Despite holding a special place in the heart of countless Columbo fans, Patrick McGoohan plunged the series into disrepute almost as often as he sent it to soaring heights.
We’ll gloss over the calamity of Last Salute to the Commodore today, though, and focus on his ruinous efforts as a director and co-writer of Murder With Too Many Notes – an episode so poor that ABC buried it for more than two years after it was filmed before sneaking it quietly on to schedules in March of 2001.
If you have not done so already, I recommend reading my recent episode review of Murder With Too Many Notes, which gives an overview of the many problems in the production’s final story, many of which can be attributed to McGoohan’s tinkering with the original treatment of young, wannabe screenwriter Jeffrey Cava.
What follows goes into a lot more detail about what really went on behind the scenes during the production of Too Many Notes, revealing the untold story of how a labour of love that should have been a career highlight for a fledgling screenwriter became a debacle that tore the heart out of the writer and his treasured tale.
As a piece of investigative journalism, this is superb work by Glenn Stewart, whom regular readers will know as an occasional contributor and regular commentator on the blog. Here he does justice to the late Jeffrey Cava’s Columbo contribution, while raising matters that may just make fans of the series rethink their relationship with one of its most iconic stars…
It began simply enough, as a seat-of-the-pants, needle-in-a-haystack, shot-in-the-dark lark. I impulsively decided that I was going to have a go at tracking down the original script for the Columbo episode Murder With Too Many Notes. The goal was simple – to see exactly what changes Patrick McGoohan had made to the initial work of aspiring screenwriter Jeffrey Cava.
By all accounts, the celebrated, egocentric, often-brilliant McGoohan had taken a perfectly decent Columbo plot and made a cascading series of terrible choices that resulted in what has been generally regarded as one of the worst of the 69-episode Columbo library. Along the way, beyond merely altering some words on pages of a Courier 12pt font screenplay, it became a story of Hollywood hope and heartache.
Many Columbo fans have already peeked behind the curtain of Murder With Too Many Notes, thanks to CP’s episode review, but more prominently as a result of the digging of author David Koenig, who devotes several pages to the debacle in his Shooting Columbo book. In short, Jeffrey Cava was a youthful assistant editor at Universal Studios where Columbo was produced, and on spec – that is, without any guarantee that it would be bought – he created a script that centered around his interest in film music.
As merely an aspiring screenwriter rather than an established one, his work lay unread for many months, eventually getting a look from Peter Falk, who was quoted before episode production as claiming, “In my judgment, it is one of the most ingenious murders in the history of Columbo“. Impressed, Falk gave it the go-ahead, and the script was being readied for production when Patrick McGoohan came aboard as the episode’s director.
Cava had already worked with Columbo co-producer Jack Horger to trim the too-lengthy script before Falk had a look at it. But now it was McGoohan’s turn to apply the knife and make room for his own embellishments. His unrestrained additions and subtractions to the script resulted in trivial circumstantial clues that had no connection to the conductor villain, Findlay Crawford, and unfunny and unflattering scenes with Peter Falk that sapped the patience of even the most forgiving Columbo fan.
What happened? Exactly how – and why – was Cava’s work so changed by McGoohan? And could I locate the script to find out?
Piecing the puzzle together
I would discover from David Koenig that he had not seen a copy of Cava’s original screenplay. However, he had spoken with people who had indeed read it. From those discussions, in Shooting Columbo David detailed the significance of the industrial elevator, which McGoohan made into a noisy and clumsy piece of evidence, rather than the subtler way Cava incorporated it as the primary clue. That was one change. I was hopeful to find others.
David had described Jeff Cava as a film music “superfan”, so I fired up my Google machine for a search. It led me to the website Film Score Monthly, describing itself as “one of the leading voices in film music [with] appreciation of the original dramatic underscoring composed for motion pictures, television, new media — and of the talented composers who create it.”
The website is a robust community of film music devotees. If you’re looking for an interview with the composer of Evil Dead Rise, release date of the CD score for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, or serious discussions of the music of Matlock, Fantasy Island, and more (including Columbo), FSM is definitely your online hang. And for Jeff, it was.
But it’s where I also found the sad report that Jeff had passed away in September 2020. FSM founder Lukas Kendall posted the news and noted Jeff’s professional history at Universal and Paramount, where he had been working on home video restorations and documentaries of classic movies. “He was, quite simply, a mensch… who went above and beyond to assist with any project he could,” Kendall wrote in tribute.
In my judgment, it is one of the most ingenious murders in the history of Columbo.
