(From left) Danielsen Lie, British film director Grant Gee and US actor Bill Pullman pose during a photo call for the film ‘Everybody Digs Bill’ presented in competition at the 76th Berlinale, Europe’s first major film festival of the year, in Berlin.
BERLIN, Germany: A film about legendary jazz pianist Bill Evans that focuses on one of the most traumatic periods of his often torturous life got its premiere Friday at the Berlin Film Festival.
The film, which is shot in black-and-white, borrows its title from one of Evans’s early albums: ‘Everybody digs Bill Evans.’
Directed by Britain’s Grant Gee, it stars Norwegian actor Anders Danielsen Lie as Evans who died in 1980 at the age of 51.
The film focuses on the period following the death in 1961 of bassist Scott LaFaro in a car accident just days after the Evans trio had finished recording their residency at the Village Vanguard – now considered classic records.
Evans, grief-stricken, stopped playing for several months, mourning the loss of his friend and relapsing into heroine use. A visit to his parents in Florida – played by Hollywood veterans Bill Pullman and Laurie Metcalf – is the catalyst to him getting his life back on track again.
But as Danielsen Lie observed, this was just one of a series of crises in the life of the musician, who struggled for years with his addiction to hard drugs.
“One of the things that’s been said about Bill Evans is that it was the longest suicide in history,” said Danielsen Lie.
“And that is partly true, because there is an immense amount of self-destructive behaviour in this biography,” he added.
“But at the same time, he was also very alive… He really enjoyed his art and what he was doing, which is kind of contradictory. It contradicts the total mess and chaos that his life was at many stages along the way.”
‘Everybody digs Bill Evans’ is based on Welsh writer Owen Martell’s novel, ‘Intermission,’ adapted for the screen by Ireland’s Mark O’Halloran.
It was O’Halloran who chose to put Evans’s partner Ellaine Schultz – who shared his addiction – back into the story. Although she does not feature in the novel, he told AFP that for him she was one of the emotional keys to ‘the journey that Bill goes on with her and the others around her.’
Valene Kane, who plays Schultz, agreed. “I think you always need the love story,” she told journalists with a smile.
“It’s one of the most important life forces we have, for me. I love love, we all love love.”
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