In honor of the 1998 Virginia Film Festival's emphasis on the "cool" genre of Crime Jazz, and the inclusion of two independent features by thelate actor-director John Cassavetes on the schedule, the Archival Division of the vast Grip Monthly empire dug up some LINKING MATERIAL (that'sfilmtalk for all you laypersons out there) in this case, episodes of aseminal, forgotten plunge into the Noir waters of "Crime Jazz"

The 1959-1960 television series, "Johnny Staccato," starred John Cassavetes, an unlikely casting choice to play a hardbitten TVgumshoe. Created as an answer to Blake Edwards' popular "Peter Gunn," the evocative "Staccato" boasted a bangupwindow-smashing opening as well as a "dangerous" Mancini-esque themesong, and spun our hero Johnny (Cassavetes) into a weekly mess of seedymisadventure with numerous guest stars (such a young Dean Stockwell) plus a bevy of gargoylish villains.

Always involved was Waldo's, a smokyBeatnik joint where Johnny plays piano and hangs with the band (usuallystellar, and credited, "cool jazz" players like Barney Kessel andGerry Mulligan). While the plots were usually perfunctory because of the30-minute slot, the low-budget film work is oftenstriking. . .even at times rather expressionistic. Stranger still, the mostgarishly-lensed episodes seem to be directed by Cassavetes himself, freshfrom making the acclaimed Shadows he very rarely utilized this kind of stylishatmosphere in his improvisational independent feature directing.

Grip asked Ray Carney, Professor of Film Studies at Boston University, andthe author of many acclaimed books on film (including a definitive volumeon the famed director, entitled Cassavetes Pragmatism, Modernism and the Movies) , to comment on "Johnny Staccato."

The fiery Carney, who recently causedwaves with a scathing indictment of the "boutiquing" of contemporaryindependent film in a recent two-part piece for the magazine, Moviemaker, was typically forthright in his opinions on where to place "Johnny Staccato" in the official Cassavetes oeuvre. While the Grip archivists don't completely agree, he is the expert. . .

Cassavetes acted in and sometimes wrote for anddirected lots of film and television projects beyond his own independentwork.

In many of them, his heart wasn'treally in the project, but it kept body and soul together and providedmoney for his independent films. On television, there was"Staccato," "The Lloyd Bridges Show," "Chrysler Showcase," "Omnibus," and "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour" among others. On all of these Cassavetes acted whenhe had to, and wrote and directed when he was allowed to (occasionallywriting or directing under a pseudonym). The very best of these invariablycommercially compromised projects, in my judgment, artistically speaking, was a "Lloyd Bridges" episodecalled "A Pair of Boots."

Here is the story John told about how hegot onto "Staccato." But note that John's stories were always alittle embellished, so take with a dose of NaCl.

He had already shot the second version of Shadows by May, 1959, and run up considerable debts doingit, when he said he received a call from Universal Studios to do the "Johnny Staccato" series. He was a hot young "jazzy" actor, andthat's all they wanted. No creative input, nothing that reallyinterested him. According to him, he first he hung up on the executive whocalled him out of disgust but then looked at (wife) Gena Rowlands' pregnant tummy and remembering all the debts heaccrued during the filming of Shadows, he called back and explained that he thought thephone call was a prank.

If my memory is accurate,"Staccato" was shot over 6 months and debuted in the fall season of1959 to mostly lukewarm reviews. As far as I remember, Cassavetes directedfive episodes and fought to get certain scripts that he thought wereadventurous and daring approved.

I remember one in particular about a jazzmusician who is addicted to drugs that was stunning and completely ahead ofits time in its psychological realism. The other episodes he directed seemquite humdrum to me (with lots of empty stylistic flourishes that would better belong in a Hitchcock or Wellesmovie). The noir effects are there, but so what? It's rhetoric, nottruth. It's as if Cassavetes were simply having fun with the sort ofHollywood razzle-dazzle he hated and avoided with a passion in his own work. Maybe he was getting it out of his system.He certainly does none of this in his own films.

He always had profoundly mixed feelingsabout commercial projects. He tried to make them as good as he could, anddo something that mattered to him,but invariably alienated directors andproducers by complaining about the limits on what he was able to do, and by generally rattling too many cages.

As happened every time he worked on acommercial project, he met resistance on "Staccato" too and after thefirst season decided he wanted to get out of it to have the chance toreturn to directing feature films full time. The problem was, he was undera long term contract and the studio didn't want tolet him out. So in a pattern that would be repeated dozens of times inhis career he decided to make himself a pest.

He cooked up a phony-baloney objectionto the Arid-antiperspirant ads on the show. Arid (I think it was) used aplaster cast of a "Greek sculpture" (the Venus De Milo), and Johnsaid it offended his Greek heritage to be on a show that travestied art that way. It was just an excuse to make himself such apain in the you know what, so that they would let him go. Only after beingvery vocal in the press did Universal let him break his contract. It was atypical Cassavetes performance and the start of his getting a rep as impossible to work with. Andtemperamental. And unreliable. Which he often was when it came to makingjunk.

I believe the show did fairly well in theratings for NBC, because they kept it on as a rerun into the next season.The show was an even bigger success in England, where it was a "hit"on the BBC.

The best part of the whole experiencewas that John met Richard Carr, who was a writer on the show. They became goodfriends and eventually collaborated on the script for John's firstHollywood feature film, Too Late Blues, which has a lot of similarities with both"Staccato" and Shadows, the film John had done on his own prior to"Staccato." Too Late Blues was another commercially compromised project, but aswith "Staccato," John managed to do some interesting things in thecracks of the narrative.

- Ray Carney

(Episodes of "Johnny Staccato" arenot commercially available,

but many of Cassavetes' fine directorialefforts are.

Thanks to Prof. Carney for his insights--read his book!!!)