Peter Falk on Jeffrey Cava’s original Murder With Too Many Notes teleplay
Kendall followed this news in May 2021 with word that “the family of our late friend Jeff Cava is looking to find good homes for Jeff’s significant collection of soundtrack CDs”. The email contact for the project was Jeff’s sister Elizabeth. Unsure if this would prove to be helpful, I reached out to her, explaining my hope that she could help me discover Jeff’s original Murder With Too Many Notes script. Her reply was unexpected: “He was my little brother, and his death has still left me reeling. What he wrote and what was ultimately shot, was an extremely painful process for him.” She added, “If there’s any way to get justice after the fact, I’d be happy to help with this. I was always his protector when we were kids, but I couldn’t protect him from stuff like this.”
While Elizabeth began her own search for the screenplay, she put me in touch with Bill Paxton, a friend of Jeff’s at Universal, currently Head Librarian of the Universal Film Library. In the early 90s, Jeff and Bill were friends trying their hand at screenwriting in Los Angeles. They shared their scripts with each other, looking for feedback and collaborative advice. Jeff was angling to sell a movie script, but when that was unsuccessful, Bill convinced him to try his hand at something for television.
Weeks later, Murder, With Too Many Notes was born. Bill liked it. One of Columbo’s producers at the time was Jack Horger, whom Paxton had known when Horger was an editor at Murder, She Wrote. Paxton assisted getting stock footage for Columbo episodes, so he looked to Horger as a way to advance Cava’s script. It worked.
According to Paxton: “Jack called me up and said, ‘Bill, this is a really good script.’ He said, ‘Peter really loves these stories that take place in show business. I’d like to show it to him.’ I put Jack in touch with Jeff, and next thing you know, Jeff says that they want to buy the script, and he was all excited.”
It is here where Paxton believes the inexperienced Cava likely made a critical miscalculation. “I said, ‘Jeff the very first thing you have to do is to get an agent. Whatever you do, get an agent.’ He did not get an agent.”
What happened next is a vivid memory for Paxton. “In those days, Jeff was an emotional guy, very integrity-based. He would call me sometimes and we would talk through things. This time, he was really upset. He told me, ‘Patrick McGoohan is trying to steal my script!’
“I said, ‘He can’t do that. It’s registered.’ [Scripts registered with the Writers’ Guild of America create a public claim to authorship]. But according to Jeff, he said that McGoohan took his script, and changed the names of every character in it, and re-registered it with the Writers’ Guild.”
This was the first twist in my script quest. With McGoohan and Cava each deceased, reconstructing events could potentially be difficult-to-impossible. Alleged actions are one thing, confirmation quite another. But here is where the original script would be able to provide at least some small validation or contradiction. Fortunately, the efforts of Elizabeth Cava paid off. Among Jeff’s belongings was his original script, which she graciously passed along to me.
On the front cover page, the work is titled Murder, With Too Many Notes. (Yes, the comma is in the original title). In addition: “First Draft 1-24-92 Copyright 1992; Original WGA Registration #485193 1-27-92; Renewal Registration 5-27-97 Renewal #666335”.
Following this is the Character List page. Some characters would be eliminated from the final episode version and others added, as might naturally happen in script rewrites and revisions. But there are several characters who are holdovers from Cava’s initial effort. And none of them – killer, victim, and more – retain the names Cava gave them, save Lieutenant Columbo. The closest any major or minor moniker comes to the original Cava choice is Director Nicholas Ritter, who becomes “Sidney Ritter” in the episode.
Additionally, there are other small and seemingly subjective alterations. Cava’s score composed by the victim is called The Murderers. It gets switched to The Killer. Stellar Studios becomes Monolith Studios. Of course, there could be logical and perfectly legitimate reasons those tweaks were made, and in isolation, they don’t have significance. But on the point that Cava was said to be initially upset about, name changes did indeed happen.
Paxton continues: “Jeff was crying; he was so upset. I was aware of the Writers’ Guild arbitration, and said, you have to go to the Guild and tell them what this man did. So he filed a grievance against him [McGoohan]. I remember that there was a back-and-forth about how he [Cava] was only going to get the story credit, and McGoohan would get the teleplay credit, and that really upset him.”
Seeking justice
To document his complaints, Cava needed to provide an arbitration statement to the Writer’s Guild of America, detailing his contributions to the script, and how they did – or did not – differ from the finished product. Once again, Elizabeth was able to retrieve this piece to the puzzle. Amidst music composition notes from Dick DeBenedictis, a thank you card from Peter Falk, production shooting call sheets, and dusty VHS tapes, Cava’s account was lurking in a set of three boxes of materials collected from his Universal and Columbo experiences.
The statement is dated January 16, 1999. The words are over 24 years old, but they read as fresh as a contemporary oral history of one fledgling writer’s personal mission to create a quality episode of Columbo.
The statement reads: –
“I first had the idea to write the teleplay ‘Columbo: Murder With Too Many Notes’ in December of 1991. I recognized that conceiving a story and script for a pre-existing format that already had its own well-defined central character would be an important lesson to me in the development and possible success in my writing. The Lieutenant would be a challenge for me to fill a blank script page with story, which is exactly what the task that I’d set for myself was meant to be.
