Stop for Bud is an experimental portrait of the American jazz pianist Bud Powell. The film was shot by a sometimes moving camera in contrast-poor black and white, with a slightly dreamy tone as the celebrated pianist proceeded through Copenhagen locations such as Kongens Have (a park), a dockside and a rubbish dump. The picture compositions are often untraditional, such as the introductory tilt that shows the pianist from his feet upwards, an extreme bird's eye view in a factory-like setting or a hand-held travelling shot that follows Powell's legs on a stroll. The editing does not pretend to create a clear thread through the material but may be seen as a loose juxtaposition of a series of images or situations. The film also includes a concert scene from the Montmartre jazz club in which Powell's face and fingers are studied from a series of beautiful, dark angles as he plays, but without synchronous sound. We hear Bud Powell playing on the soundtrack and at the beginning and end of the film Dexter Gordon tells a couple of stories about Powell and his innovative impact on jazz.
Stop for Bud is Jørgen Leth's first film and the first in his long collaboration with Ole John. Having met by chance, together they wanted to "blow up cinematic conventions and invent cinematic language from scratch". The jazz pianist Bud Powell moves around Copenhagen -- through King's Garden, along the quay at Kalkbrænderihavnen, across a waste dump. He enters the frame, he leaves the frame, the camera follows him. We are far away and close. He looks up at us, Bud is alone, accompanied only by his music. The montage is followed by footage from a concert at the Montmartre jazz club, though the sound isn't synchronized. Image and sound are two different things -- that's Leth's and John's principle. Dexter Gordon, the narrator, tells stories about Powell's famous left hand.
In an obituary for Powell, dated 3 August 1966, Leth wrote: "He quite willingly, opr better still, unresistingly, mechanically, let himself be directed. The film attempts to depict his strange duality about his surroundings. His touch on the keys was like he was burning his fingers -- that's what it looked like, and that's how it sounded. But outside his playing, and often right in the middle of it, too, he was simply gone, not there."
