Trumpet Miming in Film: Mostly Jive

No surprise that filmmakers want to feature trumpet players in their films. After all, we are a complicated, sometimes volatile and, ahem, sexy cohort. I've written here about the odd character-illogical bent that movies show toward the species, but in this post, I'll restrict myself to analyzing how well filmmakers pull off the act of shooting a character playing the trumpet or cornet.

Let me note that, technically, no one is actually playing for the soundtrack while scenes are being shot. Music is almost never recorded live on a soundstage, but is recorded in an audio studio and mimed during the shoot (I did this myself as a member of a polka band in the as-yet unreleased Jack Black film The Polka King). That's the only way to be able to isolate any dialogue in the scene and it gives many more editing options. So, even if someone knows how to play, in a feature film, they always have to try and synch with pre-existing audio.

Let's start with the one scene I know of featuring a woman. In The Jerk, Bernadette Peters does an excellent miming job. Before she plays, she lightly licks her lip in a very natural way. Then, she actually fingers the right notes on the valves for a melody in the trumpet key of Aflat. Her embouchure is a little too loosy-goosy and the dubbing is very close, but not exact. She looks like an example of someone who is comfortable with the trumpet and maybe even knows how to play, but is not playing it here.

Jack Lord of Hawaii 5-O fame is in Play It Glissando, an episode of Route 66. Just from the awkwardness of the title (you can play _a_ glissando, but you can't play _it_ glissando), you can see the writers are trying to get hip but can't quite get there. I find that a lot in Route 66, but I love them for trying. Lord is cast in the Chet Baker mold and has the basic look right, but, as in most miming attempts, he's trying too hard to look the tortured soul. He's too stressed, too tense. Also, there's no variation in his chops; no indication that he's actually playing high or low, loud or soft. The director is smart enough to have only one shot where you can see him fiddling with the valves and that's a quick long shot.


Whether or not Richard Gere in-Cotton Club plays the cornet himself is a subject of online debate. The most convincing story I read says he did; not live, of course, but that with Warren Vache's help, he pre-recorded his parts. The scene where Gere's character really plays is not online, but in this clip he does a good job; right stance, overall physical look, amount of tension, fingering the valves properly. Flirting with Diane Lane does break his concentration. I get that.


Denzel Washington in Mo Better Blues does a very credible job. It helps that he is photographed in dim light-makes it hard to see his chops. They put him in the classic Miles pose-hunched over, with little movement. Spike is smart enough to give him a simple riff to play in close up and to pull back in the brief time the solo gets more complicated. Also, they know when the horn should have a harmon mute-and when it's open, for the solo.


Jack Klugman in a Twilight Zone episode called A Passage for Trumpet was not well coached. Here I speak not of his playing (although that too) but what he does when he goes to pawn his trumpet. Watch at :48.


Did you see what he did? First, he slammed his mouthpiece into the receiver-a sure way to get the thing stuck. Then, he actually, put the whole mouthpiece in his mouth. Never happens.

Ok, nuff o that.

I had reservations about other aspects of Miles Ahead, but no question that Don Cheadle was serious about learning how to play and to do a good job synching to the soundtrack. Sorry I don't have a longer clip, but this clip should show how invested he was in getting it right. Keyon Harrold does the real playing.


Jack Just-the-facts-maam Webb, a big jazz fan, made Pete Kelly's Blues. The thing that made Jack's miming work credible is his intrinsic wooden-ness, which actually keeps him from engaging in the St Vitus dance that so many actors are subject to in miming a trumpeter. His valve work is not bad.


In Clint Eastwood's film Bird, Michael Zelniker does a pretty good Red Rodney, at least in terms of fingering. He does not get the embouchure. Red had fairly Dizzy-like puffy cheeks.


Ethan Hawke as Chet Baker in Born to be Blue does some things right. His general physical deportment and playing posture is right, but his embouchure is wrong and he also raises his shoulders and gears up a little too much for a breath. Careful video study of Chet would have shown that. As is the norm, his fingering for ballads is good and breaks down somewhat at higher tempos. Kevin Turcotte does the actual playing.


