A Festival Wife's blog

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 $10K deal Artie Delfont offered me, pushing a bit of publicity about Ari Safta's new film company...  well, that deal promised to solve my other problem of persuading Jeffries from Variety to interview the Great Director. Here's how it would work: a) I would give Jeffries the Ari Safta "finance story" via Delfont, and then b) Jeffries would be obliged to interview my director, keeping my boss happy, my boss' boss happy, and everything would be fine. Theoretically.

It was a dirty little deal but what the hell - there I was at 10:45 am sharp, meeting Delfont in the Medici Hotel lobby. We walked in the conspiratorial rain a short distance to the Little Medici, the nickname of a bar in the narrow street directly behind the hotel, the actual name of which no one could remember. In his best spy whisper, Delfont was giving me a top-secret backgrounder.

 "Just between you and me, old sport," Delfont cautioned, "these guys want to stay away from the details. Of the money. You know what I mean."

"Wait a minute, Artie," I said. "I promised Jeffries a finance story. These guys are the money, right?"

"Right-o," he said, "they are the money guys, indeed. But they would rather speak about the movies, you see. The slate. Their vision."

"Their passion for film, you mean."

"Precisely," he said. "and please leave aside the more mundane, shall we say, fiscal matters."

Delfont laughed, setting his pomposity aside, and relaxing to a degree that was unconsciously insulting. "Angie and I talked about you," he confided. "She says you're not really such a tough bastard, deep down."

"I've mellowed."

"Worries about you, she does, your ex."

"I'm fifty-nine years old, Artie. I think I can take care of myself."

 "Always had it wrong about Angie and me, you know. Nothing going on with us, Henry. Never was."

"I'm sure you're right," I said, seeking to change the subject. "Look who's here. The man from Variety."

Adam Jeffries, ambling up the street, paused in front of the Little Medici. He looked puzzled.

"This is the Little Medici?"

"Glad you could make it," I said and introduced Delfont.

"But it says Café Reggio," he insisted, pointing up at the faded lettering on the café's façade. I don't think Delfont or I had ever noticed the name before, nor did we give a bloody damn now as we made haste to get out of the rain.

It was dark inside. The owner, a made-to-order Sicilian complete with greasy hair and scar down the left cheekbone, nodded towards the back room.

Delfont made the introductions. Steve Gordon was the tall one in the olive Brook Brothers poplin, a former Drexel trader who'd made a pile of money in 1980's and narrowly avoided jail in a famous SEC scandal.

Hershel Heath was the short, stocky fellow, an East End lawyer with a cockney rasp, a Saville Row suit that may have actually been fashionable some time ago, and a sloppy comb-over.

Ari Safta was the stubbly-faced big guy in the too-tight Armani jacket and designer blue jeans. A dark-skinned Lebanese who, it was said, had connections ranging from hashish lords of the Bekaa Valley to white slavers in Moscow to gold smugglers in Singapore. Safta sat back and stretched out his long thick legs to show off Prada slip-ons, sock-less on his shockingly thin and bony ankles.

Lounging off to the side, and getting no introduction at all, was The Worm, cell phone cradled against his ear. He was engaged in some indistinct conversation in a language that sounded possibly Latvian.

Jeffries shook hands all around, accepted a Coca-cola and got out his reporter's notebook.

"I don't have a lot of time," he declared in a bluff, business-like tone, "but Henry says you've got some news for me."

"Exclusive to Variety," Heath croaked.

"We want page one," said Gordon.

"We don't discuss placement. Matter of policy," Jeffries said, waving his hand dismissively.

"Look," said Safta, coating each word with a guttural accent before it rolled off his tongue, "you give us page fucking one with banner headline, kid, or we rip your fucking balls off."

"Er, ah, Ari's kidding," Delfont interjected quickly. "He's a big joker."

"Yeah, big joke. I'm just pulling your yo-yo, kid. Don't listen to me. And shut the fuck up Delfont, you cocksucker you! Ha ha. Just kidding. Big joker, that's me, sure."

Jeffries looked over at me like nothing so much as a puppy with his paw stuck in a doorjamb. I stepped in to say, "Gentlemen, why don't you tell Adam exactly what it is you are doing?"

"Okay. The story is we are forming a new film company," said Gordon, lighting a cigar. "The three of us."

"Four of us," Delfont said.

"An important film company," nodded Heath.

