I Called Him Morgan

9/4/17

I'm just finishing watching the doc I Called Him Morgan, which explores the relationship between Lee Morgan and his common law wife Helen Morgan.

I can't see the point of the last chunk of it.

It's interesting insofar as we get insights into Morgan's life in music, his rise, fall and rising again out of the ashes of his addiction through the prism of their relationship. In all of that either his playing or his failure to play is always at the center of what's going on. 

But then the left turn comes and the last 1/3d or so of the doc deals exclusively with the breaking apart of their relationship and elaborates in great detail on all the unlovely circumstances that led to Helen Morgan shooting Lee Morgan dead. In all that, what's truly important about him, namely his playing, his music, is as nothing.

I don't suggest skipping over how he died but I ask myself: what's the point of so much elaboration of it and why construct a doc that drives so intently to her killing him as its main point?

That I do not get.

I'll a note a small irony at the end. The final credits are shown against the background of his glorious playing. That's the important thing, his playing. So, asking again, why supplant that over the final chunk of the doc with all the squalid detail of how he came to die?