Marissa

I like porn, Paul Thomas movies and especially love jazz, so MARISSA: THE BIRTH OF JAZZ - THE DEATH OF INNOCENCE was made for me. Hardly a classic, it is quality workmanship from P.T.

Kudos goes to the moody jazz score credited to Tommy Ganz and Miles Long, a necessary element of the film's success. And the fact that it was shot on film rather than video is a huge plus.

Slice of life story centers on Alan Ribbot, a tenor saxophonist who was once a great success (with Gold records to prove it), but who's been off the scene for a decade. In the real world of jazz there is guitarist Marc Ribot, but I'm thinking the musician inspiration here might have been a composite of fellow Blue Note label artists Joe Henderson and Bennie Wallace, black & white tenor men respectively.

Film opens with John Decker as Alan humping a young blonde chick on the roof, with the girl doing nude cartwheels after they finish - a free spirit. That is what he isn't - next we see Alan with his MILF wife Sydnee Steele (excellent in a character role), trapped in West Coast domesticity.

His life changes when a fan calls from NYC, Cassidey as Marissa, talking Ribbot into ending his lengthy sabbatical to appear at her jazz club in Greenwich Village. He reluctantly agrees, hops a plane, and overcomes stage fright to make a big hit with the crowd. This key scene has auteur Paul Thomas erring significantly: he has the hip crowd in the club dancing in the audience to Alan's mainstream jazz. I've been going to Manhattan jazz clubs for nearly 50 years now and never seen it happen.

Fortunately for P.T., the film recovers from this gaffe, and Alan lucks out when a guy (Alec Metro) from West Side Records makes him a nice offer, to lay down some new tracks for rappers to sample, since the ongoing sampling of classic vault tracks is costing him an arm and a leg in licensing fees. This plot twist is based on solid fact: I recall how the late Blue Note trumpet star Blue Mitchell's widow received a check for six figures a decade ago from EMI as her share of royalties for rappers' having sampled Blue's BN mid-'60s LPs, records which had very light sales earning next to nothing (unfortunately) when they were originally released.

His career revivified, Alan goes through the usual ups & downs, chief of which concern his torrid sexual affair with Marissa. The film's bi-coastal setting is achieved nicely with second unit shooting around Manhattan plus the usual L.A. principal photography. Both parties are unfaithful, as is long-suffering wife Sydnee, who hooks up for sex with a fellow Steele, Lexington, introduced as a recording engineer who helps her home one night when she gets drunk.

As the title character, Cassidey is appealing, reminding me of a flatter chested Beth Anna from the Golden Age, or more recently resembling the hot young current star Penelope Stone. The actress is fine but Marissa is not fully developed in David Stanley's script, including a lesbian threesome sex scene in a bar with Alan present watching that makes no story sense.

Film's final reel is quite pretentious, with Alan blowing up at a wedding, and a dumb montage of flashback footage that is too emphatic in its theme of him torn between two worlds and the two main women in his life, represented by Steele and Cassidey. Overall, Decker's performance is okay but lacks the charisma the role calls for (the late John Leslie, a jazz buff in his own right, would have been perfect back in the day).

There's plenty of XXX content doled out, ranging from foot fetish to anal, and P.T. thankfully keeps these scenes concise and to the point I recommend this film on video as a good example of the mainstream of porn that has all but disappeared recently: plots shot on film with interesting characters and story arcs rather than wall-to-wall humping.