“I have long since loved film music and its’ impact on movies. This setting would not only let me offer my point of view on the importance of film music, but would also dramatize… the emotional value of music both in film and in the fictitious world of my character’s everyday life.”
Unlike a typical generic murder-for-money plot device, Cava was offering up a unique environment that motivated, inspired, and excited him. And he also clearly wanted it to educate, interest and excite us, the viewer. It was a textbook passion project.
Cava’s five-page statement walks through the elements of the script that he originated: the murder’s premise, the protégé’s eccentricities, the weaponized vertical lift elevator, the conductor’s arrogance, the killing’s execution. He notes clues that were kept (the wrong-size tuxedo shoes, the lack of sneakers on the victim) and ones that were dropped (drug research by Crawford).
Cava recounts how he moved forward an important clue – the lack of a scream by the falling victim – from Act 6 to Act 3 because “placing it earlier made Columbo’s suspicions much more warranted.” He shows a clear understanding of “the emotional and mental ‘chess game’, pitting Columbo against his villain in a way that lets both the pursuer and the pursued believe, ‘I’ve got you, but you still think I don’t’”.
But Cava’s document produced another mystery – and it was a big one. On the title page, he calls himself “Writer A”. This obviously makes sense. But he also describes other script drafts as having been written by…..“Writers B and C”. Wait, two other writers? Wasn’t Patrick McGoohan supposed to be the sole villain responsible for all the script rewrites?
Since many of the character name changes are ascribed to Writer C, one can assume that this was McGoohan. So, what was Writer B’s role? According to Cava’s statement, “Wherein my drafts used the lack of a baton as a clue, Writer B initiated the presence of a baton, engraved with a love note from Gabriel’s girlfriend, as the primary clue… The use of Writer B’s device of the baton eliminated other clues in my original draft.” [Although in the final filmed version, the baton isn’t really used as a clue at all, never mind as a ‘primary clue’.]
Another search through Jeff’s Columbo boxes was needed, and sister Elizabeth’s discovery of the final arbitration settlement papers produced the identity of Writer B. The notice was cc’d to Jeffrey Cava, Patrick McGoohan, and Jeffrey Hatcher. The latter was the credited teleplay writer for the previous Columbo episode, 1998’s Ashes to Ashes, which starred McGoohan. Hatcher has an extensive list of plays, films, and books to his credit, yet it appears that the baton was his only significant addition to the Murder With Too Many Notes script.
As Cava had shared with Bill Paxton, the arbitration committee indeed “tentatively determined” that Cava would only get a story credit, and the entire teleplay would belong to McGoohan. But Cava’s multi-page inventory of script similarities (and crucial differences) apparently swayed the arbitration board. “After carefully considering the material submitted to the Guild for the determination of credits, the Arbitration Committee has determined that the writing credits shall read as follows: Teleplay by Jeffrey Cava and Patrick McGoohan; Story by Jeffrey Cava.” And this is what we see in the episode’s opening credits.
The arbitration notice then takes just 16 words to unintentionally but accurately summarize the entire relationship between Cava and McGoohan: “Please note that an ‘and’ designates writers working separately, and an ampersand (‘&’) denotes a writing team.” As if Cava didn’t already realize it, he and McGoohan were not going to be hammering out the script’s final draft together downing pints at an LA tavern.
“Sorry old boy.”
We know that Cava, looking to get a foothold in the Hollywood screenplay game, was distressed by the whole process. How did McGoohan react? According to Paxton, Jeff clearly remembered McGoohan’s blithe response to the conflict: “’Well, sorry old boy’”.
Elizabeth Cava has a bitter reaction to McGoohan’s alleged brush-off: “Ouch. Did McGoohan even try to help Jeff with the script? Why did McGoohan decide to do it that way?” Excellent questions left lingering.
Writer’s Guild arbitration conflicts are not uncommon, particularly in the often-cutthroat Hollywood community. After an initial script sale, precisely worded credits determine residual payments. This would be the compensation paid for the reuse of a credited writer’s work, such as an episode rerun. In other words, looking at credit disputes often have a simple dictum – Follow The Money.
To help wade through the key elements of such disputes, I turned to our own Columbophile Blog playwright, author, and lawyer Richard Weill for his perspective. “In this case, it appears that Universal Studios decided internally that only McGoohan deserved ‘Teleplay by’ credit. Cava would get ‘Story by’ credit, and Hatcher nothing,” Weill explained. “That signifies that Universal regarded McGoohan’s rewrite to be fairly comprehensive, true or untrue. Upon reviewing the various scripts, the WGA arbitrator overruled that. Cava got co-teleplay credit. The WGA thus recognized how much of Cava’s original teleplay survived McGoohan’s tampering.”
As the 1999 WGA Credits Manual points out, “The first writer on an original screenplay shall be entitled to screenplay credit if such writer’s work represents a contribution of more than 33% to the final shooting script. Any subsequent writer must contribute 50% to the final shooting script.”