Probably the progenitor of the self-destructive trumpet player was Kirk Douglas in Young Man With a Horn, a film I talk about here. Kirk's performance varies, depending on how fast the music is. There are no clips up of him when he plays jazz, but here, apart from the usual excess physical movement, he does a credible job with a ballad (trumpet actually played by Harry James):


In A Man Called Adam, Sammy Davis Jr. takes on the part of yet another messed up trumpeter. I was a little disappointed in Sammy's miming attempts here, as he was a consummate musician who, I believe, actually played some trumpet. This just means that, although his embouchure is convincing, he didn't take the time to know what cornettist Nat Adderly was actually putting down and there's a lot of random fingering going on. He does a great job of carrying out one of a trumpet player's great fantasies: smashing up his horn on stage.


Montgomery Clift in From Here to Eternity has quite a challenge: to make Manny Klein's trumpet playing look like it came from a bugle. Of course, a bugle has no valves, so even though impossible to do, it's much simpler to mime. We only see him play in profile, so rating his chops is hard, but he has the correct look of a trumpet player who's had too much to drink, but has enough energy left to show off for 16 bars before he passes out.


Red Nichols and His Five Pennies has Danny Kaye taking the title role. Much of the musical slack is taken up by Louis Armstrong and Danny does a lot of singing (unlike Red himself). He comes onstage about halfway through the clip. Before that, you get to hear Pops. When he is playing, Danny is in long shot, with appropriately masking lighting, so not much pressure for cornet verisimilitude. Adequate, I guess.


SHORT TAKES/ ODDITIES  This post would take an eternity to load if I embedded all these, so I just provide the links where you can find the clips.

Amazing. At 29:15, Sugar Ray Robinson ("Biff") gets a lecture on the use of mutes in the TV series Land of the Giants(!) Later, Sugar and the actor play a duet on Give Me The Simple Life. "I hate to call a man a liar, but that's not the first mute I've seen." At the end, the actor has to charm a snake with his trumpet, using a few well-chosen minor scales. Now yer talkin'. BTW, writer Richard Shapiro's first writing credit is a script for Route 66. https://youtu.be/4ihHl2HadQI
 
Forrest Whittaker, in the production Lush Life does have the length of the phrases down, so that he starts and stops playing phrases at the right time;  points for studiousness. But, he also suffers from the same unnecessary rocking/excess motion that he had when he played Bird in Eastwood's movie. Some playing after opening credits and at 8:00: https://youtu.be/GSYfFE_BOMo

Burt Young plays another self-destructive trumpet player in Uncle Joe Shannon. Instead of showing us the tension in his chops needed to hit all those Maynard Ferguson high notes, Burt is in constant motion. Between that and the director shooting into lights and constantly moving the camera, attention is pretty much successfully diverted from how little effort Burt put into knowing anything about the music.
https://youtu.be/A_7z7CZZQlE

Thanks to FB friend Marty Krystall for reminding me about this, He wrote: "I worked on camera in a few shots with Kurt Russell in Swing Shift, with Goldie Hawn. Kurt studied the trumpet with Zep Misner for two months, and I heard him warming up on the set. He had a very nice, controlled sound. He was a natural trumpet man. I don't know if some of his playing ended up in the film or just his side-lining, but he could play." https://youtu.be/gMU8I4uMFIY 

Bryant Weeks sits in for Bix in Bix: An Interpretation of a Legend (Tod Pletcher is playing). Full credit to Weeks for knowing the music well enough to make the fingering look good. It is weird that he brings his fingers up so high, as if each valve needed the pressure of a tuba valve to go down. The actors all do a good job and music director Bob Wilbur makes sure there are no anachronisms and missteps. https://youtu.be/dlggYkTZkzo

For Love or Country; The Arturo Sandoval Story features Andy Garcia as Sandoval, who, of course, is actually playing. Garcia does a very good job, although we might note that since Arturo's valves are almost in perpetual motion, it makes miming fast sections easier than in solos that are less moto perpetuo. https://youtu.be/3c06RIkstto

