Charlie “Bird” Parker never got to play his alto sax at the Monterey Jazz Festival. He died – much too young – in 1955, three years before the first festival horn ever sounded.

The Monterey County Film Commission, Monterey Jazz Festival and Golden State Theatre now give the stage to the film Bird, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Forest Whitaker, in a free showing Thursday, the night before the festival begins.

Parker blew past borders, famously saying, “Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.”

Playing alongside other jazz masters like Dizzy Gillespie, he was instrumental in creating the bebop movement.

For all those squares out there, dig this: Bebop is a revolutionary style of jazz that ripped away from swing sounds like the zig, zag and sizzle spewing from a saxophone. Think of dark clubs and sunglass-clad hipsters, listening with a cigarette in one hand and snapping fingers with the other. Cool, man. Cool.

“He was not a prodigy,” says Bill Minor, jazz historian and author of Monterey Jazz Festival: Forty Legendary Years, who regards Parker as one of the greatest saxophonists of all time. “It was a gradual, slow acquisition process of the skills he had acquired.”

Too shy to leave the kitchen as a kid during his first job at Chicken Shack, Parker absorbed the rapid-fire playing of the legendary house pianist Art Tatum.

“The kid in the kitchen was listening,” says Minor, who will give a talk about Parker prior to screening the film. “He was always taking in this stuff, learning what musicians call the vocabulary. And then he just mastered it.”

From old recordings, Parker’s performances were digitally isolated and used to rerecord the songs for the movie, which earned an Oscar for Best Sound.

The inescapable substance abuse that engulfed Parker ravaged his body and mind and spun his career into an erratic spiral. From an early age, Parker seemed resigned to this dreadful fate, but his skill, warmth and humor never faded. In the end, he was even forbidden to play at Birdland, the jazz club named in his honor.

Within the vibe of New York City’s sultry and steamy 52nd Street during the ’40s and ’50s, the film injects you into the life of Parker, his magnificent music and his awful addictions. Cinematographer Jack Green took Eastwood’s vision and captured it on film. He has worked with Eastwood on many other films, including the richly visual Unforgiven, The Bridges of Madison County, and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Bird will be the first of three in a series to feature Green’s work as a cinematographer. The Monterey County Film Commission plans to show the next two in the coming months. Though the films haven’t been finalized, the last film of the series will include a guest appearance by Green for Q&A.

Free advance tickets for Bird can be picked up from locations listed at www.filmmonterey.org/events.htm, and at the Golden State Theatre.

BILL MINOR gives a presentation on Charlie “Bird” Parker followed by the film Bird (rated R) at 7pm Thursday, Sept. 17, at Golden State Theatre, 417 Alvarado St., Monterey. Admission is free.