"A great fucking film company," said Safta.

"What is the name of your company?" Jeffries asked, pen poised.

"We're not ready to announce that."

 "To be announced - write it that way."

"Don't tell him what to write, asshole."

"Then tell him the fucking name, for crissakes."

"Everest Entertainment."

"Everest?"

"Like the fucking mountain, man," said Safta. "'Cause we're like on top of the world. See, you guys, I'm telling you. He doesn't get it. Nobody gets it. Just plain Everest don't work. We got to call it Mount Everest Entertainment. Put the fucking Mount in there for crissakes or nobody fucking gets it."

"Everest Entertainment," Heath said firmly.

"I think there already is an Everest Entertainment," Jeffries started to say, but Delfont cut him off.

"Everest Entertainment Limited, A Guernsey company."

"And you - " Jeffries waved his pen at the trio, "are the principals?"

"That's right. Me, Steve and Ari," Heath stated. "Three co-chairmen."

Delfont jumped up. "Our agreement was quite different," he complained.

"Okay, okay, you can be president."

Delfont sat back down, uneasily.

"And what is your business plan?"

"We will make movies, mainstream movies, for the world market," promised Gordon.

"A-level movies," agreed Heath.

"Studio-quality pictures, Three to four a year," said Delfont.

"Big budget movies with big fucking stars like you wouldn't fucking believe, man," said Safta.

Jeffries glanced at Ari Safta. Gordon looked at Heath, Heath looked at Delfont, Delfont just shrugged. Safta had his own style. He was also the money and, as such, not to be argued with.

"How are you financed?" Jeffries asked, attempting to inject a note of professionalism into the interview.

"Foreign sales."

"Some equity."

"Big private investors, man. Like, royalty and shit."

"Some private equity, foreign sales and a line of credit from - "

"To be announced."

"Hey, man, not to worry, we got the fucking money, so let's not talk about that, okay?" Safta said, clapping Jeffries on the arm to get his attention. "Hey, you want to come to a party? We're having a big fucking party tomorrow night."

"Sure, give him an invitation."

Looking like a mouse cornered by three cats, Jeffries unconsciously brushed off his arm where Safta had touched him.

"You, uh, mentioned private investors. Can you tell me who -"

"Can't talk about that."

"Hey, we should tell him about the local guy, the guy, the royal prince or duke whatever the fuck."

"What royal prince? I asked.

Delfont shushed me and equally admonished his partner. "No, no, Eddie," he said. "Can't talk about that."

Jeffries tried another tack. "You said ‘big budget' - what kind of budgets are we talking about?"

"Big," said Safta. "Big means big."

"We can't talk about budgets now," said Heath.

"Okay," said Jeffries, "What about your slate. Any movies that we can talk about?"

"We can't talk about titles yet."

"Titles to be announced. At Cannes. Write that."

"Fuck it, we've got Loose Cannon 2. Everybody knows," said Safta.

"The motorcycle racing movie?" said Jeffries, seizing on something he'd actually heard of. "Isn't that Travolta at MGM?"

"No, no," said Heath. "Can't say Travolta. In the original it was Travolta but Travolta passed on the sequel."

"But it's still at MGM?"

"MGM domestic. We got the rest of the world. Badass cop on a motorcycle teams up with the girl in the strip club, cleans up the town. Va-room, va-room, eh!"

"Is there a director?"

"The script is out to directors."

"We are close to signing a director. To be announced."

"It's Brian fucking DePalma directing, script by the same sonofabitch who did that movie - what's the name? Total Recall."

"An offer's out to DePalma."

"Any stars?"

"No stars."

"Can't talk about stars now."

"To be announced. Write it that way."

"Stop telling the kid how to write."

"Stallone is doing it," said Safta.

"Ari, don't say that. That was off the record."

"What happened to Brad Pitt?" I asked Delfont.

"Pitt is shit," Safta said. "Stallone, he makes money. It's all about the money. It ain't about art."

"Can't somebody shut Ari up, please?" Heath whined.

"What do you want me to do?" Gordon sputtered. "The proverbial fucking cat is out of the proverbial fucking bag."

"Can I print this?"       

"No, no, off the record!" said Gordon. "We've got an option on the script. Stallone is interested."

"His agent is going to give it to him."

"This weekend, the sonofabitch has to read it this weekend or he can go fuck himself, Stallone that cocksucker. I don't care who he is."

