Interview (Written): Steven Baigelman and Don Cheadle (“Miles Ahead”)

A WGA interview with Steven Baigelman and Don Cheadle, co-writers of the Miles Davis biopic Miles Ahead.

Tell me about the decision to pick this story up about one of the most important and prolific American musical icons from a period in his life when he’s silent.

Don Cheadle: When we were delving into this research, everything was interesting to us about Miles Davis, you know? We both love music and love Miles and everything was interesting to us, but one of the most interesting things we bumped into was this five-year period when he wasn’t playing. One of the most prolific artists of the 20th century, one of the greatest voices who impacted his art form in such a demonstrative way for so many years — changed music three or four times — then just shut it all down? We were both like, “What the fuck is that? How does that work? What’s going on in that period? What’s he doing? Why did he shut it down? Is he going to come out? When he comes out, what’s it going to sound like?”

The enigma of that period is the magnetic attraction there?

Don Cheadle: Absolutely. Especially with this artist, who famously said, play what’s not there — and famously was about leaving space. Now we bump into his part of life that seems to be all about that — what’s not there and space and the voice being silent. We just marveled over that and went, “Well, this is our entry point — this is the point of departure for us.”

And you wanted to approach the writing with a free, improvisational feel to match the man at the center of the story.

Steven Baigelman: Yeah, exactly that. Once we decided what our entry point was, we essentially took our marching orders from Miles. We did a lot of research and looked at a lot of things that he said. And as Don pointed out, this idea of space and what’s not there — and we were also particularly interested in figuring out the process of an artist who suddenly decides he doesn’t have anything to say and how an artist in general and Miles Davis specifically, finds their way back to creating again, which is ultimately his life blood.

The story is loose and free-form, but what kind of struck me was how it’s also anchored by core, very traditional narrative elements. You’ve got this central heist/chase thing going on over the tape, you got this buddy relationship with Dave Brill, which I know is a complicated story on its own. And then you got the love story. Did you purposely want to juxtapose the free-form element with some kind of touchstone narrative anchors?

Don Cheadle: Well, without sounding too pretentious or getting too esoteric about it, which we relished doing when we were in the lab — we’d deep dive into it — we were fascinated with Miles’ approach to modality in his music, the construction of what is arguably — not from his standpoint, but from everyone else’s — the pinnacle of his achievement being So What and Kind of Blue. These songs that are built around simply two chords, so that things are not linear in their structure, but that they are sort of horizontal in construction. It’s just C and C# bebop, it’s up and down, and there are a lot of runs and key change, key change, key change… It’s this-and-that, it’s yes-and-no, it’s binary. And we said, let’s create a composition with this narrative that is also binary, that’s this-and-that.

What’s the this? The this is Miles in this period where he’s trying to find what to say, and is he going to come back, and what that looks like. And the that is the period with Frances Taylor Davis, who they both describe — Frances and Miles — as being the one that got away, the one who was closest to him in spirit as far as what he was looking for in a woman, the person who embodied a lot of his creativity, and the one he had the most regret about. So for us, she became the physical embodiment of these missing tapes. She was the physical embodiment of this stolen voice, this music that’s gone. It’s what he’s trying to get back to. A lot of the ways that we cut back and forth between these different times is based on emotionally what’s happening with Miles and that music. When he almost has it, boom, she’s gone.

A trailer for the movie in which Don Cheadle stars in the lead role:

For the rest of the interview, go here.