MOVING PICTURES
Music Making SHIRLEY CLARKE’S ORNETTE COLEMAN DOCUMENTARY IS AS DARING AND EXPERIMENTAL AS ITS SUBJECT BY JOE NOLAN, FILM CRITIC Everything about the documentary Ornette: Made in America is fringe-y: Jazz legend Ornette Coleman always pushed his music beyond the boundaries of popular music, from his 1959 debut, The Shape of Jazz to Come, and throughout his half-century-long career. Director Shirley Clarke was a pioneer of early American independent cinema, and her best known work is a feature about a drug deal (The Connection, 1964) that minted the found footage film form nearly 40 years before The Blair Witch Project (1999). This documentary itself is unlike any other music bio, but its elliptical, non-linear style and off-beat pacing are a perfect match for Coleman’s unpredictable and expectation-upsetting compositions, performances and recordings. Clarke’s evocation of Coleman’s childhood in Fort Worth, Texas is one of the most original and striking aspects of the film. The movie opens at a citywide celebration for the opening of the Caravan of Dreams performing arts center in Fort Worth in 1983. Clarke and her crew were on hand to film a mayoral declaration, dubbing September 29, 1983 “Ornette Coleman Day.” It’s a pretty standard documentary device to catch-up with an artist receiving some honor before diving into the backstory of how they arrived in such a celebrated spot. But Clarke also casts young boys to play
Coleman at various ages as a child — their clothes look like they're from the 1940s and they walk down abandoned streets and along railroad tracks near Coleman’s boyhood home. One boy wears a saxophone hanging from his neck. A local bank’s electronic sign announces the film’s title sequence in the amber glow of vintage LED lights. Clarke mimics the sign’s pixelated messaging, scrolling information across the bottom of the screen throughout the film to set up various scenes and announce locations. It’s a playful touch that echoes Ornette’s open and even childlike approach to music making. Clarke worked on this film on and off for two decades, and one of the movie’s highlights is footage from 1968 that features Coleman playing with his 12-year-old son Denardo and double bass legend Charlie Haden. The trio made their debut with The Empty Foxhole (1966) when Denardo was just 10 years old. Coleman himself played violin and trumpet on the album despite being untrained to play either instrument, and we hear examples of both in the film. Clarke blends her decades of footage into an elongated montage of Coleman waxing about his life and “harmolodic” music philosophy, street scenes, live music footage, and inventive recreations with her young actors. They’re all tied together with an editing style
that varies from rapid-fire cutting, synchronized to Coleman’s boiling-over arrangements to lingering shots that capture everything from the urban doldrums of Fort Worth to the intensities of improvisational musical performance. Ornette: Made in America includes cameos by weirdo luminaries like William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin and R. Buckminster Fuller. Coleman explains that Fuller’s geodesic dome designs are to architecture what his compositions are
to music, and he calls Fuller “my best hero.” A Shirley Clarke film is the perfect milieu for a cross-disciplinary meet-up of this mid-century avant garde supergroup, and it’s to her credit that Clarke’s movie starts offbeat and only becomes more challenging and experimental as it unwinds over its 77 minute watch time. Coleman’s music and Clarke’s filmography both serve to remind viewers that the best art will always come from unique individuals with novel messages, delivered through in-
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novative expressions. Ornette: Made in America was Clarke’s last film. She died from a stroke at the age of 77 in 1997.
Ornette: Made in America is streaming on Amazon Prime
Joe Nolan is a critic, columnist and performing singer/songwriter based in East Nashville. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.