"Is that on the record or what?"

"Bloody hell, Ari," croaked Heath. "You're fucking this up!"

"Fuck you," laughed Safta. "Up yours."

"Look, here's the party invite," said Gordon, handing Jeffries a printed card with curlicue script that looked like a wedding invitation.

"We're throwing a real wingding," said Heath. "You'll have a very good time."

"Lots of nice bitches," said Safta. "We get you some nice bitches. Hey, Ivan -"

The Worm jerked to attention, as if he were ready to retrieve "the bitches" immediately.

 "Ari, you sound like a pimp," Heath scolded his partner.

Safta beamed, as if he'd been paid the ultimate compliment. But Jeffries was frowning.

"Well, this story is pretty vague, but -"

"Exclusive to you. We want good placement."

"We want page fucking one, man. Banner headline."

"I told you I can't promise placement," said Jeffries. "Listen, maybe this is an off the wall question, but what can you guys tell me about Luxembourg tax shelter deals?"

The three co-chairmen of Everest Entertainment, Ltd. looked at each other. They shrugged, cleared their throats, and scanned their watches. Each one had an appointment they were late for and excused themselves. Even The Worm hurried out, tagging along on Safta's heels, yakking on the cell phone.

Jeffries shook his head, glaring at me. "I really don't know if we have a story here. You promised me some leads on the Luxembourg tax shelter deal."

"May I just talk to Henry for a second," said Delfont pulling me aside. He ushered me into the men's room, the air acidic with tobacco and disinfectant cakes.

"Do not put all that stuff in the paper. Please, Henry. If Sly's agent reads anything in the papers..."

Jeffries followed us in and entered the lone stall to pee.

"Adam Jeffries is nothing if not professional," I said loudly to Delfont. "He knows Ari's comments are off the record."

"What's on the record here is what I'd like to know," complained Jeffries from behind the stall, his urination tinkling primly against the porcelain. And then suddenly from the deep recesses of the young man's inner bowel, betraying a state of gastric distress and escaping like a mouse's strangled cry, came a tiny sustained fart.

Delfont burst out laughing.

I confess I could not help myself from doing the same.

Beside ourselves, in a hysterical fit, we watched the intrepid journo exit the room zipping up his fly, red-faced and too embarrassed to make even a token stop at the washbowl. We were in tears, Delfont and I.

"What's on the record here?" Delfont repeated, hilariously."Just get him off the Luxembourg thing, Henry. We'll have fifteen hundred for you tomorrow."

"You said five. Upfront."

"Trust me," he lied.

* * *

 

 

 "Are those guys crooks?"

"Crooks? Oh, no."

 "Look, all I want to know is the Luxembourg tax shelter deal. You said they'd talk about it."

"I said they were financial guys who knew a lot about movie financing. Maybe they'd talk about it. You didn't ask the right questions."

"They wouldn't shut up long enough for me to ask questions."

I'd had a satisfying nap back at the hotel, interrupted by the bedside phone. It was Jeffries, and he was upset. He was on deadline, he wanted his story, and the little jerk wouldn't let up.

"Try a different angle," I counseled him. "The director I was telling you about - he's made close to sixty films. You said you'd talk to him."

"I said I'd think about it. Anyway, what does he know about any of this, your director whatever his name is?"

"Whatever his name is was making hit movies when you were in your nappies, young man. He knows how films are financed. With a few of his anecdotes you'll get some context, go all the way back to the Sixties, work your way up to the present -"

"Maybe, but what's he got to do with the Luxembourg tax deal?"

Once he did the interview with my director, I promised, I'd get him whatever he needed on the Luxembourg business.

"You're saying the guys I just talked to in that bar - that's when they'll talk to me about the tax shelter deal in Luxembourg?"

"They'll talk about it when I bloody well tell them to talk about it."

"I told you I don't trade favors," he said, after a pause to soak up my vitriol. "It's a matter of journalistic ethics."

"Fill the two-column space on page one with your damn ethics, then. I'm sure your editor will be very happy," I said, and hung up on him.

Five minutes later the bedside phone buzzed again. It was Jeffries, of course, asking what time would be best to interview my director and I silently congratulated him on his good sense. I proposed he meet me at Count Rassi's luncheon Wednesday, which was tomorrow. I assumed he had been invited.

"Who's Count Rassi?"

