"If you want to tell a story, come with some attitude", Don Cheadle says at the opening of the new trailer for Miles Ahead, and by most accounts that's exactly what he did. Eschewing the traditional biopic format, Cheadle, who directed the film and stars as the jazz legend, takes a fast-paced, somewhat fictional account of a period of time when Davis was out of the spotlight. In this story, he's paired up with a Rolling Stone writer (Ewan McGregor) to try and reclaim some stolen session tapes.
Speaking with EW, Cheadle admits it wasn't always the story he planned to tell...
"...when it first came to me, it was just something for me to act in. When I met with [Miles’] family, I told them I wanted to do something that wasn’t like I had seen before, and I had a take on the movie, that if I was going to play him, that it had to be as creative and different, that if it wasn’t as aspirational as he was, then I wasn’t really that interested. And before I got to my house after that meeting, it kind of came to me that that would be hard for anyone else possibly to see it the same way that I was seeing it, so if I was going to do it, I’d probably have to direct it. And as I was calling them, they were kind of calling me to say the same thing."
Reviews out of NYFF and Sundance have been pretty mixed with the exception of Cheadle's performance, which is garnering a ton of praise. Miles Ahead opens in theaters on April 1st.
