Pieces of Art
Alto saxophonist Art Pepper was a piece of work. An emotional bebop improviser with TV-star, if not movie-star, looks, Pepper acquired a world-class heroin habit while playing in Stan Kenton's big band during the forties. He nonetheless managed to record more than a hundred albums during a career punctuated by drug-related prison stays, including a five-year stint in San Quentin. He met his second wife, Laurie Pepper, in the Synanon rehab program, and she helped put him on track for a robust later-life career that ended with his death in 1982 at age fifty-six. The Peppers began recording an oral account of Art's tumultuous life after leaving Synanon in 1972. The resulting book, 1979's Straight Life, is as eloquent as his saxophone playing, and practically begs to be filmed with someone such as Johnny Depp in the lead role.
It turns out that many people in the film industry, including Mr. Depp, have approached Laurie Pepper about translating Art's words into film. Frustrated by the compromises they would have her make, e.g. selling the story and walking away from any other participation in the project, Laurie has bravely, and perhaps foolishly, opted to film it herself on digital video with an Apple computer. "They thought they knew who Art was," Laurie says of her Hollywood suitors. "A tragic wild man, a junkie hipster. Art was way more interesting than that. I wasn't going to let them lie about him."
Clips of her early results can be seen at Straight Life: The Movie. Using audio from the cheap, noisy tapes they used to write the book, a glorious selection of Pepper's music, and a visual style reminiscent of Monty Python animation, Pepper appears to be on her way to creating one of the most honest and uncompromising, i.e. straight, jazz films ever.