Movies Til Dawn

Continuing on the theme begun while on two cocktails last night... I find it remarkable that I was able to acquire as broad a background as I did in movies of the past (twenties, thirties, forties) while growing up in a non-digital universe (Los Angeles in the early to mid seventies). There wasn't cable yet (Z channel happened around '75, but showed only new movies at the time) and our first VCR didn't arrive until 77 or 78. Revival theaters were around, of course, and we occasionally went to the Vagabond Theater on Wilshire Blvd. where, one stunning night, Rita Hayworth herself Norma Desmondishly dropped in--heavily accompanied of course--to take a gander at her younger self in "Gilda". (Was she already deep into Alzheimers? Did her companions hope that seeing her old movie would spark something?) Also the Tiffany Theater on Sunset was then a revival house--it hosted the first 3D festival that I remember attending. The Vista, in Silverlake, was somehow not on ou...

Sunday. Spent much of today in jazz-geek heaven, listening to transcriptions of old WRVR broadcasts of "Just Jazz with Ed Beech". Beech was a New York based d.j. who made discography sound suave. Using a Shakespearean-trained actors voice (at least according to his publicity) he filled New York radio with the sounds and history of jazz from the early sixties through the mid-seventies. I was turned onto him by my old New York friend Tom Hayes, who acquired from a few different collectors shows that Beech did on the music of Teddy Wilson, Fats Waller, Benny Goodman and Earl 'Fatha' Hines, the last my favorite ever jazz pianist and the one whose work still inspires me spend (waste?) an hour or more a day at the keyboard. Indeed, I just finished a solo CD of piano music inspired by Hines solo albums of the 1960's. But more on that another day. Much more, I'm sure. My point here, though, is non-alcoholic influences (and what better time to write about them while o...

My producer, and dear friend, David Zellerford, has grown to hate me and this film like a disease that wont go into remission but also wont get worse. Every moment of this last few months of finishing is torture for him and me. But especially for him. Largely this has to do with his own unfortunate decision-making process. No, not about producing a documentary nobody asked for about a singer that a thimble-full of people have heard of who worked in a field that is practically guaranteed to lose money for anybody who gets anywhere near it...(Joke: How does a jazz musician make a million dollars? Start with two million...) No. David's bizarre turn of mind led him to choose this particular year to...buy a house in Long Island. AND BECOME A FATHER. As if the stress level created by having to finish our film needed any help...(And it's not even the house that he lives in full time. Like most New Yorkers who aren't billionaires, he bought a weekend house so as to not offend the ...

A great sigh of relief as a week of uncertainty comes to a positive-ish close. "Ish", by the way, is a very important trio of letters in show business. Things are always happening--until they're not. Or perhaps they're happening again. Never say never. Never give up. We're shooting/releasing/whatevering September-ish. Which means: if the money is there, the intentions are all good. And if the money isn't there, it wasn't because we dropped the ball. We just didn't have the cash flow. But it's on its way. October-ish. Releasing an independently made documentary takes great hubris, great passion and more than a little good faith. Our distributors, Outsider Pictures, have all the above in spades. Cobbling together the deals from overseas (or somesuch) to fund the theatrical rollout of "Tis Autumn" is the hubris part. To do it at all requires passion. And the consanguity between the filmmakers (me and the film's producer, David Zellerford...

There's an old saying that the real movie isn't the one that winds up on screen but, rather, is the one in the dailies (the unused film, the rejected takes). Certainly my moments with Hank Jones and Soupy Sales qualify. And plenty of other fascinating conversations (Mark Murphy, Harlan Ellison, Ruth Price, Will Friedwald) exist in the film only as fragments. Is there a repository for this footage? A kind of vast documentary film dump that, in the future, will become a treasure trove for reasearchers on any of a variety of subjects? And if there isn't--why doesn't someone start a webiste where doc makers can deposit their fascinating but irrelevant interviews from various projects? It could be set up like Youtube but with raw footage on a variety of subjects organized by topic. For instance, if you were interested in jazz you would click on that subject and up would come every interview I shot for "Tis Autumn" in its entirety. Of course, cross-indexing the mat...

Last Night (7/5) at Birdland, in New York City, I heard the impeccable and impeccably modest jazz giant Hank Jones at the piano with his trio. At age 89 (and after a recent heart episode) he is naturally somewhat less authoritative in his approach, but never less than elegant and thoughtful. On the right hand side of this infuriatingly hard to manage page I've added Hank Jones accompanying Jackie on the magnificent "Cherry" from "The Song is Paris." Hank Jones was one of the twenty or so jazz greats who I was priveleged to interview for "Tis Autumn: The Search For Jackie Paris" -- he accompanied Jackie many times over the years in clubs and can be heard on the last four or so cuts of "The Song Is Paris" (of which "Cherry" of course is one.) Which leads me to realize why the act of making a self-financed documentary about an obscure (undeservedly so) jazz singer was worth taking up the last three years of my life; it provided the o...