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 "A Festival Wife" is a romantic thriller that takes place in the world of film festivals. A roman a clef, it contains characters, both real and disguised, who come together at the fictional San Lorenzo International Film Festival, a composite of many real festivals. Anyone who has been to Cannes and the global film markets will find the characters recognizable and the story intriguing – even controversial.
The online published novel is serialized in weekly episodes exclusively for fest21.com and filmfestivals.com readers.
The complete novel A Festival Wife is now available in ebook format on Mobipocket.com for only $9,99.
We are sending the following message via "balloon" at 6 from the croisette during the festival organizers reception held at Village International
Dear finder of this message !
The following text is the final chapter of a "Festival Thriller", which we have just published on our website fest21.com
We have released this message to the world via balloon...may 21st at 6.00pm from the Cannes Film Festival hotspot on the Croisette.
Attending the launch w...
A chilly wind sweeping off San Lorenzo Bay the next to last day of the Festival seemed to send a stern message: Winter had held off as long as it could in deference to the gathered cineastes, film distributors and assorted merrymakers, and now needed to get on with its seasonal business. So the flannel sky and drop in temperature served to hasten exits from San Lorenzo of those attendees who had completed their film sales and home video buys, or seen all the movies they'd come to see.
...
Turn left and three streets up from the end of the Passagia, the Licinian Baths are tucked into the face of the mountainside where the Romans widened a natural crevice in the living rock, allowing the hot mineral springs to flow from the beating heart of the earth into granite-lined pools.
Named after the Emperor Licinius, a 4th Century soak enthusiast who erected elaborate bathhouses around the empire, the original stone pools are still there, worn smooth by antiquity's bunions....
"Movies, gunrunners, terrorists, Hollywood, royalty - Henry this is a great story. I even found out The Worm's real identity!"
"You've got to kill the story, Charles," I said.
"You've begun the cocktail hour before me, eh?"
Mitchell was seated at a small table on the balcony of his room, barely looking up at me as he furiously worked the keys of his laptop with his best reporter-on-a-deadline flourish, as the warm autumn evening breeze played ove...
Ari Safta's urgent summons sent me hurrying toward the Old Port, but on the way I bumped into the Festival President who buttonholed me in desperation.
"I need that Variety story," Demo implored. "The festival is nearly over, Henry. The Mayor is calling me every hour. ‘What about the Variety reporter? When is he going to take my picture?' He drive me crazy with this."
Not to worry, I told Demo - relax. I'd be calling the Variety reporter Adam Jeffries th...
I had been asked to kill a story - the story Charles Mitchell was writing for one of the world's major newspapers - about Ari Safta and his dodgy group of money men who maybe were a front for international arms dealers and terrorists. Stopping the story before it reached print was an urgent matter of national security, according to my old friend Artie Delfont, a foreign sales agent for film producers and spy for MI-6 - or was it MI-5? One of those spook agencies, anyway, Artie claimed,...
"Forget about the goddam Luxembourg tax deal," said Charles, peering darkly into his Bloody Mary, stirring it with a spoon so that the medicinal mixture of Worcestershire and spices swirled to the surface. "The real story on your film finance guys is they're killers, Henry. They kill people."
"My head is killing me, Charles, that's all I know," I said, over my second coffee on the terrace of the Medici.
We were now entering Day Six of the San Lorenzo ...
A shaft of warm light from the half-open bathroom door, where Leticia was brushing her hair, was all that illuminated my hotel room as I sat down wearily on the sofa and called Guy Stevens' direct number. Variety's European Editor in London got on the phone and we exchanged pleasantries.
I explained to Stevens about the story Adam Jeffries had filed from the festival, about Everest Entertainment backing the Great Director's new project and the troublesome business with the Luxembour...
"Rassi is wonderful," Nora was saying over breakfast on the Medici terrace. It was well past nine. She was in a state of high excitement. On the table beside her coffee cup and cinnamon bun was a script.
"Aren't you going to the Besson screening?" I was thinking of Charles and his plan to end their affair this morning after they went together to the screening of Luc Besson's latest film, a kind of "Gallic Western" they were calling it.
"R...
To get to Count Rassi's place isn't easy, nor is it obvious. Nothing about him was.
You had to find the right way, a certain street, one of several narrow passages winding up the hill behind the Medici above the Porto Vecchio. All the streets back there looked alike, cobbled and lacking sidewalks, lined with shops and restaurants carved cave-like under low lintels into the lopsided apartment houses of four and five stories all clinging desperately to one another at odd angles under the w...
A steady Mediterranean drizzle kept the crowds indoors for the second day of the festival. The beach restaurants would suffer, of course, and too bad for them - they'd more than make it up with their inflated menu prices. But in between screenings the cafes and bars up and down the Passagia would be full and the expensive shops along the fashionable end of the Via Inglaterra and the quainter streets in the Porto Vecchio would prosper.
I was hoping to prosper, too. That little $10...
Chapter 2: Day One
The stately hotels along the Passagia saluted the rising Mediterranean sun on the morning of the Festival's first day as I made my way from the Medici Hotel toward the Festival Director's office at the Castello di Festival.
Pavements steamed from the shopkeepers' soapy buckets as they flushed away last night's sour accumulation of cigarette butts and spilt booze. The municipal police, eyes red-rimmed and uniforms lacking some of their starch, studiously re-stack...
A FESTIVAL WIFE - By Rex Weiner (preview exclusive to fest21.com readers only)
Prologue:
The way I see it is this: had I known how the San Lorenzo Film Festival would end, I don’t think I would have been there on opening night. My being there, while not the causative factor, was one of several factors setting in motion certain events that changed everything forever. I said this to the police when I was called in for questioning, knowing full well that I was one of the suspects in the ...
FILMFESTIVALS.COM TO PUBLISH FESTIVAL NOVEL IN WEEKLY SERIAL
Web 2.0 Festival Novel
"A Festival Wife" romantic thriller by ex-Variety reporter Rex Weiner to appear online on fest21.com
Check the fourth chapter
Check the third chapter
Check the second chapter
Begin with the first chapter
Filmfestivals.com, the online source for global film festival news and resources, will serialize "A Festival Wife," a first novel by former Variety reporter Rex Weiner, in its ...
The way I see it is this: had I known how the San Lorenzo Film Festival would end, I don't think I would have been there on opening night. My being there, while not the causative factor, was one of several factors that set in motion certain events that changed everything. I said this to the police when I was called in for questioning, knowing full well that I was one of the suspects in the murder of Count Rassi. Had I not been there, I confessed... But that was useless speculation. You see, fo...
The author of "A Festival Wife," the first novel to be published on Fest21.com, was a staff reporter at Variety and Daily Variety from 1992 – 1997, covering international film, film finance and entertainment technology. His column, Lost and Found, appeared weekly in the trade paper. He was one of the developers of variety.com, Variety’s online edition.
A member of the Writers Guild of America since 1982, Weiner’s produced screenwriting credits include The Adventure...
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Weiner Rex 
