UNDER THE (non-alcoholic Analog) INFLUENCE, Part 2

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 our radar. And the New Beverly, if I'm not mistaken, was much more foreign-artsy-indie fare-ish, which I didn't get into until teenager-hood. Indeed, most of my old movie education happend via the black-and-white Zenith in my parents bedroom. In LA in the 70's, there were plenty local tv stations showing old movies--albeit of execrable print quality and mercilessly chopped up and shortened for commercials.

Cheif among them were the Ben Hunter Movie Matinee on KTTV (Ch. 11) every weekday at noon. I spent most of my summers indoors, in the air-conditioning, watching this program which was simply a different movie every day--but hosted, for some reason, by the above-named personality. He even did a little call-you-at-home gimmick called, I think, Hunter's College of Movie Knowlege. The KTTV library was largely MGM movies and they also had a Saturday afternoon movie which was repeated that same evening at 11PM or so. This was important because I remember the odd effect of seeing a movie in the afternoon and watching it again so close to its first viewing and being able to anticipate not just the plot but the camera angles and the cutting. My first film school? Probably. Ben Hunter's set also sticks in my mind--a faux-wood paneled den with bookshelves, leather "easy chair" and couch, none of which ever convinced me that we were anywhere but in a cheesy television studio. He interviewed people occasionally (who were they?) and use to end the show with a Laurel&Hardy short.

Then there was KTLA, Channel 5, home of Tom Hatten (and his fake projector) as well the 8PM Channel 5 movie club. This was largely the Paramount film library--or the "MCA" library. (In a fit of house-cleaning in the early sixties, Paramount stupidly sold all there pre-WW2 movies to MCA for a pittance who promptly slapped their logo on the beginning of all the best movies Paramount ever made--Marx Brothers, Mae West, W.C. Fields etc.) Comedy wise, at KTLA the Hope-Crosby axis crossed with the Goldwyn Danny Kaye movies. (In fact, I think I remember a KTLA weekend afternoon movie program called "Goldwyn Theater.") I very definately remember seeing my first Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges movies on the Channel 5 movie club--though I rarely was able to stay awake for the ten pm finish. In fact, I didn't see the ending to "The Lost Weekend" until a few years ago when I saw it projected at Film Forum.

And KHJ, Channel 9, had "Million Dollar Movie". Which frankly was not usually as good as its competition on KTLA. Though they did play the "Tara Theme" ("My Own True Love") at the beginning. Indeed, I can't remember what studios films turned up on Million Dollar Movie.

The loser station was KCOP, Channel 13, who were stuck with the Universal Library. In other words, Ma and Pa Kettle, Francis the Talking Mule, and dramatic fare like "Mississippi Gambler" or somesuch, usually starring the pre-'Music Man' Robert Preston. And Abbott and Costello, of course, but I seem to remember their movies programmed on weekend mornings. Early on I figured out to avoid the A&C movies where Bud had a pencil-thin moustache and spoke an octave deeper than usual--the unfortunate post 1949 crop.

Finally: Channel 52, from Corona, of blessed memory. This strange indie station somehow controlled the Three Stooges and Our Gang (or "Little Rascals" as they were re-dubbed in their television years) movies as well as an outstanding selection of Warner Brothers 30's movies which aired weeknights at 8 PM under the banner "Hollywood Movie Classics." This was where I caught early Busby Berkeley, James Cagney/Pat O'Brien, the pre-Bowery Boys "Dead End Kids" and a pile of John Garfield/George Raft/Bette Davis/Ida Lupino stuff. All of it, I believe, uninterrupted. (Or was it? I can't remember Channel 52 having any commericials--was it a case of it being simply too obscure a station to attract any advertisers?)

Actually, the one commercial I remember on Channel 52 was an ad for Larry Fine's (of the Stooges) autobiography, "A Stroke Of Luck." They filmed Larry at the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills and, after plugging his book, he invited any kids who were watching to come out and say hi. One long forgotten day, in 1974, my sister took me out there to meet him. But that's for another time...

UNDER THE (non-alcoholic Analog) INFLUENCE

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 on my second Campari and Soda? Okay, with a DASH of Gin thrown in...). And it has occured to me of late that all of my childhood interests/obsessions etc. were fed by a remarkably unsophisticated analog society. I was born in 1964 and first became enamoured of jazz in 1969, age five. Very little radio was playing the stuff that I liked--the good, swinging early 30's stuff that immediately captured my ear. In New York there was WRVR, or course, but little else that I remember. Then we moved to LA, where all I can recall was the local all-purpose jazz station KBCA. But on Sunday nights, there was a Dixieland show conducted by a dapper (I met him once) and wonderfully named man, Benson Curtis. Also KPFK did jazz stuff (clumsily) some of which I participated in as a so-called "prodigy" pianist--I was already playing stride, ragtime and blues before I was ten. (More on that another day. Much more...)

