Leaving Planet Earth: Amazon's Wayne Shorter Documentary Zero Gravity

Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity
Director: Dorsay Alavi
2023

Wayne Shorter was brought up in the belief that he could achieve anything he wanted to: there should be no barriers to his ambition. This three-part documentary—a true labor of love from director Dorsay Alavi—shows us that Shorter was far more than a musician.

In the first part (or portal), we see Shorter and his brother Alan, portrayed in black and white by a pair of child actors, at play in a vacant lot near their house. There they would reinvent themselves as characters in all kinds of scenarios. They often visited the Adams movie theatre in Newark, and when they got home, they would "sing back" as much of the music as they could remember. Later, as bebop took hold of their imaginations, they styled themselves Doc Strange and Mr. Weird, mooching around the neighborhood in long overcoats and hats with the brims cut right back.

This episode ("Newark Flash in NYC") covers Shorter's career up to 1971, including his time with the Jazz Messengers and Miles Davis' second great quintet. The second ("Faith is to be Fearless") takes us from 1972 to 1999, which includes the Weather Report years and his Native Dancer collaboration with Milton Nascimento (although sadly not his contribution to Steely Dan's Aja). The third ("Zero Gravity: 2000-infinity") relates the years leading up to his death in March 2023, but also takes the time to explore more of his ideas about music and life in general.

The story of his life is told through interviews and images; there is no authorial voice. Dorsey Alavi managed to film everyone who was still around, family and friends as well as musicians. Where there are no available interviews, the director has found terrific archive film or video footage. In the section that relates the tragedy of Shorter's second wife Ana Maria's death in a plane crash, Alavi has somehow got hold of the audio from the control tower. Where no archive material existed, as in much of the first part of the documentary, she uses clever recreations and animations. The most striking of these accompanies a psychedelic sequence reminiscent of Disney's Fantasia, full of fairies and other mythological beings. "[Wayne] knows the power of the invisible world," comments a long-time family friend. "Fairies do work when everybody else is asleep."

The Mr. Weird moniker was truer than Wayne realized as a child: even as an old man, he was fascinated by fairies. "You're even weirder than I previously thought you were," comments his friend, the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson more than 70 years later, after Wayne shows him his huge collection of fairy and action hero figures. It was this childlike quality that fueled his art, as his early collaborator Art Blakey observed.

So yes, by any normal standard Wayne Shorter was weird. But more to the point, the documentary convincingly portrays him as a genius who was barely of this world, so preoccupied was he with his infinitely inventive and unfettered imagination. A gifted visual artist in the comic-book style, Shorter brought this skill to his 2018 triple album Emanon, which was accompanied by his own 74-page graphic novel.

He became an adherent of Nichiren Buddhism, which not only influenced his world-view, but helped him get through a number of personal tragedies. Despite his other—worldliness, he seems to have been a warm and lovable human being, who Herbie Hancock counted as his best friend. Among the most affecting passages in the film are those showing the two of them still working on music together as old men. Hancock was one of the few who was able to interpret Shorter's more gnomic utterances: he didn't like to talk about music. Clearly, music should speak for itself. Given the stresses of his life, one feels grateful that he met Carolina, the funny and affectionate third wife who shared his final years.

The great man was a brilliant mimic: whenever he tells a story involving Miles Davis, his voice becomes Miles' urgent, whispered rasp. Art Blakey likewise springs to life through Wayne's gravelly rendition of his voice—particularly in the memorable scene where Miles calls up during a Jazz Messengers rehearsal and tries to poach Shorter for his own band.

It helped, from the filmmaker's point of view, that Shorter was an avid film buff, since this allows the inclusion of clips from The Red Shoes (1948) and The Giant Spider Invasion (1975)—the latter a hilarious piece of dreck that Shorter excitedly called pianist Danilo Pérez about one night, urging him to switch on his TV and watch it.

Alavi and her editors have done a terrific job of editing the film down to a manageable length, to the essentials. As a result, it is never boring. Actually, it would have been nice to spend a little more time on Shorter's early years with Blakey and Miles. But there is so much to talk about that the time goes by in a flash (Newark Flash, incidentally, being the nickname Shorter was given around the time he first came to the attention of Sonny Stitt at a jam session.)

He loved working with gifted women, collaborating at different times with Joni Mitchell, Terri Lyne Carrington and Esperanza Spalding, who wrote the libretto to Shorter's opera Iphigenia. One of the high points of part three is Spalding's spine-chilling vocal at the work's premiere in Gdansk.

Although at times a little too cosmic, the film is always a joy to watch, and gives us the most all-encompassing view we are ever likely to get of Wayne Shorter.

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