Bird (1988 Clint Eastwood)

A bit of an epic (2 hours 40) from Clint, an honest biopic of Charlie Parker with contributions from his wife Chan, Red Rodney and Dizzy Gillespie.

Classily made, e.g. the cymbal, long tracking shot of doorman, jazz performances, good production design (Edward Carfagno). Touches of humour welcome, e.g. Red masquerading as an albino, Bird entering apartment miming to singer. Very darkly photographed by Jack Green (interestingly future DP Tom Stern is credited as 'lighting consultant'), edited by Joel Cox.

Great little speech from Dizzy to Bird: "What you're really asking me is, How come when you're supposed to be there at 9.30 I get there at 9.30? How come I can land on a cat I love almost as much as you and fire his ass for showing up late or stoned? Why I can hold a group together, why am I leader? Because they don't expect me to be. Because deep down they like it if the nigger turns out unreliable. Because that's the way they think it's supposed to be. Because I won't give them the satisfaction of being right. Here, we are, brothers. I'm a reformer and you're trying to be a martyr. They always remember the martyrs longer..." Written by Joel Oliansky.

Really well acted by Forest Whitaker, Diane Venora, Michael Zelniker and Samuel E Wright. Considering it won the Oscar and BAFTA for Best Sound, it's funny that you can't always make out what Whitaker's saying. Clint was nominated for the Palme D'Or and Forest won Best Actor; Cahiers named it one of the year's Top 10.

It was - perhaps unsurprisingly - a flop, though I'm pretty sure we saw it at the cinema in January 1989, and it was released throughout Europe, so I'm not sure Box Office Mojo is accurate as to how much of a flop it was, listing no non-domestic takings.