Birth Of Her Cool

IDA LATIF (19), plays double-bass guitar with her father, a touring, lounge/cabaret pianist. After one particularly bad incident on tour, Ida quits altogether, refusing even to play the following Saturday in the yearly gig they do with her dad’s friends. BENJAMIN SPIRO (72), an American flautist and family friend, also scheduled for the Saturday gig, comes to stay with them the week before. Ida’s father however is called away for a last-minute booking with JUDI (50s), a demanding, mind-shattering diva, who performs English folk songs. It's left to Ida and her best friend DAPHNE (19), a shy singer and Industrial music artist, to look after Benjamin for the week. Ida accidentally breaks Benjamin’s precious, custom bamboo flute, of which there are only 3 in the world. Ida is determined to rectify her terrible mistake. Drafting their friend MARCUS (21) a bank clerk happy to accept any thrills in his otherwise staid life, to be their driver, Ida, Daphne and Benjamin’s quest to replace the broken flute becomes an epic, mystical road-trip. They visit an Indian Musical Guru in Southall. Benjamin faces a terrifying singer turned Diplomat from Uzbekistan. They take mushrooms with Benjamin’s old stoner friend, on the Isle of Arran in Scotland… An encounter with a suicidal poet on a boat, and a lively performance at a Celiedh (barn dance) reinvigorates Ida’s passion for music. All they have to do then is beat the weather, and get back to London before Saturday, to perform at a prestigious London Jazz venue with Ida’s dad and the other 11 awaiting musicians. Concept: A female, teen musician's comic, stoner, coming-of-age within-the-British-Jazz-scene, road-trip story. An English ‘Whiplash’, but very much milder. Here the lead male character, the elderly American flautist, is a much kinder, gentler mentor, compared to the brutal character J. K. Simmons plays in the brilliant Whiplash.