Let’s Get Lost, Bruce Weber’s 1988 film about jazz icon Chet Baker, shows the musician at his nadir. Bruce Weber is now 67, but couldn’t be in a more different place. The filmmaker and photographer is immersed in interviews for a documentary about actor Robert Mitchum, and has just released an installment of his All American arts and literary journal as well as a box set of his films. (He also still makes time to shoot for CR Fashion Book and OC Annual.)
Tonight and tomorrow afternoon, he will be speaking at Film Forum in New York, which is screening four of his features this weekend, including a new print of Let's Get Lost, which premiered twenty five years ago at the theater. This movie, which I watched this week in preparation for our interview, is one of the most touching profiles of a person I’ve encountered. Its gorgeous, shadowy world––shot on black and white 35mm––transforms its subjects into icons, the kind of people who would emerge in bursts of laughter from a party in 1950s Hollywood (or, perhaps, appear in Bruce Weber photographs). This was the kind of person trumpeter Chet Baker was, before a life of drugs and constant traveling ran its course. Yet Let’s Get Lost also shows that there is beauty in decay. Chet's voice––still as lovely as his face once was––lingers in the soundtrack for what seems like the entirety of the film.
After watching Let’s Get Lost, I knew Bruce Weber would be a tenderhearted guy–-he did, after all, make a feature-length film about his beloved Golden Retriever, True. But I didn’t know he would also be so funny. Bruce jumped from stories of a woman who named her daughter Chanel (“names come from wacky places!”) to memories of Robert Mitchum (the actor, “a pretty rough guy,” was liable to get drunk at lunch and offend potential film financiers). But he also answered my more serious questions, like what it’s like to have two of your documentary subjects die during or shortly after filming. Our conversation is below.
Bruce Weber's films are screening at Film Forum in New York from November 15 to November 21.
Alice Hines: So you know my brother’s name is True.
Bruce Weber: Oh my god what a beautiful name. My dog, you know, was True. I’m so crazy about him. I loved him so much and I always loved that name. I was always so surprised that I never met a person with that name. That’s so great. How incredible your parents did that. What made them call him that?
I guess they just liked the name. His middle name is Woodberry so he has a really good name.
Wow, what a name. God. Well he’s gotta be a writer or something. Or at least a film actor or a DJ.
Where did you come up with the name?
Nan [Bush, Weber's partner] and I, when we got True we didn’t know what we were going to call him. And he was such an exceptional puppy (all my dogs are really), and we just sort of came up with it. One night we got really hippie about it, like started writing feelings down, you know? I met this girl in Detroit we were photographing a couple of years ago, and her name was Chanel. I said, "How did your mother call you Chanel?" And she said, “Oh, she was in the hospital, pregnant with me. She was looking at a fashion mag
Tonight and tomorrow afternoon, he will be speaking at Film Forum in New York, which is screening four of his features this weekend, including a new print of Let's Get Lost, which premiered twenty five years ago at the theater. This movie, which I watched this week in preparation for our interview, is one of the most touching profiles of a person I’ve encountered. Its gorgeous, shadowy world––shot on black and white 35mm––transforms its subjects into icons, the kind of people who would emerge in bursts of laughter from a party in 1950s Hollywood (or, perhaps, appear in Bruce Weber photographs). This was the kind of person trumpeter Chet Baker was, before a life of drugs and constant traveling ran its course. Yet Let’s Get Lost also shows that there is beauty in decay. Chet's voice––still as lovely as his face once was––lingers in the soundtrack for what seems like the entirety of the film.
After watching Let’s Get Lost, I knew Bruce Weber would be a tenderhearted guy–-he did, after all, make a feature-length film about his beloved Golden Retriever, True. But I didn’t know he would also be so funny. Bruce jumped from stories of a woman who named her daughter Chanel (“names come from wacky places!”) to memories of Robert Mitchum (the actor, “a pretty rough guy,” was liable to get drunk at lunch and offend potential film financiers). But he also answered my more serious questions, like what it’s like to have two of your documentary subjects die during or shortly after filming. Our conversation is below.
Bruce Weber's films are screening at Film Forum in New York from November 15 to November 21.
Alice Hines: So you know my brother’s name is True.
Bruce Weber: Oh my god what a beautiful name. My dog, you know, was True. I’m so crazy about him. I loved him so much and I always loved that name. I was always so surprised that I never met a person with that name. That’s so great. How incredible your parents did that. What made them call him that?
I guess they just liked the name. His middle name is Woodberry so he has a really good name.
Wow, what a name. God. Well he’s gotta be a writer or something. Or at least a film actor or a DJ.
Where did you come up with the name?
Nan [Bush, Weber's partner] and I, when we got True we didn’t know what we were going to call him. And he was such an exceptional puppy (all my dogs are really), and we just sort of came up with it. One night we got really hippie about it, like started writing feelings down, you know? I met this girl in Detroit we were photographing a couple of years ago, and her name was Chanel. I said, "How did your mother call you Chanel?" And she said, “Oh, she was in the hospital, pregnant with me. She was looking at a fashion mag