In Blues in the Night, Jack Carson does a credible job. Plus, there's a certain fascination in watching an entire group of actors pretend to play jazz. https://youtu.be/BJG0ZimloMY

One of the most ridiculous efforts and certainly the most vertigo-inducing, Mickey Rourke in Passion Play: https://youtu.be/apwHygpBzus

In Memories of Me Billy Crystal plays trumpet and, albeit with too much head movement, does a credible job. https://youtu.be/eVvhSBO0NnE

Dingo, a little known film with Colin Friels as the trumpet player(Chuck Findlay playing). I give Friels an B- for his mime job, but worth noting is the fact that this is the only film I ever saw with POV shots of the valves; as if seen through the player's eyes-or nose. https://youtu.be/AG5gZjKaPyw

Nice little trumpet scene from The Black Glove with ok miming by Alex Nicol of nice playing by Kenny Baker (I think) https://youtu.be/jMbT7JABKW4

Playing two big band trumpet players, Fred Astaire and Burgess Meredith vie for the affections of Goddard in Second Chorus.  Fred does kind of a ragged job with the fingering, while Burgess is a little more precise with fingering but apt to twist himself up into some odd contortions. Bobby Hackett and Billy Butterfield are the real players. https://youtu.be/upO7v6T7O5c

In The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai, Peter Weller, who apparently actually plays trumpet, pulls out a pocket trumpet during a nightclub scene. I'll give it a mention just because, well how often do you see a pocket trumpet in a feature film? https://youtu.be/AbBMzGUlIRw

The Salton Sea has Val Kilmer (Terrence Blanchard playing) and the little I've seen on Youtube is disappointing; no effort to synch his valve work with the music and a laughable embouchure. Goo-ily romanticized bilge. https://youtu.be/swYBhpwTLAo

Dennis Leary in The Secret Life of Dentists does a credible job. They keep him in medium-long shot with low lighting. That helps. https://youtu.be/Zirk0GaE9fU

Unfortunately, I could find find no clips of Robert Wagner playing trumpet in All the Fine Young Cannibals, no trace of Syncopation by William Dieterle, 1942, that has Jackie Cooper as a jazz trumpet player and could not find clips of Antonio Banderas playing in Mambo Kings. 

There are many more scenes that could be analyzed, especially in episodic television, but I have evaluated my own level of obsessiveness and feel that things have gone far enough; at least for the moment. I'd ask any readers who can cue us in to other examples to leave a comment here rather than responding on Facebook, although I'm happy if you do that as well.

Jazz on Film: Caveat Emptor

There are good documentaries about jazz. A person can see the films listed on this site and walk away without reaching for the gas pipe. But, as the furor around the film Whiplash (well, to jazz people it was furor) reminds us, it's wise to keep the bar low.

When Hollywood does jazz, it should stick to hagiography and cheesy romance: The Benny Goodman story, the Fabulous Dorseys, the Glenn Miller story; these are really just the Lindbergh, Curie and Young Abe Lincoln stories with clarinets and bobby socks. Henry Fonda coulda played Miller and Jimmy Stewart coulda been Lincoln. Fred Astaire and Burgess Meredith as trumpet players in Second Chorus, competing for Paulette Goddard? No problem. These movies are a nice, comfortable roll in the lowest common denominator hay. And, of course, any time Louis Armstrong is on, he lights up the screen. Ditto, Hoagy Carmichael.

But, when the egomaniacs in L.A. go all arty and pseudo-egghead on us and decide they have to "explain" jazz and jazz musicians, it's a formula for disaster.

Remember your initial excitement when you heard about "Round Midnight," and about "Bird"? Remember your disappointment after you saw them? Why didn't they let Dexter play anything up tempo! Why did they make Bird a man-child! Why did they strip the original rhythm section off the sound track! Bird didn't look like that when he played! Is every black man a tragic figure and every white man a dolt?

