Round Midnight is a 1986 film directed by Bertrand Tavernier. It tells the story of an African American tenor saxophone player in Paris in the 1950s who becomes befriended by an unsuccessful French graphic designer who idolizes the musician and who tries desperately to help him to get out of his life of alcohol abuse. The protagonist jazzman, "Dale Turner," was based on a composite of real-life jazz legends Lester Young (tenor sax) and the tortur...
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Round Midnight is a 1986 film directed by Bertrand Tavernier. It tells the story of an African American tenor saxophone player in Paris in the 1950s who becomes befriended by an unsuccessful French graphic designer who idolizes the musician and who tries desperately to help him to get out of his life of alcohol abuse. The protagonist jazzman, "Dale Turner," was based on a composite of real-life jazz legends Lester Young (tenor sax) and the tortured and enigmatic Bud Powell (piano). While the film is fictionalized, it is drawn directly from the memoir/biography Dance of the Infidels written by Francis Paudras, who had befriended Powell during his Paris expatriate days and on whom the character "Francis" is based. The film is a wistful and tragic portrait that captures the Paris jazz scene of the 1950s.
Tavernier defied the movie studio by insisting that jazz tenor sax great Dexter Gordon play the role of Turner. Gordon, who himself played with Bud Powell in Paris in the 1950s, helped...
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