It was so vile and reprehensible that I could not believe that a man of McGoohan’s stature would do that.
Bill Paxton on McGoohan’s alleged theft of Cava’s script
It must be noted that nowhere in his official arbitration statement does Cava make a direct accusation that McGoohan was trying to “steal” his work. The presence of a third writer would likely make that claim more difficult to stick. But the practice Cava was objecting to – a rewrite job making unnecessary and arbitrary changes to an original scribe’s work in order to get a writing credit – is unfortunately not unusual.
In Hollywood, script rewriting is as natural and essential as drawing oxygen. Paxton says that Cava was under no delusion that his work would remain untouched. “Jeff was open to advice. And he would admit that he was an overwriter,” said Paxton. “He wrote long, and he knew that. He wanted the feedback. There was no objection to rewrites. The objection was to McGoohan’s trying to cut Jeff out completely. To my knowledge, there was no collaboration whatsoever.
“You know, he would have loved it if he had been brought in to be even a little part of what they did; ‘Listen kid, this is how we do this in the big time, you have to cut this and this’, I think Jeff would have welcomed that feedback. He was so passionate… It wasn’t about the money, it was about the credit for something you wrote. That really meant something to him. The fact that he thought McGoohan tried to steal that, that’s what offended him so much. It was so vile and reprehensible that I could not believe that a man of McGoohan’s stature would do that.”
Cava’s original vision
As for Cava’s original script, it is posted here exclusively on the Columbophile Blog to allow Columbo deep-divers to give it their own look. As with all creative works, opinions of the screenplay will no doubt draw a range of responses. My own take is that the script is perfectly serviceable as a first draft. If Cava was indeed open to change – and if McGoohan hadn’t crowbarred his own terrible scenes into it, and Peter Falk didn’t exaggerate his old man-nerisms – it had potential to be a solid 90s episode.
The draft script is indeed overlong. At 131 pages, it would have run close to 2 ¼ hours minus commercials. The extended opening is ripe for shortening. There’s a bit with Paradiso [the original name of killer Findlay Crawford] researching Secanol that would be eliminated, as well as a student who surreptitiously records his studio concert. The gotcha scene’s final proof that Daniel Mason [victim Gabe McEnery’s original name] scored The Murderers comes in the form of a too-convenient pre-mailed package with a postmarked date prior to Paradiso’s claiming that he alone wrote the score, a package not even discovered by Columbo.
But Cava provides several good clues that McGoohan either ignored or botched. The tennis shoes tell is much simpler and more direct here. Columbo suspects something’s amiss when it appears that Mason did his rooftop “conducting” facing in an unlikely direction. Paradiso has to cover his tracks for the unlocked freight elevator that kills Mason, so he attaches a rusty lock that comes from his Peugeot – the same model as Columbo’s, only in pristine shape (a nice touch). Completing the subterfuge means that Paradiso has to go the roof immediately after the fall instead of rushing to see the body on the pavement – the best of two “click” clues that focus Columbo’s sights on Paradiso.
Cava closed his 1999 arbitration statement to the WGA recognizing the irony in what he was seeking. Almost a quarter-century removed from writing it, and close to three years after his passing, this realization has special resonance uncovering it today: “It is my hope that this arbitration will afford me a shared credit, the credit I believe I have worked to deserve. This is probably out of line, but as I finish this statement, I can’t help but realize that I wrote a script about an upstart artist who is murdered by the mentor who takes his credit. Where’s Rod Serling?”
Despite the difficulties he encountered, Cava was, as Paxton describes, “thrilled at the end of it all. Seeing his name on the final credits meant so much to him.” When production wrapped, Cava was gifted a model of the set that he had visited each day of filming, and he was “absolutely delighted.” Although it would be understandable if Cava soured on anything having to do with screenwriting again, Paxton asserts that this was not the case, as there were other scripts that Cava developed, although none bore fruit.
Murder With Too Many Notes completed production in December of 1998, but in a sure no-confidence signal, ABC kept it on the shelf for over two years before slotting it for viewing. Air date was March 12, 2001, and Jeffrey Cava was ready. He rented event space for the episode’s premier at a Vine Street LA lounge bar, The Three Clubs, inviting friends and family to the showing. He scripted a welcoming introduction and by then was acutely aware of what the episode had ultimately become.
“Many of you know that tonight has been a long time in the works… Columbo was a show that I always admired, mainly because of his adversaries,” Cava wrote. “A really good murder is difficult to plan, and Columbo allowed the time to plan and execute a good murder, and in doing so managed to emerge – most of the time – as quality television. I hoped that my script would be all of that.
“Of course, last Friday’s Hollywood Reporter review will tell you that I achieved nothing close to this lofty goal. We all know that a tremendous lot can be said in reaction to any critic, but I’m not the one to do so. No writer ever is…. So screw the Hollywood Reporter!”
