review for Art Pepper: Notes From a Jazz Survivor on AllMovie

This late-career record of the jazz musician Art Pepper is an engaging if limited biographical portrait. Pepper talks openly about his problems with drugs and his criminal pursuits; there are also a few vintage stills and some impressionistic footage of his old L.A. neighborhoods. When Pepper talks fondly of the physical sensations from shooting heroin, it's eloquent testimony to the power of that drug. What really anchors the film are his unstinting tributes to his third wife, Laurie, who appears frequently on camera to talk about their relationship, and excerpts from a quartet performance at Pasquale's, a club in Malibu. In the film's most moving moment, Pepper tells of his first wife bringing their 12-year-old daughter, Patricia, to visit him in prison, to see how low her father had sunk. The story itself is enough to move you to tears, but the filmmakers intercut it with Pepper performing a lovely ballad he wrote in dedication to his daughter. Pepper's memoir, Straight Life, has the makings of a sensational docudrama, but in the meantime, this film will suffice.