The poor lad was not to worry, I would make sure he received an invitation and he should be at the Medici side entrance at noon where a shuttle would be waiting to take him up the hill. Being there on time was his responsibility. Would I be obliged to wipe his nose and burp him, too?

Exhausted from the care and feeding of yet another journalist, I fell back in bed and looked at the note marked by the familiar scrawl that the concierge had given me earlier and turned to face my own strange responsibilities.

 

* * *

 

My ex-wife Angie was seated on the breezy terrace of the Medici Hotel in a long, bright tangerine sundress that billowed and snapped around her ankles like the sails on one of the rollicking yachts bobbing in the distance.

I would not extend the nautical metaphor further, except to say that my first impression of her as I crossed the terrace from afar was of a rather sleek racing craft. Angie was still a stunner, despite plenty of miles and oceans of booze. She was anchored to the table by a half-empty bottle of Lambrusco, a lit cigarette held aloft in her pale and slender limb like a ship's yardarm.

Here I will abandon the seafaring lingo except to say my ex-wife was drunk as a sailor and by anybody's sextant it was only noon. But then, as she was fond of quoting some sodden old movie star:  Somewhere in the world it was always cocktail hour.

"Henry, you old shit," she said, shifting unsteadily in her seat to batten down the airborne folds of her dress. "How's it going?"

"You're looking well, darling." On closer inspection, I could see her mascara was smeared.

"Liar, liar. You ol' liar, you. I'm a disaster and you know it. Sit down and have some wine. I've been searching everywhere for you. You're looking fat. Has anyone told you you're fat?"

"I'm glad to see you, too, Angie."

"Quit pretending, Henry. Quit pretending," she repeated, as drunks do, milking the sound of their own voices for comfort. "You're still trying to make everything all right, everything nice and all right for everybody. Round off the rough edges, beat down all argument, everybody must behave just so. The Great Unruffled One. That's you. But I know you, Henry. I know you. You're just a big fat softie. Still wearing that bloody watch I gave you for your birthday a million years ago."

"It's a very nice watch, Angie," I said, and it was true. The Tag Heuer she gave me for my thirtieth birthday was an extravagant gift. When we divorced she got the house, our daughter, the car, the bank account, everything. The watch I kept.

She laughed her short, hiccupping laugh and emitted a plume of carbon from her lungs. "For heaven's sake sit down, sweetie. Have some of this wine. It's on the BBC tab."

"If that's the only reason you wanted to see me, to help you inflate your expense account..."

"No, sit down silly. I need your help, Henry. This documentary I'm doing here... I need your help."

Angie always liked to dig into things, unearth secret histories, and bring to light the hitherto untold story, etc. of people and places and events, the subjects of her various documentaries. You've surely seen some of them on the BBC or at film festivals:  "Wales Without Tears: A Coal Miner's Life," which really showed what went on in the mines and was hotly debated in the press and by Laborites and Tories in both houses of Parliament; "Welcome to Bollywood," her profile of Bombay movie stars and the racism they encountered as they toured Indian communities in various English cities; her biggest hit, "Soho Red Light," the controversial exploration of prostitution in London, for which she befriended a half dozen whores and followed them around with her camera crew. I disagreed with the critics' accusations of "exploitation" but had my own complaints when several of Angie's subjects turned up at our home as frequent dinner guests. Angie insisted they were good people at heart, but our 10-year-old daughter's suddenly expanded vocabulary was a bit shocking.

I was proud of Angie's achievements. At the same time I always suspected that with each new project Angie was performing a kind of operation on herself. The camera was her scalpel, cutting into the skin of a subject and revealing the troubled inner soul. She was a surgeon, like her father, seeking to examine an internal disorder, an organ that was somehow malfunctioning or perhaps even missing entirely. Beyond the trendy, slightly English-accented, expatriate button-nosed rebellious Angela Ashley, she was searching for the heart of the girl from Cleveland whose father never mentioned his origins, never uttered a word of the Yiddish his parents had spoken and treated his daughter more like one his prized possessions - the Shaker Heights house they lived in, the Jaguar that he drove - than as the sensitive young girl she was.

Her Anglophile father had changed the family moniker from Ashkenazi to Ashley early in life, the better to smooth his entrance into medical schools and country clubs in that mid-western American gentile world. He prospered, married a thin, nervous blonde debutante from a prominent mid-western gentile family, and his pampered, sheltered offspring never knew the trials and tribulations that had afflicted his Russian-born parents, chased by pogroms and Cossacks to the shores of the New World and all the way to the haven of its green interior.

