Let's Get Lost

United States

1988

120 Min

Black and White

1.33:1

English

Currently 4.2/5 Stars.
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CAST Chet Baker, Carroll Baker, William Claxton, Hersh Hamel, Chris Isaak, Lisa Marie, Andy Minsker, Jack Sheldon

ED Angelo Corrao

Berlinale (Forum), Venice: Critics' Prize, Cannes (Cannes Classics)

Synopsis

Let’s Get Lost, also the name of a long out-of-print Chet Baker tune, aptly describes the driving force of the man and his music. His James Dean looks and cool sound set Baker apart from the other musicians of his time but his ongoing issues with a narcotic addiction also gave a generation of jazz fans a doomed youth of their very own. Chet Baker’s life plays out like a Kerouac creation, as did his death (he fell out of an Amsterdam hotel window on Friday the 13th 1988, age 58), but out of his life came some of the most lyrical trumpet playing and jazz vocals ever heard.

Traveling with the elusive jazz vocalist and trumpeter Chet Baker, renowned photographer/filmmaker Bruce Weber weaves together the life story of a jazz great. The film uses excerpts from Italian B movies, rare performance footage, and candid interviews with Baker, musicians, friends, battling ex-wives and his children in what turned out to be the last year of his life. Let’s Get Lost has become an important document in the career of the filmmaker on the life of a jazz legend. Since its release in 1989 Let’s Get Lost has introduced a whole new generation of jazz enthusiasts to the timeless talent of the late Chet Baker.

Director

Bruce Weber

Bruce Weber (born March 29, 1946 in Greensburg, Pennsylvania) is an American fashion photographer and occasional filmmaker. He is most widely known for his ad campaigns for Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren,Pirelli, Abercrombie & Fitch, Revlon, and Gianni Versace, as well as his work for Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair, Elle, Life, Interview, and Rolling Stone magazines.

Weber’s fashion photography first appeared in the late 1970s in GQ magazine, where he had frequent cover photos. Nan Bush, his longtime companion and agent, was able to secure a contract with Federated Department Stores to shoot the 1978 Bloomingdales mail catalog. He came to the attention of the general public in the late 1980s and early 1990s with his advertising images for Calvin Klein. His straightforward black and white shots, featuring an unclothed heterosexual couple on a swing facing each other, two clothed men in bed, and model Marcus Schenkenberg barely holding jeans in front of himself in a shower, catapulted… read more

Bruce Weber (born March 29, 1946 in Greensburg, Pennsylvania) is an American fashion photographer and occasional filmmaker. He is most widely known for his ad campaigns for Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren,Pirelli, Abercrombie & Fitch, Revlon, and Gianni Versace, as well as his work for Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair, Elle, Life, Interview, and Rolling Stone magazines.

Weber’s fashion photography first appeared in the late 1970s in GQ magazine, where he had frequent cover photos. Nan Bush, his longtime companion and agent, was able to secure a contract with Federated Department Stores to shoot the 1978 Bloomingdales mail catalog. He came to the attention of the general public in the late 1980s and early 1990s with his advertising images for Calvin Klein. His straightforward black and white shots, featuring an unclothed heterosexual couple on a swing facing each other, two clothed men in bed, and model Marcus Schenkenberg barely holding jeans in front of himself in a shower, catapulted him into the national spotlight. His photograph of Calvin Klein of Olympic athlete Tom Hintnaus in white briefs is an iconic image. He photographed the winter 2006 Ralph Lauren Collection.

After doing photo shoots for and of famous individuals (many of whom were featured in Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine), Bruce entered the realm of filmmaking, making short films of teenage boxers (Broken Noses), his beloved pet dogs, and later, a longer film entitled Chop Suey. Weber directed Let’s Get Lost a documentary feature film about jazz trumpeter Chet Baker.

Weber’s photographs are occasionally in color, however most are in black and white or toned shades. They are gathered in limited edition print books, including A House is Not a Home and Bear Pond, an early work which featured, among other models, Eric Nies from MTV’s The Real World series.

Weber began collaborating with crooner Chris Isaak in the mid-1980s. In 1986, he photographed Isaak for his second album, Chris Isaak. In 1988, he photographed a shirtless Isaak in bed for a fashion spread in Rolling Stone.Isaak appeared in Let’s Get Lost and Weber has directed a music video for Isaak.

He photographed Harry Connick, Jr. for his 1991 album Blue Light, Red Light.

In 1993, he photographed singer-songwriter Jackson Browne for his 1993 album I’m Alive.

He is married to Nan Bush, with whom he sometimes collaborates.

In 1990 Weber directed the music video for the Pet Shop Boys single “Being Boring”. He filmed a wild party with a diverse group of people. The video was filmed in one day by two film crews in a house on Long Island. Content including male and female nudity prevented the video from being played on MTV in the United States. In 1996 he directed the video for the Pet Shop Boys single “Se a vida é (That’s the Way Life Is)” on location in a Wet ‘n’ Wild, a water park near Orlando, Florida. In 2002, Weber again directed a Pet Shop Boys video, for the song “I Get Along” from the album Release. Weber filmed this video on location at his own Little Bear studio in New York City. Weber also directed the music video for the Chris Isaak song “Blue Spanish Sky”. —Wikipedia

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