Mingus: Charlie Mingus 1968 a documentary film by Thomas Reichman that follows jazz musician Charles Mingus and his five year old daughter on the night before his eviction from his New York apartment for not paying the rent. As Mingus sifts through his belongings he riffs on a variety of subjects; society, women, music, his daughter, politics and the country as a whole.
Its a quiet drama laden with pathos. Mingus plays a few bars on the piano, shoots a bullet into the ceiling, gives his daughter a sip of wine and recites his own version of the Pledge of Allegiance:
I pledge allegiance to the flag–the white flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of America. When they say “black” or “negro,” it means you’re not an American. I pledge allegiance to your flag. Not that I have to, but just for the hell of it I pledge allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. The white flag, with no stripes, no stars. It is a prestige badge worn by a profitable minority.
The documentary is intercut with footage of Mingus and his sextet performing at Lennie’s-on-the-Turnpike – a small club in Massachusetts – features Mingus on bass, Dannie Richmond on drums, Charles McPherson on alto saxophone, John Gilmore on tenor saxophone, Lonnie Hillyer on trumpet and Walter Bishop, Jr. on piano.
The film can be hard to look at. It’s intimate. It’s a painful moment in a great artists life and there is a little girl involved. To cap it all off the final sequence is shot on the day the cops arrive. A crowd of reporters and cameramen are there to record the scene as Mingus’s things, including his musical instruments, are hauled out onto the pavement and loaded onto a truck. Tears appear in Mingus’s eyes when the police block him from going back into the building and when the cops find hypodermic needles among his belongings, Mingus himself is put into a police car and taken away.