With altered name and enhanced physiognomy - rhinoplasty gave her a button-nose, making her awkward age less awkward - Angie grew up spoiled rotten. But somewhere along the way, between high school prom and first joint, privilege merged with a deep intellectual impulse resulting in the thoroughly stubborn, outrageously pugnacious, rule-breaking young woman who emerged in London in the 1960s with a scholarship to the London School of Art and a backstage pass as a frequent companion of the Rolling Stones. A regular in the tabloid gossip columns and at Annabel's in the wee hours, Angie was said to have been an inspiration for Antonioni's "Blow Up" (the naked teenagers scene).

Her politics were on the Marxist side, Groucho style; there was no cause she didn't champion, no party at which she didn't dance. A touch of the orgiastic in her nature ensured that there was no bed left unslept in.

By the time Angela Ashley landed in my bed, it was perhaps by way of exhaustion. Be that as it may, I was thrilled to have captured this wild thing of a girl, already a celebrated maker of experimental films who had mounted group shows with Yoko Ono. John Lennon wrote "Just a Jealous Guy" because Yoko was spending too much time with her, Angie claimed,.

We went out everywhere and had a very good time for a good long run. And then the Sixties were over and we were simply another married couple with a house and a child in school, going about our business in the world of couples in their houses and people in business and children in schools.

The period of time when Angie and I had been together seemed to me part of some kind of unedited work-in-progress, a trite "documentary of an era" assembled by someone else: Swinging London in the Sixties, a collage of Pop Art party stills viewed through the fuzzy lens of alcohol and too many drugs, the soundtrack playing bouncy tunes from Georgy Girl and other films that have as much meaning today as hieroglyphs on papyrus under museum glass.

That was not our marriage.

Yet, what was left of it? Blank spaces where there was shouting, time alone on airplanes that stretched the bond thin across time and continents, the late nights when I was trying to "build a business," the excuses that eventually become no excuse at all. The fault, in the long run of our marriage, was what at first belongs to the other person, then is a fault shared, and finally is no one's fault at all.

And so here we were, in the first year of the new Millennium, and she was explaining what she was doing in San Lorenzo, where she'd never been before.

"I'm making a documentary for the BBC about Jews on the Riviera."

"You won't find any here," I said, repeating the bad old joke again. "Except for Harvey Weinstein when the Festival's in town."

She failed to laugh. It was a bad joke.

"There's maybe a few running a boutique or two," I said, "Other than that, I'd say you're out of luck in San Lorenzo."

"Exactly," she said. "It's about how the people who built the world's most exclusive resort towns handed the Jews over to the Nazis during the war. A true story of luxury and murder!"

"Oh, come on."

"I'll prove it."

"Is San Lorenzo going to be the focus of your documentary?"

"If you mean the Festival, I don't care about your damned Festival, okay? I mean, if you think I'm here to wreck your Festival, forget it, it's just not the point. It's the locals I'm interested in. And that's where I need your help, Henry. You see, I'm starting with this guy Count Rassi - know him?"

"Everybody knows Rassi."

"I'm going to lunch there tomorrow. Up at his castle or whatever."

"That's nice. So am I."

"Wait a minute - he invited you, too?"

"Me, you, and about a hundred other people. He does a lunch every year. It's an AIDS benefit."

"Poo. And I thought it was just me. But this is where I need your help, Henry. With Rassi."

"You're going to his luncheon, you'll get your interview. I don't have any pull with Rassi. He's not my client or anything."

"Exactly. So, no conflict of interest."

"Conflict with what?" I couldn't figure out what she was driving at.

"I want you to help me get the goods on him, Henry. The goods. You've got the goods on everybody. If he was your goddam client you sure as hell wouldn't get me the goddam goods."

"The goods?"

"The dirt, Henry. You know what I mean. Don't be so fucking dense."

"There is no dirt on Rassi," I said. "The man is an open book."

"Cut the crap, Henry," she said. "I want you to help me expose the Nazi sonofabitch."

At this point, things were moving in a bad direction. The only thing I was sure of was that I needed a drink, before things got any worse.

Of course, worse is exactly what happened next.

 

 

 

 

 

 

NEXT WEEK: LUNCH AT COUNT RASSI'S

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