Photo by William Claxton

“Lets Get Lost” (1988), Bruce Weber’s Academy Award-nominated documentary portrait of the elusive jazz icon Chet Baker, will run at Film Forum in a new 4K restoration from Friday, November 1 through Thursday, November 7.

A James Dean look alike pretty boy whose jazz trumpeting and melancholy epitomized 50s cool, Chet Baker had become, when famed photographer Bruce Weber finally caught up with him after three decades of fandom, an alcoholic and a junkie, whose petulantly angelic looks peeping out from behind a gaunt, valleyed and crevassed face could have starred for Sam Peckinpah.

Two visually stunning and musically moving hours with the iconic jazz trumpeter in the most romantically erotic jazz documentary ever made, shot by D.P. Jeff Preiss in stark, brooding film noir black & white.

Shifting back and forth from past to present, from Baker’s breakout performance and his controversial “doomed youth” years, to his poignant late-career decline and struggles with addiction, LET’S GET LOST forms a dreamy, improvisational quality offering a rare, behind-the-scenes glimpse into the decadent life of jazz music’s original bad-boy.