Cava’s sister Elizabeth was there. “The episode was airing, people were drinking, and I just remember that Jeff kept pacing back and forth throughout the night,” she recalls. “And things would come up and he would suddenly yell at the screen. This was almost non-stop. It was funny… but of course, ultimately not totally funny for him.” Episode viewers can certainly empathize – who among us has not yelled at the screen experiencing McGoohan’s painful script additions, such as the slow drive back to Crawford’s home, or the “Name That Movie Theme” fiasco?
Bill Paxton did not attend the event, not because he didn’t care, but because he cared too much. “For me, it felt like I was going to celebrate somebody who was crippled in a car accident and got a $10 million settlement. It just didn’t feel right,” he explained.
Perhaps the party served as a final catharsis for Cava. After all, the screenplay was his personal pet project. Regardless of how we judge his original script – good, bad, or indifferent – it was a work that he poured his film score passion into, and Peter Falk and others at Universal had felt that it was worth buying. That alone meant something. But then, rightly or wrongly, he believed that his passion had been flayed into something else altogether by others. Well, by one person in particular.
The whole experience was, according to Elizabeth Cava, “a mixed bag. It gave Jeff hope that he could be a writer, and he never gave up on that, even as messy as everything was. So he continued to write, but it also took a toll on him. Once you have the writing bug, it never really leaves you – if it’s in your blood, it’s in your blood.”
Friend Paxton speculates on the might-have-been. “If Jeff had just had an agent, I think he would have had a writing career in the business. He was talented. With an agent, he would have had someone behind him who could have protected him, someone who could have sold more of his scripts. But Jeff was a quirky guy, and he had his own way of doing things. He was naively trusting of people.”
“Jeff really wished that he had taken Bill’s advice to get an agent”, adds Elizabeth. “I don’t think he didn’t want to, but finding time for his job, to write, to find a good agent… I don’t think he was made out for that.”
Posthumous appreciation
There is one final unknown regarding Jeff Cava and Patrick McGoohan, and of all the questions this script search has raised, this mystery may be the most curious. After McGoohan’s death in 2009, a posthumous appreciation was penned, appearing on the Ultimate Columbo Site. The writer of this appreciation? Jeffrey Cava.
Dated March 14, 2009, Cava’s 800-word homage has no direct mention of his difficulties with McGoohan. He describes him at various points as “gracious”, with “dry humor”, “irreverent”, “irreplaceable”, and both as having a “connection that was mutually realized”.
But there was one passage that takes on more significance when understanding the scripting backstory of Murder With Too Many Notes. See if you can spot it here: “In my early experiences with him, Patrick, though welcoming, was a seemingly hard man externally who many might feel was perhaps too thick-skinned to get to know or even approach. And while that distinctive character trait may have been counter to the manner in which I felt our joint Columbo venture should be realized on screen, it was never thick enough to prevent me from wanting to spend as much time as I could around him, no doubt much to his irritation”.
Jeff never wanted conflict; he was a gentle soul and never looked for a fight.
Jeff’s sister Elizabeth on her brother’s nature
The appreciation stunned Bill and Elizabeth, who were unaware that it existed until after Jeff’s death. “I don’t believe the Jeff Cava that I knew had those kind of feelings about Patrick McGoohan,” says Paxton flatly. “Did they change over the years? Did he find it in himself to say ‘why be bitter’ and forgive him? Maybe.”
Elizabeth provides another, sisterly perspective. “Jeff never wanted conflict; he was a gentle soul and never looked for a fight. He wanted to have a mentor, and I think he probably looked up to McGoohan and wanted him to be what he wrote about in that appreciation. He would make his memory and remember him in a positive way, rather than saying, ‘What an S.O.B.’”
While pursuing his screenwriting ambitions, Cava’s passion for film and his photographic memory were put to good use as he immersed himself in movie restoration projects, most notably the 2007 restorations of The Godfather and The Godfather Part II. In his later years, there were health issues and harder times.
Murder With Too Many Notes was Cava’s first and only screenplay credit. It was McGoohan’s last. After this final Columbo contribution, his career was essentially complete, save for a handful of voice acting roles, such as “Number 6” in a 2000 episode of The Simpsons.
McGoohan was never a collaborator. After the world-wide 60s success of his Secret Agent and The Prisoner, both of which he totally controlled, no producer would let him steer the ship of any project, which was, McGoohan opined in an interview with Bill King, “totally frustrating…. Clout. I had clout in England. And you have to have it. Columbo was okay because Peter had the same sort of situation that I had. He had say-so. Peter had a very successful series and they’d do anything he wanted.”
It is well-documented that Falk was enamored of McGoohan’s talent and, for better or worse, indulged him with unparalleled freedoms in his Columbos. A notorious rewriter even outside his work with Falk, in retrospect it is highly unlikely that McGoohan would have ever consented to seriously work with a writer on his first screen effort.
