Saturday morning my cell phone rang. “Have you seen CNN?” said the somewhat frenzied voice on the other end of the line. “It’s a High Terror Orange Alert in the States.” I tried to explain that we had nothing to worry about, that this was just fear mongering and that more people die each year from being kicked by mules than in airplane related accidents, but my words felon deaf ears. It was a friend of mine who was also going to Washington DC the next day to interview Robert Duvall and the cast of Gods and Generals. Despite my comments to her I have to admit that I was feeling a little uneasy about the flight. I have traveled under all kinds of circumstances – bad weather, in tiny little planes that didn’t look like they could muster the speed to get off the ground, in the middle of the night, at rush hour – but never during a High Terror Orange Alert.
The next morning I headed for Pearson International expecting to be poked and prodded. I discovered that security for those traveling to Washington is even more intense than usual. “What is this?” said the stern security agent who had just emptied my bags. “I believe it’s a shoehorn sir,” I replied, trying my best not to let even a hint of sarcasm slip through. I’m all for tight security, but I found it hard to keep a straight face while being questioned about my shoehorn. Next was customs. In my last on-line diary I talked about the number 13, how it always pops up during my travel plans – whether it’s the date, my seat number or whatever. I’m not superstitious, and it’s a good thing, because while I’m about to enter a High Terror Alert my customs agent was number 13! From there I went to Gate U, the furthest gate in Terminal Two – I believe it’s actually located in Edmonton. More security. More questions.
The flight was uneventful, although we were reminded of the security alert in subtle ways. No one was allowed out of their seats for the last thirty minutes before landing, and the flight attendants were unusually chipper – almost too much so. We land on time and while I am waiting for my bags I checked out the Reagan airport. Airports are generally filled with tacky souvenir shops, but the one I found here has to top them all. Called America! it sold a multitude of overly patriotic items – everything from White House mugs to ties with the American flag on them. I bought a roll of toilet paper with Osama Bin Laden’s picture with the slogan Wipe Out Bin Laden. Wrong, really, really wrong, but it appealed to my sense of humor, and kind of set the tone for this trip to America!
Fifteen minutes by cab later we were at the Ritz Carlton. Located just outside the historic Georgetown section of Washington it is very elegant, and my room was big enough to do cartwheels in. In the hallway I saw CNN founder and multi-gazillionaire Ted Turner and Jeff Daniels, one of the stars of God and Generals. Turner is a remarkable guy. It’s rare to meet someone who has as much charisma as he has. His good-old-boy personality literally fills the room.
The movie is a prequel to the civil war drama Gettysburg. At three-and-a-half hours Gods and Generals feels almost as long as the Civil War itself. While there are some engaging scenes – in one effective sequence soldiers from opposite sides exchange tobacco and coffee on Christmas Day – the sheer length of the film weighs it down. I think Gods and Generals in an expanded form will one day make a great, sprawling DVD, or should have been cut by at least an hour for theatrical release.
Have you heard about the drinking games that college kids play? For instance they watch Star Trek, and every time Spock says “That’s illogical,” or some other predetermined catchphrase, everyone takes a drink. If you had a Mint Julep (this is the South after all) during Gods and Generals every time someone delivered a l-o-n-g speech on horseback you’d be reeling in the aisles by intermission. (Did I mention this movie has a twelve-minute intermission?)
The next day we shot some stand-ups (introductions and throws) at the Robert E. Lee Memorial, Arlington House in Virginia. It overlooks the Potomac River and Washington DC, and while I’m sure it’s lovely, when we were there fog and snow obscured the view and the footage looks like it could have been shot anywhere.
After that we went back to the Ritz Carlton for the interviews. Unlike a few junkets I have done, which were badly organized with long waits between interviews and actors dropping out at the last minute, this one ran like clockwork. Started by talking to director Ron Maxwell. He’s as long-winded as his movie. I think his passion for the Civil War and the film got the better of him, and he rambled though our entire time with one long, unusable answer that I though would never end.
Jeff Daniels was next, and he’s a pro. As I walked into the suite to interview him, the previous “interviewer” was sitting on his lap having a photo taken. Then she moved over to his knee and invited her assistant to sit and have her picture taken. When she left he was shell shocked, but pulled himself together when I assured him I didn’t want to sit on his lap.
Robert Duvall was the last interview of the day. Keep in mind we shot this the day before his comments about never wanting to work in Canada again hit the press. Had I known that the interview would have taken a slightly different path. As it was we discussed the film, and the various military roles he has taken over the years. See the complete interview on Reel to Real.
I think the most surprising thing about the whole trip was the lack of concern over the High Orange Terror Alert. Apart from extra scrutiny at the airport, there was no feeling of panic, and no one even mentioned the alert. No one was even wearing orange. That feeling of calm is probably going to evaporate in the next few weeks as the US seriously gears up for war, but for now it’s business as usual.
It doesn’t seem to matter what time my flight is, 5 am or 5 pm, I always find myself scrambling to get to the airport with a ticket in one hand and a packed bag in the other. On Wednesday night I decided not to pack because my flight didn’t leave until 2 pm on Thursday. You would think that should give me loads of time to get ready. Wrong. Once again I found myself in the back of a cab, shoving rumpled clothes into a suitcase and wishing I was better organized.
The flight is on time (even though I’m not) and I barely make it on the plane. As the big steel door shuts behind me and I take my seat a little rush of anticipation washes over me. I’m off to one of my favourite places, New York, at my favourite time of year and I’ll be seeing Kill Bill. Not bad for a Thursday.
