Jean Bach never intended to make a sequel to "A Great Day in Harlem," her documentary on some of the great jazz musicians, which was a hit at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival. But she had so much unused footage and so many unanswered questions that she felt she had little choice.
"If I could have included everything that was interesting, the film would have been way too long. I had to put some of it to the side," the seventysomething filmmaker said during a telephone interview from her Chicago home.With leftover footage, Bach began "The Spitball Story," a 21-minute short that explains why late jazz greats Cab Calloway and Dizzy Gillespie struck up a feud in the early 1940s.
Calloway was nearly struck by a spitball thrown by one of his backing musicians, and he blamed Gillespie, who was well-known for being a practical joker. The two came to blows, and during the ensuing scuffle Calloway was accidentally cut.
("The Spitball Story" is being shown as part of the 1998 Sun-dance Film Festival; it precedes showings of "Melvin Van Peebles' Classified X.")
Other musicians who were in the band at the time claim Gillespie did not throw the offending wad of paper. During the filming of "A Great Day in Harlem," Bach asked Gillespie to talk about the fabled incident. But that interview was never included in the film.
"The footage was like an extraneous solo that's in a song," she said. "Like a solo, it can be terrific or can have its place, just not in the song or the movie in question."
During interviews held for her first film, Gillespie held back some information on the incident. But before Bach could interview him for her new feature, Gillespie died. Fortunately for her and jazz fans, some of his fellow musicians stepped forward to fill in the gaps: bass player Milt Hinton, the butt of some of Gillespie's practical jokes, and trumpet player Jonah Jones, who actually threw the spitwad.
"Milt and Jonah solved the mystery and filled in all the blanks," said Bach, who is a longtime jazz fan and who counts many jazz greats as her friends.
Like "A Great Day in Harlem," the short treats its material very lightly but with respect for jazz history. Bach's love of the musical form shines as she intercuts archival Cab Calloway performance foot-age with modern-day interviews, creating almost a jazz-like rhythm in her pacing.
But the former journalist still considers herself an amateur filmmaker despite the fact that "A Great Day in Harlem" received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary in 1995 and was a hit on the festival circuit.
"I'm constantly amazed by the reaction got," Bach said. "I just tell people that they shouldn't expect a followup very soon because I'm very slow."