eccentric and enigmatic figure who worked only sporadically and whose best known tunes were all written in the 1940s (“ ‘Round Midnight,” “Well You Needn’t,” “Ruby My Dear,” “Straight No Chaser”). In 1964, he enjoyed his 15 minutes of fame with a portrait on the cover of Time magazine.

The film, which inexplicably neglects to make use of the title tune, brings the man and his music into sharp focus, from live performances to poignant comments by his son and others about his frustrations, his international successes, and his bouts of deep depression and hospitalization.

Since Monk’s death Feb. 17, 1982--at the end of a decade of near-total retirement and seclusion--there has been a flood of recordings of his tunes by other artists, along with countless reissues of his own albums. With such honors as an international piano competition named for him and a conservatory for jazz studies under his name now in the planning stages, Monk, like Charlie Parker, is more fully recognized posthumously than he ever was in his lifetime.

“I began thinking about the Monk film when he was still alive,” said Charlotte Zwerin, who directed the film and co-produced it with Bruce Ricker. “I didn’t realize how ill he was in those last years. But then there was a lucky accident. In 1981, Bruce Ricker bumped into Christian Blackwood, who mentioned that he and his brother Michael had all this early footage on Monk. Bruce was shocked. He called me, and we started trying to raise money for this project.”

A music lover since childhood, Zwerin collaborated with Albert Maysles and Susan Froemke on “Horowitz Plays Mozart” and recently on “Jessye Norman Sings Carmen.” She co-directed the acclaimed feature length documentary “Gimme Shelter” which examined the Rolling Stones’ 1969 concert at Altamont. A few years ago, during a stint at NBC, Zwerin produced a 20-minute film called “Woody Herman, Road Father.”

“I had just finished making ‘The Last of the Blue Devils,’ about Kansas City jazz,” Ricker said, “when I found out that in 1967 and ’68 the Blackwood brothers had followed Monk around on the road for six months, in the studios, at home and in various cities, for a German documentary. They shot 14 hours of film and edited it down for a cinema verite special on West German television. It was shown just once in Germany and had been lying around unused and forgotten ever since. I worked out an agreement with Christian and Michael, then brought Charlotte into the picture.”

The search for funding was an arduous problem that began in 1983. The National Endowment for the Arts came through with a $50,000 grant in 1985, but more money was needed. There were unexpected difficulties, one of which was the discovery that the Monk family had sold the rights to the name for a film called “Music in Monk Time,” in which Monk did not take part.

To the Blackwoods’ documentary material was added a series of interviews with Monk’s longtime saxophonist Charlie Rouse; with his personal manager, Harry Colomby, his road manager, Bob Jones, and with the Baroness Nica de Koenigswarter, the wealthy patron in whose home in Weehawken, N.J. Monk spent the last decade of his life (but wife Nellie Monk visited him there often and was with him when he died).

“This is an instance of something done by people who had their heart and soul in it, and when that happens, you know they’re going to give it their best shot,” said Eastwood. “They did a fine job and it was fun for me to be involved.”

One of the very few faults in the movie is its failure to seek out from other musicians who worked with Monk and knew him well, most notably Art Blakey, Milt Jackson and Sonny Rollins.

Nellie Monk, anguished over the death in 1984 of her 30-year-old daughter, was reluctant to be involved with making the film and did not want to be interviewed; however, she trusted her son, Thelonious Monk Jr., to take care of the family’s interests in the movie.

The younger Monk, a 39-year-old drummer who worked with his father from 1970 until his final public appearance in 1976, wound up becoming a moving force behind the picture. “Charlotte and Bruce did a bang-up job,” he said. “I told them a lot of things that I and my mom would like to see in it, and they put everything in the proper perspective.

“This film will provide a great opportunity, particularly for people who never saw Thelonious. He always inspired people; now he can continue to inspire them, even though he’s not here.”