Jeffrey Cava may have wanted a mentor. But a mentor must want a mentee. Of all the roles in Patrick McGoohan’s long career, that may be the one that interested him the least.
Glenn Stewart spent 25 years in the music radio business across the United States specializing in classic rock. For the past 15 years he has been working in History, English, Education Assessment, and writing Social Studies curriculum for the juvenile justice system. He has also taught “Issues In Media Industries” as adjunct faculty at a New England university. His favorite pre-1980 TV rewatchables are Columbo, Mission: Impossible, Batman, The Prisoner, and The Twilight Zone. You can access Glenn’s other Columbophile Blog contributions here.
Well, messieurs–dames, wasn’t that a FASCINATING insight into a very sad Columbo chapter? I know I found it riveting reading and hope you did too. My thanks to Glenn Stewart, whose behind-the-scenes sleuthing would make even the good Lieutenant proud.
I’m sure I speak on Glenn’s behalf when I say we’re extremely interested to get your views on this topic. Does Jeff Cava’s Columbo dream-turned-nightmare sadden you, or do you merely think ‘that’s life’? And does it do anything to change your opinion of Patrick McGoohan’s Columbo legacy? As always, hit us up in the comments section below.
Until next time, adieu, and do make sure you join in the 13-minute standing ovation for Maestro Stewart’s sterling endeavours on behalf of the Columbo community…
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All very interesting, no doubt …..if deeply unfortunate & harrowing for the individual in question.
“Never give a sucker …. (etc).” is a tactic of general application. In this showbiz context, as taught in the School of Hard Knocks by Professor McGoohan it may seem to some more than a tad unfair.
However the “elephant in the room”, ignored by the regular commentariat on the CP’s episode review and now this thread – remains ghastly Billy Connolly. The grotesque inadequacy of “Big Yin’s” inappropriate “performance”, and the supreme foolishness of someone having handed him the part in the first place simply beggars belief.
A Columbo episode could be based on a story by James M. Cain, screenplay by Dashiel Hammett & Raymond Chandler …..but as long as Connolly were to be in it, bathetically strutting his stuff around as “villain”, it would be bound to turn out as a complete turkey.
I guess I’ll have to vote for the “That’s life” option. People re-write scripts in Hollywood. It happens. And Cava wound up getting his credit after all.
First, great thank you to Glenn Stewart and Columbophile for giving as all an opportunity to read Jeffrey Cava’s script.
A couple of notes (no pun intended) I made for myself comparing the script and the final product
1) The clues. I can understand why they dropped this “Deus ex machina” reveal of the music score the victim mailed to himself. But why remove the clue of the conductor’s stand facing in the wrong direction? It”s a very nice psychological point that doesn’t really prove anything per se but shows Columbo’s deep understanding of human character. I think it would be on par with, say, Columbo’s observation that the victim in the “Old port” would never leave the top of his prized sports car down in the rain.
2) Transforming Paradiso into Crawford. It would be interesting to know if Falk and McGoohan decided to turn this character into a caricature from the get-go, so the decision to cast Billy Connolly was perfectly logical in that sense. Or was it the other way around, Connolly somehow got the part and then they realized that he would be incongruous trying to channel a much more interesting and deep character I visualise Paradiso to be? In the finale Columbo says he believes Paradiso when the latter claims that Daniel/Gabe was like a son to him. I can hardly imagine Connolly believably portraying what a man like that must feel: killing a person who apparently would have been the closest one to him after his wife’s death and “killing” what’s left of his career at the same time. I think it especially bad we lost the scene between Paradiso and Ritter at the end. Replacing their quiet confrontation (which I think could be worthy of the limousine scene at the end of “Make me a perfect murder”) with stupid dressing down Crawford gets from Ritter after listening to the new score was criminal and devalues both of their characters.
3) The script had perfectly good subtle comedic touches in it like two Peugeots or Mrs. Columbo being a rare fan of Ritter’s flopped romance movie. Why would anyone want to replace them with atrocious “Name That Tune” scene is beyond me.
A great article on behind the scenes Hollywood and Columbo. Thanks. From the moment this episode started there seemed to be something odd. McGoohan’s tinkering with the script is duly noted. The long car driving scene. Putting the body on top of the roof and nobody noticed. The lack of clues to solve the crime. It would have been great to have used Cava’s original script.
Patrick McGoohan was a fine actor but it’s clearer than ever that this is likely the extent of his talent. His close friendship with Peter Falk is a private matter, but it seems it clouded Peter’s professional judgment and paved the way for Patrick to turn this Columbo into a vanity project…change the title to “Murder With Too Many McGoohans”.
I am so impressed with Glenn’s research and conveying all this information to us. Thank you, Glenn!
