When Jeff Preiss met director and photographer Bruce Weber in the 1980s, he was experimenting with an 8mm camera. “Bruce saw about six minutes of what I shot and that was enough for him to hire me. We made seven films together in three years,” said the cinematographer at the debate in the Small Hall, where he presented a restored copy of the acclaimed 1988 documentary Let’s Get Lost, which chronicles the end of the tumultuous life of the famous jazz trumpeter and singer Chet Baker.
“Bruce and I were both obsessed with Chet, but we didn’t originally plan to make a film about him. Bruce just wanted to get some shots of his face for a documentary about a young boxer who looked like him. But when we visited Chet in a typical drug den, where the beds didn’t even have sheets, we were absolutely fascinated by his face. Bruce decided to keep filming so that there would be something more left of him than just a note in the papers that he’d overdosed. We filmed him for a year,” said Preiss.
For him, Let’s Get Lost is a film that is mostly about fascination. “That’s always a difficult thing to capture. But I learned from Bruce that you can do it if you’re fascinated yourself.” And they both were. “Chet was both frightening and charming, depending on his mood and how long it had been since he had taken his drugs,” revealed Preiss, who also invited the audience to a retrospective of Bruce Weber’s work in Prague in September. “Bruce is a very positive guy. He brings out the best of you when you work with him,” he added in praise of his colleague.
