Trailer
Plot summary
In 1939 Kansas City, Charlie "Bird" Parker plays alto saxophone at the Reno Club, and the rapid, sporadic way he plays gets him jeered offstage. He moves to New York City, where he performs at jazz venues on 52nd Street and meets the trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie. The style the two men play attracts a following and comes to be called bebop. Charlie becomes addicted to drugs, and his habit deepens. One evening he meets Chan Parker, a dancer who loves jazz; he keeps asking her out, and she refuses and moves to Chicago. She comes back and tells him she is carrying another man's child. Hurt, he travels to Los Angeles to perform with Dizzy, where a Jewish trumpet player, Red Rodney, tells him he is a fan.
Cast
- Glenn Wrightas Alcoholic Patient (as Glenn T. Wright)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Bird (1988)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Joel Oliansky wanted to make a Charlie Parker biopic starring Richard Pryor. The property was owned by Columbia Pictures, which at Eastwood's instigation traded the rights to Warner Bros. in exchange for what became Columbia's Kevin Costner vehicle Revenge; by then Pryor had lost interest, and Eastwood dismissed his involvement because he would have felt obligated to include gags.
- To rebuild Charlie Parker's sound, Eastwood had a sound engineer electronically isolate Parker's solos from recordings made by Parker's wife, Chan, then hired musicians including Ray Brown, Ron Carter and Barry Harris to record new backing tracks. Dizzy Gillespie was alive but on tour, so trumpet player Jon Faddis was hired to record Gillespie's parts.