I am left feeling even more compassion for Jeff Cava and saying “Shame on you!” to McGoohan. No matter how often this unethical behaviour occurs whether in science, literature, music, art, and elsewhere, it is always reprehensible and we should never get habituated to it.
As Richard said, it is not at all clear what the 50% was that McGoohan supposedly wrote. It sounds like he had enough political power and status to get what he wanted. He comes across as a bully, a creative one and one with acting talent, but a bully nonetheless. Shame on him.
Glenn, Your article is a lovely tribute to Jeff, and I hope it gives his sister, Elizabeth, some comfort.
Thank you for the kind words, Rickey. As for McGoohan’s 50%, I think we can all agree that the car crawl certainly felt like 50% of the episode.
Well done, Glenn Stewart. A fascinating, haunting read. And the irony: “I can’t help but realize that I wrote a script about an upstart artist who is murdered by the mentor who takes his credit.” Cava was clearly a talented creative writer who worked hard to break through, only to have his work stolen and/or compromised, and his spirit nearly flattened. Bravo to you, Glenn, for giving Cava his day. Would that every single writer who has gone through something so crushing, so heart-breaking, could have such a champion. We can strive, we can hope: The truth will out!
If, after reading Glenn’s article, you are of the view that Jeffrey Cava’s story is probably typical of most fledging writers thrown in the shark tank, I recommend that you also read this from Michael Sloan, about his experience writing “Now You See Him”: https://www.michael-sloan-equalizer.com/young-man-with-a-dream.html. It starts the same: a new, aspiring writer with a fresh idea and a spec Columbo script. But it ends quite differently. Kudos to Peter S. Fischer — for not being Patrick McGoohan.
What a different and great outcome for young aspiring writer Michael Sloan; as you say kudos to Peter Fischer!
It also shows what a difference in episode quality a healthy mentoring produces.
That’s life, (that’s life). That’s what all the people say. You’re flying high in April, and shot down with a ballistic missile and a lot of tragic events that set you up to fail from the outset in May.
What a great article! It’s fascinating to hear the full story behind what happened – which, as so often, is a little more complicated than it first appeared. And getting hold of the original draft script is a real coup! As a music lover myself, I can definitely sympathise with poor Jeffrey Cava.
My usual green avatar doesn’t seem to be working, unfortunately 🙁 And I noticed some display issues with the front page of the site on PC (Firefox browser).
Fascinating article. Thank you so much. Murder With Too Many Notes is an execrable Columbo episode, but now I’m motivated to watch it again after reading the original teleplay, in order to see how it all went wrong. The controversy adds depth to an episode that so very much lacks it. Sometimes a film or television episode has a cultural resonance beyond the value of the thing itself. Murder With Too Many Notes may just be such a case.
I second CP’s description of Glenn’s work here: it’s investigative journalism at its finest. Glenn doesn’t stop at combing through reference works; he goes straight to the source. Here’s one small example: Glenn asked me to give a lawyer’s eye to the Writers Guild’s rules on credit. When I pointed out that the 33%/50% rule comes from the current WGA Credits Manual available online, so maybe he should add the word “current” to qualify this reference when speaking of events in 1999 — not Glenn. No fudging for him. He went right to the source here, too — the WGA — and learned that the Guild has employed the same standard for decades. A brilliant job all around.
Still, it remains a mystery to me (and I’m sure Glenn, too) what Patrick McGoohan actually added to this script that put him within any semblance of striking distance even for a claim to be the credited co-author of the MWTMN teleplay. “Any subsequent writer must contribute 50% to the final shooting script” to be listed as co-author. What 50%? What did McGoohan do except change names? We know what Cava created. We know that Jack Horger made a substantial contribution before McGoohan touched anything, and that Jeffrey Hatcher tried to find a gotcha for this gotcha-less script (that is, something we all knew about previously without appreciating its significance until Columbo figured that part out; think “cider”). But what did McGoohan actually do? And he wanted not just co-credit but sole teleplay credit — which ordinarily means that he added 50% AND reduced Cava’s contribution to less than 33%. Name changes can’t get you there.
It’s my theory that McGoohan tried to take advantage of another WGA rule — one that can deny credit to anyone who isn’t a “professional writer” (i.e., one “who has received employment for a total of thirteen weeks as a television or theatrical motion picture writer, or received credit as a writer on a television or theatrical motion picture (including series), or received credit for a professionally produced play or a published novel”). I wouldn’t be surprised if McGoohan used Cava’s lack of prior writing credits against him in the most craven, self-centered way.
