Interview: Don Cheadle on the making of Miles Ahead

Selwyn Harris spoke to him on the phone from LA about his directorial debut, biographical authenticity, Miles impersonations, trumpet-playing and more

It’s been widely pointed out that the movie isn’t a ‘biopic’. Would you go along with that?

Yeah, I would say that to me it isn’t a classical biopic, if we’re talking about a cradle-to-grave depiction of a historical figure that tends to make sure they feature all of the highlights and either give you an understanding in depth of moments that you know or introduce you to moments that you don’t know. I was more concerned with giving an experience that felt like Miles Davis’ actual music than doing something that all the documentaries, radio shows and the books about his life do a lot better. In cinema you can do a good movie with a narrative that’s not a documentary and tell a story in a more interesting and dynamic, creative and fun way. I didn’t want to attempt something that those other approaches can do better than a film.

How free did you feel you could be in balancing the biographical and the fictitious sides to the movie?

It was a conversation that was constantly going back and forth between Steven Baigelman [Cheadle’s co-screenwriter] and I. We are personally interested in all those different moments in his life and all the minutiae – when he met Charlie Parker and left Juilliard and went into the street, from playing bebop to modal to electric and the first supergroup. All of those different signposts in his life. We weren’t interested in making sure that we hit all of those in the film. But it was a constant conversation over the years of writing and rewriting the script. Looking each other in the eye and saying, ‘Look don’t we have to talk about Coltrane?’; ‘Don’t we have to talk about Cicely Tyson?’; ‘Are we leaving too much off the table?’. We just kept coming back to the fact that if it doesn’t feel like it’s dynamic and if it doesn’t feed into this momentum that we’re trying to create with the story, and we feel like we’re having to do a ‘time out’ to make sure we let people know that we know that Miles Davis worked with John Coltrane, then we’re not gonna do it!

It’s interesting that you focus on the period between 1976 and 1981 as the ‘present tense’ in the film, ironically the point at which Davis doesn’t make any music at all. Why that period in particular?

For that very reason. It was compelling to us that this singular voice that changed music three or four times and was so prolific, shut down and went silent for five years. For me, a storyteller, that really drew my focus. How did that happen? What happened during that period? Why did he go quiet? How do you come out of that? What do you say when you come out of it? That seemed like a really strong point of departure for us. And it also created an opportunity for us to do what Miles did in his own life, which was be creative and spontaneous and hopefully create a piece which is about feeling like you were in the Miles Davis experience. 

In terms of playing Miles, how close did you want to get in terms of your character portrayal?

I wanted to be close enough that it would allow people to go along for the ride and not attempt some kind of Las Vegas impersonation. Certain aspects of his persona were important to me – his voice was important. If I didn’t have that it would be hard for people to go along with the ride. Learning how to play the trumpet was important too. Getting that nailed. I see films and the people, whatever instrument they’re playing, don’t really know what they’re doing. That’s a pet hate of mine. I didn’t want to do that. I may have only got as good as Miles was in sixth grade, but I wanted to be in the continuum. I wanted to be somewhere in his development in my development as well. I studied and I’m playing in the movie. It’s not my sound that we’re hearing cos it’s Miles, but I’m playing in the movie. I learned all the solos. I still play the trumpet every day a little bit, but I would never call myself a trumpet player. I have fun playing.

What role did Herbie Hancock play in the making of the film?

Herbie was kind of like a godfather throughout the whole thing. He was originally going to be the composer of the incidental music, but he was so busy doing so many different things that we went to Rob Glasper. I actually called Herbie and said, ‘hey dude what do you think about Rob Glasper’, and he said, ‘I’m actually trying to figure out a way to do some stuff with him. I want to work with him’. That was good enough for me. 

What was your intention behind the film’s coda, where you play Miles performing alongside a contemporary all-star band, including Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock?

That was pretty much like the first group I saw when I saw Miles on the We Want Miles tour, where he was playing with a rock guitarist, an African percussionist, R&B drummer and a funk bass player. All these disparate disciplines were together in one band. I wanted to have a band that looked and felt like that same group Miles played with during that period and, luckily, we were able to get all these people that showed up just for the love of the game, nobody was really paid. So that was really special.

Read the Jazzwise review of the film: Miles Ahead preview screening and Q&A at Rio Cinema, Dalston