'Miles Ahead': What's fact, fiction and what's Cincinnati

This isn't a film about Miles Davis.

This is a movie the jazz icon would want to star in. That's how co-writer, star and director Don Cheadle explained the project at the Cincinnati premiere of "Miles Ahead."

There is love and loss and lies. Sex and drugs. Fist fights and a car chase. The story is as dynamic and determined as Davis' life. But, well, it isn't always correct.

Shot in the area in 2014, the sometimes crude and always raw result still feels honest. Jumping from the profane to the transcendent in a beat.

Like the jazz icon's own work, "Miles Ahead" is always moving, never hesitating to challenge the rules of traditional narrative. It takes on the limits of time. The meaning of memory. And the value of truth.

There is, of course, a plot. And it goes like this: The reclusive musician (Cheadle) and a Rolling Stone reporter (Ewan McGregor) work together to recover a stolen Davis recording. Sounds, objects and the people he encounters in this quest trigger flashbacks to earlier moments in his career and to his relationship with his first wife, Frances Taylor.

Cheadle told Vulture.com that the movie is "wall-to-wall facts." A legendary life as a puzzle he put together, threw in the air and put back together using his vision as the guide, he said.

We've broken that puzzle back into its original pieces, separating out the shapes into fact and fiction, just in time for its release at Esquire Theatre April 15. And, of course, how the Queen City fits into that picture.

Spoiler alert: This story is basically one big spoiler. So if you haven't seen the movie yet, save this reading until the credits roll.

Here is what you'll probably be thinking about then:

Was the Rolling Stone reporter real?

In the world of "Miles Ahead," Dave Brill is a journalist for Rolling Stone. Or at least that's how Ewan McGregor's character introduces himself to Cheadle's Davis. But it turns out, the seminal music magazine in the movie didn't exactly know that he was there to do a story on Davis' comeback. Or, probably, even who Brill was.

One thing is certain: There wasn't one in real-life. Take Rolling Stone's word for it. They call Brill a "handsome" – and "fictional" – reporter in an interview with Cheadle.

Cheadle does know, however, that there were a handful of journalists who did try to interview the icon during what's now known as his "silent period." So it made sense to cast a reporter as Davis' sidekick in the central caper.

In an odd coincidence, there was a David Brill working in journalism around that time. Boston-based, he was celebrated for his investigative journalism and gay rights activism. He died in 1979, the year the movie is set.

What we learned at the 'Miles Ahead' premiere

Check out trailer for Cincinnati-shot 'Miles Ahead'

Wait ... Does that mean the whole stolen-recording thing was just straight shenanigans? 

Pretty much.

So what exactly was Miles Davis doing in New York City in 1979?

That's hard to say. The late Davis might not be able to recount that time in his life either.

In his 1989 autobiography, written with Quincy Trope, the five years of his life 1975-1980 take up just nine pages of the 412-page tome.  It's known as his "silent period."

He didn't pick up his horn at all during that time. At most, he walked by it. Looked at it, he writes.

Instead, he picked up women. Names he doesn't remember. Faces, he writes, that he wouldn't recognize.

The $500-a-day cocaine habit made sure of that.

His apartment was a "dungeon," he says. And who lived there? A self-described "hermit."

His only contact with the outside world was often the newspapers and magazines that he kept in collapsing towers on his floor. The television that was always on. Those periodical piles and humming TV also make cameos in "Miles Ahead."

Illness crippled the creative period he launched in 1968, biographer Ian Carr writes. Long suffering from a hip ailment, it flared to an alarming degree in 1974. The bone was disintegrating. And Davis was on fire.

He took eight pills a day for his hip pain. Couldn't sleep.

Then, an ulcer formed. A hernia, too.

In 1975, his tour stops seemed to alternate between the stage and the hospital.

In February that year, he recorded the live albums "Agharta" and "Pangea" in Japan. He was scheduled for a hip surgery. But a bout with pneumonia delayed it.

The last time he was seen in public during those five years was at a show in Central Park in 1975. A few months later, in December, he received a ball-and-socket implant, Carr wrote.

For his next act, he disappeared.

There was a lost recording. Kind of. 

The central conflict of "Miles Ahead" is a recording session tape that no one has heard – and everyone wants.

In real life, Columbia paid Davis regularly during his silent period, new recordings or not. That didn't mean the company still didn't want new music from Davis, whose "Kind of Blue" is often considered the best-selling jazz album of all time.

