Taking A Shot David Caruso Is Starring In His Second Movie Coming Out In October

On a bitter-cold January day in San Francisco, hundreds of extras gather on a Chinatown street decorated with streaming banners and floats for a Chinese New Year’s parade. Director William Friedkin, who staged celebrated chase scenes for “The French Connection” and “To Live and Die in L.A.,” has worked up another one for his latest movie, “Jade.”

“Please, we’re about to shoot,” an assistant director shouts into a bullhorn. “Nobody laugh or smile.”

The crowd, huddled patiently on the curb, seems to ignore him - until a woman takes his bullhorn and repeats the instructions in Chinese.

A grip lights an array of fireworks. On their mark, the extras, many of them carrying banners or sparkling spinners at the end of long sticks, whip into a sudden frenzy and storm a silver Ford Taurus, stuck at the end of the street behind a huge float. They attack the car with rage, pounding on the windows, their sheer mass threatening to overturn the vehicle. Inside the car sits David Caruso. He’s not in an entirely unfamiliar place - the center of sound and fury.

One year ago, the redheaded actor from Queens, N.Y., could do no wrong. After 15 years of reaching for the golden ring in feature films - brushing the metal with his fingertips on several passes in strong supporting roles but never quite able to grasp it - Caruso woke up one morning a TV star.

Caruso does, in fact, have his huge TV following to thank for Paramount Pictures’ willingness to gamble on him as the leading man in “Jade,” in a role Warren Beatty was once in discussions to play.

In the $40 million “Jade,” Caruso plays a district attorney investigating a psychiatrist - his former girlfriend - in the murder of an art dealer. He co-stars with two other hot Hollywood comers: Linda Fiorentino, the “femme fatale” in John Dahl’s “The Last Seduction,” and Chazz Palminteri, nominated for a supporting actor Oscar in Woody Allen’s “Bullets Over Broadway.”

“Jade,” which is due from Paramount in October, is Caruso’s second starring role in a feature film. He completed his first one last summer, playing the Victor Mature role in a loose remake of the 1947 film “Kiss of Death,” when he was on hiatus from “NYPD Blue.”

Caruso never planned to do television in the first place.

Before “NYPD Blue” the actor had steadily built up a film resume in solid supporting roles - a naval recruit in “An Officer and a Gentleman,” the nice cop in “Rambo,” a cat burglar in “Thief of Hearts,” a vigilante cop in “King of New York.” He was always a minor supporting the majors - he played Robert De Niro’s understanding partner in “Mad Dog and Glory.”

When Steven Bochco was searching for a lead actor two years ago to anchor his new police drama, he asked Caruso to screen-test for the role of Detective John Kelly. Bochco remembered Caruso from an impressive guest-starring role on his earlier creation “Hill Street Blues.”

When “NYPD Blue” premiered last season amid scandal over its nudity and tough language, viewers across America embraced Caruso’s compassionate cop, raising “NYPD Blue” to the ratings elite. Caruso - a loner from a broken home, twice divorced, familiar with 12-step programs - easily slipped into the role of the tortured Kelly.

Last summer, not long after receiving an Emmy nomination for “NYPD Blue,” Caruso turned his back on all of it.

French director Barbet Schroeder had Caruso high on a list of actors he wanted to work with. Last year, Schroeder had what he thought was the perfect leading role for Caruso, in his film, “Kiss of Death.”

As “Kiss of Death” was nearing a wrap, when Caruso would have had a week to report to the “NYPD Blue” set, movies were tugging at his heart. He received half a dozen offers, but the project he really wanted was “Jade.” Caruso’s agents had earlier called the producers to express interest, only to learn that it would be shooting the same time as “NYPD Blue.”

Caruso says that the only time he can remember seeing his father cry was when the two were watching “On the Waterfront” together when he was a boy and a broken Marlon Brando uttered his famous line, “I coulda been a contendah.” Last summer, Caruso saw his own shot at the title, and he was not willing to subjugate his lifelong dream to make someone else happy.

Caruso says he and his representatives tried to find a way for him to remain on the show and do movies at the same time.

That’s not how Bochco remembers it. “His attorney, in fact, presented us with two different scenarios for David’s return to the show - an A scenario and a B scenario,” Bochco says. “But he prefaced those two scenarios by saying that David’s real preference was to be let go entirely so he could pursue his movie career.” The scenarios laid out for Bochco ranged from Caruso taking Fridays off, to working only 15 of the 22 episodes. Bochco believed that he was being presented with an impossible deal so he would break the actor’s contract. “L.A. Law” regular Jimmy Smits was hired to replace Caruso, whom they wrote out in the third episode this season.

When asked if there’s anything Caruso would like to tell people who might have been let down by his career choices, he sits back and reflects for a moment, before beginning slowly.

“In the final analysis, I have deep respect for the dialogue that I have opened with the audience,” Caruso says. “I’m confident that we can get through the painful period. I’m hoping that they’ll be open to some new experiences with me and not too closed to trust me again. And maybe they could reserve the right to shape their own opinion, and not have it shaped for them.”