'Tis Autumn: The Search for Jackie Paris
When the fickle finger of fame meets genuine talent, the outcome is by no means certain

Tis Autumn: The Search For Jackie Paris — Read that title and you are no doubt saying, "The search for Jackie who now? Jackie Paris? The city? Excuse me, but... huh?"

You're excused. The words I so helpfully attributed to you just now are pretty much the same words that ran through filmmaker Raymond De Filitta's head a few years ago. Driving down the highway, grooving to some jazz on the radio, he was caught off-guard when the band's singer inserted a line or two of spoken patter: "I'm Jackie Paris, and I have the blues bad." De Felitta took it as an audio message in a bottle, floating across decades to reach his ears; an obsession was born — who was, or is, Jackie Paris?

By the end of the film, you may not be a huge Jackie Paris fan, but you will probably be glad that De Felitta sought to ask the question. Paris, though never a big star, had definite talent. Some of the songs included in the film are guaranteed to have you seeking out at least one of his albums; I say that if you if you can hear his rendition of "Skylark" in the movie, and don’t want to go home and download it off of iTunes, then there’s probably something wrong with you. Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tony Bennett, the man could hold his own against any of the great singers to come out of the jazz era. It's not like he was laboring in obscurity, either. He was a favorite singer of many top jazz artists, including Charlie Parker, Charlie Mingus and others. Yet he never really managed to rise to more than a footnote in the big picture of jazz lore; all of which poses the question: what is the quality that moves some into stardom while others, perhaps equally or even more talented, languish?

De Felitta's film deals with this question as much as it does with the search for Jackie Paris, which is rather anti-climactic. Although some jazz encyclopedias listed Paris as having joined the choir invisible, De Felitta soon finds Paris to be very much alive, in New York City where he is about to embark, in his 70s, on his umpteenth bid for fame and fortune. In interviews with Paris, his friends, and other jazz musicians and historians, De Felitta's film simultaneously unravels the mystery of Paris' life and also the mystery of that fickle and illusive fata morgana called fame.

The film introduces Paris' undeniable talent to a new generation, and also reveals the special blend of human flaws and failings that, though relatively minor, are still enough in the aggregate to have, almost invisibly, kept Jackie from achieving the success he spent his life pursuing. The film does not do Paris the disservice of trying to elevate him to martyred sainthood.

'Tis Autumn: The Search for Jackie Paris is an insightful and compassionate look at the life of an artist that eschews the usual Biography channel histrionics (little did Paris know, but his life was about to take a surprising turn.) Instead, Paris' story is perhaps most dramatic for how ordinary it is; in the annals of show business, there are thousands of stories very much like it, I'm sure. It's the story of a man who assumed that his great talent would be enough, a man with a gift for creating beauty, but perhaps expected that to carry him along to fame; perhaps he needed that fame too nakedly. It takes a certain personality to step out on the stage night after night, but if audiences sense to much neediness for approval, they can turn on the performer. There are many theories to consider in the Jackie Paris story, and for whatever reasons that fame eluded him, perhaps saddest of all would his need for recognition. It’s not such a terrible failing, is it? If one has such talent, can create beauty, and is eager to share that beauty… then, if in the process, one could also become a star, is that really so bad, too much to ask, just a little fame, please? Just the littlest little?