After some pressure, Davis called on collaborators to be a part of a new studio session, according to Carr. Columbia also put together a group. Davis attended a rehearsal and was not impressed. He called on more musicians to join the effort, but he never played – and never paid them.

So, after weeks of work without an actual commitment from Davis, the recording efforts halted, Carr writes. He didn't record again in the studio until 1980.

But if he did record in the late 1970s, it very well might have sounded like the session tapes in "Miles Ahead." Or more like what we don't hear in that recording: There's no trumpet.

At stops on his 1975 tour, Davis would play the organ. "Play" might be generous here: He actually elbowed the keys, producing a "violent, dissonant sound," Carr writes.

So what is true? 

It's more like what is "most true."

There are many moments that feel ripped from the pages of Carr's 1982 biography, "Miles Davis."

The recording scene in which Cheadle collaborates with composer Gil Evans (Jeffrey Grover) features a frame of the duo at the piano that is almost pixel-to-pixel identical to a photograph in the book.

The album Cheadle takes from the young drug dealer's dorm? Frances Taylor did appear on the cover of "Someday My Prince Will Come." A couple other of Davis' albums, too.

Actually, the heart of the Taylor-Davis relationship portrayed in the movie is authentic. Although he married two more times after their divorce, she was both his major muse and true love.

"Frances was the best wife that I ever had and whoever gets her is a lucky (insert profanity here)," he writes in "Miles." "I know that now, and I wish I had known that then."

On that same page, however, he recounted the reasons he lost her in 1968. Like in "Miles Ahead," he did hallucinate that someone was in the house, grabbing Taylor and a butcher knife as he frantically searched. And just like in the movie, she mimicked his madness, playing along to diffuse the scary situation. In the movie, she runs from the house. She actually got him to call the police and left after they arrived.

Davis also did ask the on-the-rise dancer and actress to quit "West Side Story," her breakout Broadway role. Taylor talks about it in the documentary, 2001's "The Miles Davis Story." He picked her up in his Ferrari and said, "A woman should be with her man."

Cheadle says almost the exact same thing to the actress portraying Taylor, Emayatzy Corineald. But in a bath tub. After he was arrested.

Turns out, the Birdland arrest scene is pretty much a documentary.

Google "Miles Davis and arrest" and the images that answer that request look like they are stills from the movie.

The spot-on blood spattered on Cheadle's white jacket could appear in the police report.

The wildly-published picture of Taylor in her head-to-toe white ensemble at the 54th Precinct no doubt inspired Corinealdi's wardrobe selection.(The actress' look has a bit more glitter and glitz than the real-life Taylor.)

Davis described the Aug. 25, 1959, beating in his autobiography. Like the film, he exits the Birdland in New York City to escort a "pretty white girl" to a cab between sets at the iconic jazz club.

A white police officer approaches. "Move on," he says.

Davis doesn't move.

Instead, the musician replies that he's working downstairs. Look. That's his name in bright lights on the marquee.

Davis still doesn't move.

Not until the police officer reaches for his handcuffs. Then Davis takes a step back.

The officer stumbles. A crowd gathers. And so does another white detective. He doesn't use words like his brother in blue. Just his billy club.

Davis went to jail that night with a head wound. And charges for resisting arrest and assault and battery of a police officer.

He left the next morning with his wife and his lawyer, a scene depicted in "Miles Ahead," as well. There is a slight adjustment to facts, however. According to the autobiography, Taylor was not at the Birdland gig. She arrived at the jail when they transferred Davis downtown.

That's the exact moment, the history that pops up on that Google image search.

What are some of the Cincinnati credits?

Music Hall:

During a flashback scene of their courtship, we watch Davis (Cheadle) visit Taylor (Corineald) while she is rehearsing. She dances on the Music Hall stage with her partner. In the background? Yup, that's 98 Degrees singer and host Drew Lachey.

Main Street:

Dave Brill and Miles Davis spend a lot of script swapping dialogue in Davis' Jaguar. Through the car windows, you can spot the historic settlements that signify Over-the-Rhine. A lot was shot on Main Street. Look for Mr. Pitiful's neon bar sign.

The Holy Cross Church:

Otherwise known as The Monastery Event Center, the Mount Adams venue hosted the boxing scene.

Cincinnati and Suburban Telephone Company Building:

This Downtown historic building stands in for Columbia Records.

Former church in Oakley:

Now a private residence, it played Davis' New York City home. (Look close: You can spot the stained glass windows throughout the space).