Finally, as Glenn points out (and Cava acknowledged himself), there were plenty of flaws in Cava’s original script: e.g., its length (including how long before Columbo first appeared); it overdoes the imparting of inside knowledge about film scoring; Columbo solves the case using one thing (the elevator) the significance of which we always knew, and another (the self-mailed score) we didn’t know about at all. BUT the original script also contained a brilliant clue — in my opinion, the best one in the script — that inexplicably disappeared before MWTMN reached its final version. I won’t spoil it for those who want to read the Cava original (now available through Glenn’s article). Let’s just say that it’s about the padlock that secured the roof door over the elevator shaft: how the murderer tried to swap one old lock for another, how Columbo figured out that the new lock wasn’t the original, and where the new lock came from. It’s an excellent combination of a clue, good detective work, and a wonderful character tie-in (which, with a small tweak or two, could have made a terrific gotcha). But it was lost until now. That’s something someone really should answer for.
Rich, I can’t thank you enough for providing insight into the legal niceties of this saga. Research though I might, it ain’t in my wheelhouse, and your review of my materials was crucial to the final product.
For length and clarity, I streamlined some of these legal issues for the final piece. Jeff’s status as a “non-professional” was noted by him in a legal doc that tied to that pesky residuals issue. Cava speculates that he was deemed a “non-professional” because “at the time of the sale I was a full-time employee in Universal’s Post-Production Dept. (I had been advised off-the-record that there were tremendous conflict of interest concerns.) Unfortunately, I did not have literary representation to negotiate this aspect of the contract.”
Full disclosure time, Rich. What prompted me to open this can of worms was your comment in CP’s original MWTMN review: “Getting Cava’s original, un-McGoohaned draft could require some digging.” I know you didn’t issue that as a challenge to anyone, but it was a lazy Sunday afternoon, and I figured, what the heck, I’ll give it 15 minutes of my time. That 15 minutes expanded considerably….to my pleasure, I must add. And I also must note that without Jeff’s sister’s considerable cooperation and assistance, this project would have gone nowhere fast. Much of the “digging” was to Elizabeth’s credit, so thanks to her!
Nice to hear how you both cooperated and contributed to this great piece of journalism.
Make no mistake. This was 99.9% Glenn Stewart.
Another truly outstanding piece of investigation (almost taking the shape of a tribute), as we’ve come to expect from Glenn, confirming once more Columbophile as the ultimate online resource on the Columbo universe.
Thanks for all the interesting information, though I wonder, what did the Hollywood Reporter say about Murder With Too Many Notes? Did they regularly review Columbo episodes?
Try as I might, I could not find the original Hollywood Reporter critique of MWTMN. They regularly showcase Hollywood news and reviews, and in 2001, a Columbo movie was still event-worthy.
However, Jeff Cava’s Three Clubs welcoming has this:
“It is my right as a consumer to have a hard time accepting the validity of criticism from anyone who comments on an actor’s ‘wax-work makeup’ in the course of an alleged professional review. The only response I can offer is that, in reaction to my writing, solely the nuns back in Catholic School can yield words like Bloated, Lazy, Cliche, and Formulaic and actually have them take.”
In context, I can tell you that this was said with tongue pretty firmly in cheek, but some bitterness would also be expected, particularly if the really terrible parts of the episode came from someone else and you’re taking the rap.
Great work. So cool that you were able to find most all of the original documents. Whatever respect I had left for McGoohan after seeing ‘Commodore’ is gone after learning about his changing character names and attempting to register the screenplay in his name. Heinous even by Hollywood standards.
He should have been imprisoned on some sort of island and chased by a large white blob any time he tried to escape.
Can anyone explain the “Where’s Rod Serling?” comment? Thanks
Serling wrote many stories, both for his “Twilight Zone” show and movies, with twist, ironic endings. So when you see Charleton Heston at the end of “Planet of the Apes” coming across the Statue of Liberty and yelling, “You maniacs, you blew it up! Damn you all to hell!”, that’s a masterclass ironic twist. Cava recognized the irony of his own script situation with his Rod Serling reference.
This is why I love this blog. The community has some of the smartest and hardest working members who dig up more and more stories from the world of Columbo.
I read the original screenplay. It was definitely too long but maybe my mind is playing tricks on me but it seems to fit together much better that the final product.
Art imitating life in a big way..It seems Cava was not bitter. or maybe he just didn’t want to take a nap leap off a building. This episode does make me go hunh? so I’m sure some important clues were lost in the shuffle but overall McGoohan’s contributions to Columbo are positive. In my opinion. Dawn’s Early Light, excellent as well as Identity Crisis, Becoming Steinmetz in Agenda and Ashes( i love Ashes) and my entire family loves Commodore despite the Bizarro world atmosphere.
The clue about the score being pre-mailed and postmarked reminds me of a conversation I had a couple of weeks ago with my wife, Mrs Macinnes, about the song “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” by Steely Dan, in particular the following lyrics:
“Rikki don’t lose that number
You don’t want to call nobody else
Send it off in a letter to yourself
Rikki don’t lose that number
It’s the only one you own
You might use it if you feel better
When you get home”
My wife told me that one interpretation of these lyrics is that the number in this case is a song and a postmarked letter would be proof of writing the song.