Possibly the most exasperating example of the genre is "Jung Man With a..." Sorry: "Young Man With a Horn." The insane ilk of psycho-babble that oozes through this movie like celluloid arteriosclerosis makes me think Professor Irwin Corey had a hand in the screenplay. Kirk Douglas/Bix Beiderbecke has "one wing" then falls for the broken pseudo-shrink Bacall who has a pet macaw? She smashes your 78's? I hate to see that; even if they're just Caruso on Victor. You're right, Kirk/Bix, she is "dirty and twisted inside," while you-were-born-to-play-the-trumpet-and-can-only-communicate-through-that-damn-horn. Why, oh why do they try and foist off that juvenile premise: "I want to play the note that no one else has ever played?" Bejasus.

Don't ask me if the same 4th-class Freudianisms befoul the Dorothy Baker novel it was based on. I can only deal with psychic effluvia in one genre at a time. "Based on the life of Bix Beiderbecke"-my moldy toenail. Harry James is the film's music adviser and dubs the trumpet parts. James is a great player, but his style bears as much resemblance to Bix's as, well-you finish the analogy. Kirk Douglas pushes the trumpet valves convincingly and has the appropriate unyielding embouchure and convincing lunatic gleam in his eye.  

Happily, the movie is quite informative for all you trumpet players out there, as there are at least 4 mentions of the loathsome "roll" in this movie. You know, where the mouthpiece gets too low on your lower lip? You better correct it pronto, or I will strap you in this comfy chair and force you to listen to cinematic dialogue about trumpet rolls until your chops fall off.

I suppose it's not really the aspiring filmmaker's fault. They're not gonna raise a lot of money to make a movie-insightful or not-about jazz, unless it's about Miles Davis, who is now the only jazz musician that Americans can name. We'll see how Mr. Cheadle makes out with Miles, but when you walk into the multiplex, my advice is: caveat jazz emptor. 

Jung Man With A Horn- by Steve Provizer

When it comes to Hollywood doing jazz bio-pics, I prefer hagiography: The Goodman story, the Dorsey Story, the Miller story-they're just the Lindburgh story, Curie and Young Abe Lincoln stories with swing music. Fonda coulda been Miller and Stewart could been Lincoln. Greer Garson as Marian McPartland? Anyway, it's a nice, comfortable roll in the nostalgic hay. Why do those nut jobs in L.A. go all pseudo-egghead on us and decide they have to "explain" jazz? It's a formula for disaster.

Remember your initial excitement when you heard about "Round Midnight," and about "Bird"? Remember your disappointment after you saw them? Why didn't they let Dexter play anything up tempo!! Why did they make Bird a man-child!! Is every black man a tragic figure and every white man a dolt?

Possibly the most exasperating example of the genre is "Jung Man With a Horn." Sorry-Young Man. The insane ilk of psycho-babble that floats through this movie like celluloid arteriosclerosis is unmatched. Kirk Douglas/Bix Beiderbecke has "one wing" then falls for the broken pseudo-shrink Bacall who has a pet macaw? She smashes your 78's? I hate to see that; even if they're just Caruso on VIctor. You're right, Kirk/Bix, she is "dirty and twisted inside," while you-were-born-to-play-the-trumpet-and-can-only-communicate-through-that-damn-horn. Why, oh why do they try and foist off that juvenile premise: "I want to play the note that no one else has ever played?" Bejasus.

Don't ask me if the same 4th-class Freudianisms befoul the "Dorothy Baker novel of the same name." I can only deal with psychic effluvia in one genre at a time.

"Based on the life of Bix Beiderbecke"? My moldy toenail. Harry James, a fine player, is the film's "music adviser" and dubs the trumpet parts. Kirk Douglas pushes the trumpet valves convincingly and has the appropriate unyielding embouchure and convincing semi-ecstatic gleam in his eye. Unfortunately, Harry James' style bears as much resemblance to Bix's as, well-you finish the analogy. I don't want to sound churlish. Happily, the movie is quite informative for all you trumpet players out there, as there are at least 4 mentions of the loathsome "roll" in this movie. You know, where the mouthpiece gets too low on your lower lip? You better correct it pronto, or I will strap you in this comfy chair and force you to listen to cinematic dialogue about trumpet rolls until your chops fall off. There are good documentaries about jazz. Why is this music such an lousy fit in feature films?

A "Bad" Embouchure