Jazz trumpeter and singer Chet Baker was the subject of the documentary 'Let's Get Lost' made in the 1980s. Here, the film's maker Bruce Weberrecalls the musician's unique style and appeal

RETURNING FROM the Cannes film festival and going through Marseille on the skytrain, I think about how Chet Baker used to like Marseille a lot but he didn't play there - it was mostly in Paris at the New Morning. He was always making a quick jump in a friend's fast car to Germany to record a CD in a day and then return to Paris.

It was 21 years ago when I filmed part of Let's Get Lost in Cannes, as well as screening my first documentary, Broken Noses, at the Jean Cocteau theatre and photographing for Per Lui. Yes, there was a lot of confusion, but that was the best way for me to be with Chet, because if he didn't show up, we always had something else to do. But guess what? There he was, on time, hair slicked back, trumpet case in one hand and his girlfriend in the other.

It seemed in those days, because I was so obsessed with Chet and my film, that everyone started to resemble him in some way. I knew Andy Minsker, the boxer who starred in Broken Noses, looked like him, but bodyguards, waiters, lifeguards and other actors also seemed to look like Chet's twin brother. Now, of course, in the real world this wasn't true, but I was lost on this journey with Chet and I had this great fear of losing him to the outside world. It's almost like when a dog runs away from home: you try to replace him and call the new dog by the same name - but somehow it's never the same.

When I finished editing Let's Get Lost in 1988 at the Brill Building in New York, we got a call from Cherry Vanilla, who also appeared in the film. She sadly told us that Chet had died and that they found him lying on a street outside his hotel in Amsterdam.

Years later, Johnny Depp came to see me and Nan Bush, the producer of my films, at our loft in New York City. Johnny curled up on the couch and said he wanted to play Chet in a feature film. He asked us "if we owned the rights to Chet's story". Nan and I laughed and told Johnny that Chet had sold his story countless times, but no one ever owned Chet's story - he wanted to be free as a bird.

I was sad because no one looked like Chet any more - and Johnny surely didn't, but he's someone I always liked and photographed from the beginning of his career. So I told him: "Anyway, you look more like Art Pepper and there's a great book on his life by his girlfriend called The Straight Life." A day in the life of Art was like a year in most people's lives. I don't think Johnny ever read that book and he never made that film.

AS I TOOK JOHNNY down in the freight elevator, he said: "So what's going on with you these days?" I told him that Nan and I were making a documentary about Robert Mitchum. Johnny gave me a big smile and said: "He's one of my favourite actors besides Brando, and my dad looks so much like him that when I go out for dinner with him, people come up and ask for his autograph." When the freight elevator reached the ground floor we hugged each other goodbye and I said, "Maybe you could write an introduction for our book to accompany the Mitchum film?" "Count me in," Johnny said as he waved goodbye.

Oh well, I thought, here I go again: now everyone's going to look like Bob Mitchum! I made that film on Mitchum and I never met Johnny's dad, but I didn't see anyone resembling Bob - maybe because I still had images of Chet floating in my subconscious. You have to understand that I first saw photographs of Chet, taken by William Claxton, about 40 years ago on the cover of an album called Chet Baker Sings and Plays.

I collected jazz records in those days. (I still do, but most of the little record stores in the East Village of New York City that I used to hang out in are closing.) At that time, I was attending NYU film school. I got to meet Claxton and his wife Peggy Moffitt; she was the first model to wear the topless bathing suit by Rudi Gernreich.

Bill photographed me and made a short film with me and Peggy. He had three great distractions in his life: Peggy, Steve McQueen and Chet Baker. I couldn't compare with that, being a shy and awkward film student, but Bill was a real sweetheart to anyone who happened to be in front of his camera. He made me feel very confident so I could fantasise that I was in the same gang as Steve and Chet.

I learned a lot from Bill, and now when I photograph so many college kids for Abercrombie Fitch, I think of Bill and his respect for the individual and how everyone was beautiful until it was discovered they didn't have a soul to go along with a great body.

I always thought Chet had that soul - no matter what age he was, no matter if he got his teeth knocked out, or no matter how many lines circled his eyes. People always ask me, "What is beauty?" I always laugh and say: "Today is one thing and tomorrow another."

As we travelled to film festivals with Let's Get Lost and my other documentaries, I kept looking for another Chet Baker, someone who made you travel to some far outpost in your mind, never worrying about a return ticket. Peter Johnson, who starred in my next film Chop Suey, resembled Chet when he was growing up in Oklahoma. I even photographed Peter's profile with a trumpet rested softly against his cheek.

After that came A Letter to True, an anti-war documentary starring my dog True and Dirk Bogarde, and with voice-overs by Julie Christie and Marianne Faithfull. Sometimes there was a sense of longing in True's eyes just like I used to see in Chet's eyes after he finished a song and there was silence in the recording studio.

RECENTLY I HAD LUNCH sitting across from Clint Eastwood. We talked about Bird and Chet, his music and my film, over a strange buffet for "two hamburger kind of guys" of the kind of food that the French sometimes serve, which I like to call "mystery food".

I laughed, remembering when I was growing up in Greensburgh, Pennsylvania - you couldn't hear a sound in my parent's house (all the jazz music was shut off) so we could religiously watch Clint on his TV series Rawhide. Even then I photographed everyone to look like Clint: cheerleaders, my mom and dad, and the captain of our local football team. Well, I didn't tell Clint that, because I was taking a family portrait of him with his wife and child, and they would have thought I was an "odd duck".

Maybe I am, but that's okay because I'm still looking for another Chet Baker in my life - because Chet spoiled me. I began to realise that there are not a million nor even one other Chet Baker. I can't help but carry on searching for a new Chet, so I can make another movie, so I can take photographs for another book, and so once again I can have "just for a thrill" the chance of knowing someone magical that you can never ever forget.- (Guardian service)

• Bruce Weber's documentary, Let's Get Lost, has been released on DVD