Damson Idris on set as Miles Davis

Let’s check in with Damson Idris, who is in Paris filming Miles & Juliette, in which Idris stars as legendary jazz musician Miles Davis. That is a really great piece of casting. Idris is on set with Romanian-born French actress Anamaria Vartolomei, who stars as French actress and singer Juliette Gréco. The film is written by actress and writer Zora Howard and is directed by Bill Pohlad (who is also an actor and whose best-known film as a director is 2014’s Brian Wilson biopic, Love & Mercy). Miles & Juliette covers a transformative trip to Paris in 1949. It also focuses on Davis’s relationship with white lady Juliette Gréco.

There is some controversy over this as Miles Davis had relationships with Black women such as Cicely Tyson, who was one of his three wives, all of whom were Black. Also, he is a known abuser (he spoke about it on the record) so what’s the approach here? Musically, Davis’s Paris trip was very important to his development, but the film is about his relationship with Gréco. It’s a little odd that of all the women Miles Davis was involved with, THIS is the relationship at the center of a splashy film.

Davis’s relationship with Tyson stretched across three decades, they were married for a third of it, and she helped him recover after a stroke in the 1980s, among other health issues including the long-term effects of addiction, and Davis credited Tyson with helping him regain his abilities as a trumpeter. You think THAT might be worth exploring?

Or how about making a movie that doesn’t shy away from his admitted history as a domestic abuser? Davis spoke about how his anger and domestic violence torpedoed relationships; he was not a man who hid from his worst self. Perhaps that could be unpacked in a meaningful way?

Damson Idris is a great actor, I think he’ll make a great Miles Davis, I just wonder why THIS is the version of events being framed for a movie. Of all the eras and moments in Davis’s life, of all the relationships to focus on, they choose one with a white woman. I’m very interested to see the justification for this in the film. As a longtime fan of Davis’s music—his music is perfect for writing to—and with an interest in his biography and how the events of his life shaped that music, the key to the Paris trip was the respect and open admiration he received in Europe, as opposed to the constant grinding racism of Jim Crow America.

I suppose his relationship with Gréco could be presented as a great romantic tragedy—at a meeting later in New York, Gréco realized how impossible an interracial relationship was in America, so there is an angle about racism and bigotry and how it takes love out of the world. We’ll have to see what they do with Miles & Juliette. For Idris’s sake, I hope it turns out well, but it kind of feels like softening the edges of a complicated Black man’s life for the sake of white audiences.

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What else happened today…

Food creators talk the joy of food and meals, especially at a time when “nothing tastes as good as thin feels” is making a big-time comeback. (Popsugar)

Heidi Klum really outdid herself at the InStyle Imagemakers Awards. At least she’s got the inevitably elaborate Halloween costume to look forward to as a rebound. (Go Fug Yourself) 

King Charles is “scaling back” his schedule? I am buying real estate on “Charles isn’t well and that is what prompted The Move”. For real, though, dealing with aging parents is so hard, and I cannot imagine doing it in front of the whole world AND with a monstrous socio-political machine managing every step. I wish the best to the Windsors, this kind of stuff sucks no matter who you are. Age is a great equalizer. Also maybe abolish the monarchy because no one should have to live their last years like this. (Celebitchy) 

Has Amelia Earheart’s plane finally been found? An expedition from Purdue University and the Archaeological Legacy Institute are on Nikumaroro Island, long suspected to be a possible site of a crash landing as Earheart’s plane ran out of fuel mid-flight in 1937. Personally, I’ve long believed Earheart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, crash landed on Nikumaroro, I also believe they survived and yes, dozens of ham radio operators heard Earheart’s distress signals.

The question is whether or not Earheart and Noonan were eventually eaten by coconut crabs (legit monsters), and/or if Earheart’s skeletal remains were found and then discarded because old timey doctors couldn’t compute “short man or tall woman” as a possibility. It seems very likely the remains recovered in 1940 were Earheart’s based on modern forensic data and a general acknowledgment that tall women exist.

I hope the Nikumaroro expedition finally provides some concrete answers, because if Earheart actually did land there, it means she wasn’t some f-cking idiot—people continue to question her flight skills—she made a best effort to save herself and Noonan after unexpected weather conditions prevented her from refueling, and that she did successfully land and survive. It was the idiocy of others who doomed her and Noonan. Maybe also the crabs. (BBC)