Best of all, though, were the LP's that had begun to be issued in the late sixties, the RCA-Victor Vintage series. Recently I unpacked a box of long-unplayed LP's and realized that most of the music that formed me was recorded by the above label in the thirties and early forties and smartly re-issued (with proper dates, line-ups etc.) under the "Vintage" label. The cover photo of the albums is always a photo of the artist--Hines, Waller, Morton, whomever--surrounded by an open, diamond-pattered, old-fashioned wooden wine rack.

As a child I remember wondering why the jazz musicians were always surrounded by wine bottles. Seeing no connection I finally decided to ask my mother, who said: "Because everybody drank too much back then."

More, next time, on how one could get a remarkably full film education by watching local 1970's LA television on a black and white Zenith--while being interrupted by Cal Worthington and his dog spot every ten (five?) minutes.

MY FRIEND HATES ME

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 landlord who holds him hostage in Brooklyn.)

There is no helping some people. Just when life seemed easy--make a doc with your own money that nobody particularly needs and spend a couple of years toting it around to film festivals--the curves start getting thrown. Outsider buys our film. We need to actually clear rights to the material we've been using. (This nightmare--rights clearance issues-- is the subject of a future post I hope I never get around to writing.) And the person responsible (not I, of course, but my producer and former friend) gets to do all of this in between mortgages, contractors and pre-baby stuff. Meanwhile, the ghost of Jackie Paris laughs darkly at the trouble being had over him, the attention that he never received enough of in his lifetime now being lavished over him posthumously...

OUR MOVIE IS COMING OUT (perhaps)

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) and the distributors (Outsiders Paul Hudson and Peter Peterson) is dependent upon the realization that we're all hunting for ways to make this financially work. And that nobody in the room is independently wealthy. And that the house of cards threatens collapse more often than stability. But that if we all stay focused and--sorry--POSITIVE, we can get to the end of the road.

As of yesterday we seem to be well on the road to the deliverables process.

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 material and providing all kinds of time-code would make it as friendly as the 21st century allows. But even if this wasn't possible at first, I imagine all kinds of people--not just filmmakers--would be interested in scrolling through the uncut interviews of interesting subjects that are now shot far more regularly than ever before and which hit the same cutting room floor that belongs to the pre-history of docu-making. After all, it is increasingly apparent that what the internet provides is democratization--of information, of accessibility, of everything. Just because I dumped a hundred hours of footage into the toilet (because it didn't help make the point I was trying to make in my ninety minute film)
doesn't mean I have the right to withold the footage from those that might benefit from it. Additionally, by recycling in this manner we play into the "don't leave money on the table" ethos that is, happily, still a major part of what it is to be an American.

How would the money work? Well, I imagine that you would be able to watch it for free (with a burned-in "not for repro" thingy on the image) and that if you wanted to use the footage a liscence fee would be paid to the filmmaker, which would be split with the web provider. Sound reasonable? The price would have to be relatively low and perhaps basing it on the time of the footage that you wish to access would be the fairest way.

If somebody has already thought of this magnificent idea, good luck. If not, you heard it here first. And not only have I copywrited it, I registered with the Writers Guild Of America. Which, along with a Metro Card, will get you a ride on the subway.

Last Night At Birdland

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 opportunity to sit and jaw with some of the most remarkable figures in music still walking the earth. Indeed, some of the most interesting conversations didn't make it into the movie, being either off-topic or off color.

Chief among these were a long session we had with Dr. Billy Taylor, where we digressed into a lengthy and fascinating exploration of my pianistic hero (and his mentor) Art Tatum. Taylor talked at length not about Tatum the pianist but about Tatum the person--how he loved going to ball games, playing pinochle etc.

Moments like this make you realize how short history really is. By shaking Billy Taylor's hand I was one handshake away from Art Tatum. And thus two handshakes away from, say, Fats Waller.

Our session with Newport Jazz Festival founder George Wein was another fascinating encounter with a man who, by a simple handshake, automatically connects you with almost every great jazz figure of the twentieth century who lived into the 1950's (the decade in which began his festival).

The two interview subjects who I was unfortunately not able to include in the finished film at all were Hank Jones and Soupy Sales. Meeting them was enough, though. (In Jones case, he spoke eloquently and warmly about Jackie but the interview was marred by production problems. Soupy's desire to participate was touching but he was not, on that day, really well enough and we chose not to use his footage).

Question: Did Hank Jones ever play with his brother Thad's Vanguard band? Anyone know?