Here’s just a bit of a rant about LaGuardia airport. Like so many places the washrooms don’t have paper towels to dry your hands with, just hand blowers. I guess environmentally it makes sense, but when the dryer only has the wind power of an asthmatic kitten breathing lightly on your hands it isn’t very effective. I always forget about this when I’m there and invariably end up with dripping wet hands at the baggage carrousel…
In keeping with the hurried spirit established earlier in the day I arrive in New York behind schedule and don’t have time to check into the hotel. I leave my bags with the concierge and rush down to Loew’s Kips Bay Theatre on 32nd Street to catch an early screening of In the Cut, a new film from director Jane Campion. I missed it at the film festival this year, and although it received mixed reviews, a number of people whose opinions I trust said they really liked it.
This is a press screening so there is only a handful of people in a giant theatre. A handful of people… and one tiny little mouse. It is amazing how something so small, so harmless can hold a group of otherwise sensible people hostage. You could tell where the mouse was by the gasps and the screams of “Kill the mouse!” that would erupt from random corners of the house. Being more Buddhist in nature I yelled “Live free or die,” as the little critter scurried past me, and my pal Teri who was sitting next to me reminded those who decided to leave rather than deal with the horrors of the tiny rodent, that the mouse wasn’t going to chew through their shoes, so they should just relax.
Those of us brave enough to expose ourselves to the demonic rodent settled down once the movie began. Starring Meg Ryan and Mark Ruffalo, In the Cut is a dark crime drama based on the best selling novel by Susanna Moore. It reminded me of the gritty New York dramas of the 1970s that were about the soft underbelly of the city, films that portrayed NYC as a great, but failed social experiment, populated by alienated outsiders searching for some meaning in a city that was running out of control. This is not the Meg Ryan New York of When Harry Met Sally, this is a place filled with existential dread, where every alley is menacing and danger is woven into the fabric of everyday life.
Everyone is making a fuss about the risky nature of Meg Ryan’s performance in this film. Sure, she’s naked and has some pretty racy sex scenes, but let’s not forget, this isn’t the first time she has appeared nude on-screen. By her own count it is the fourth time she has doffed her clothes in front of the camera. At this year’s Toronto International Film Festival she admonished one reporter who asked her about doing her first-ever nude scene for this film. “I’ve appeared nude in other films,” she said, “apparently I wasn’t very memorable in those.” Also, In the Cut isn’t about the sex scenes; it’s about relationships and trust.
At any rate, anyone who isn’t easily distracted by Ms. Ryan’s exposed skin will notice that the performance to watch in the film is Mark Ruffalo as Detective Malloy. It is his most ambiguous role to date, and despite a cheesy moustache he brings a Brandoesque passion to the part. This is the kind of character that we don’t get to see very often in the movies anymore, a real anti-hero who rides the line between being a compassionate man and a total creep.
After the credits rolled I went to the lobby and grabbed some food then turned around and went back inside to eat a quick dinner with the mouse and see Elf. It’s a very different view of New York City than the previous movie. Will Ferrell plays a human adopted by Santa’s elves who travels to NYC to meet his real father. The NYC of Elf is awash in Christmas lights and as sweet as a candy cane. It’s as frothy as an eggnog latte at Starbucks, but also very funny. Will Ferrell is very winning as Buddy, and it is his performance that keeps the movie on track and prevents it from becoming sickly sweet or manipulative. It’s the kind of film that could slip into easy sentimentality, and with an over-the-top Robin Williams or a lesser comic in the lead role it certainly would have, but Ferrell makes it work. See the full review on Reel to Real in early November.
After the movie we went to the Toys R Us store in Times Square for a reception – fancy snacks, gingerbread cookies and Elf martinis. A couple of vodka candy cane specials later and it was time to check into the hotel and crash.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2003
Woke up early to prepare for a long day. As I unpacked everything I realised I had brought way too many clothes for a four-day trip. I have nine or ten ties alone, and have brought so many shirts I have to order up more hangers from room service. Note to self: Next time don’t pack in the cab.
The day began with the Elf interviews at the Regency Hotel in midtown. I spoke with Zooey Deschanel first. She was holding a large teddy bear and spoke very loudly for some reason. Next was Mary Steenbergen who I have interviewed a number of times, most recently at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. She told me the funniest on-set gag was watching James Caan trying to maintain his focus and not laugh when Will Ferrell was doing his thing in the giant elf costume.
I was a little nervous about speaking to James Caan. One of the first films I saw on my own at the theatre was Rollerball when I was eleven or twelve, and I have admired his work ever since. I’ve also heard that he can be a difficult interview, and is a no nonsense kind of guy. I guess that makes sense from someone who spent nine years on the rodeo circuit and has a black belt in Karate. Instead I found someone who was eager to talk, and was very funny. In the film he plays a hard-hearted publisher of children’s books, and I asked him he if based the character on anyone in particular. “You,” he said, “I looked you up on the internet and based the character on you…” You’ll see more of my chat with James Caan in early November.
I also wasn’t sure what to expect from Will Ferrell. His comic persona is so over-the-top that I have expected to walk into his room and find him wearing only his underwear and a dunce hat. To my relief he was fully dressed and very sedate. He greeted me warmly and thoughtfully answered each of my questions. Near the end of our chat I asked if he considers himself to be a serious person. Tune into Reel to Real to hear his answer.
I was really looking forward to the last two interviews of the morning – two classic TV land actors, Ed Asner and Bob Newhart. You can’t help but envision Lou Grant when you meet Asner, and as I was talking to him I couldn’t help but think of some of the legendary moments from the Mary Tyler Moore Show. My favourite moment comes from the very first show of the series. “You’ve got spunk,” Lou Grant says to Mary. “Why thank-you,” she replies. “I hate spunk!” he barks. It made me laugh then, and makes me laugh now.
When Asner found out I was from Toronto he told me that he had spent a lot of time in the city, and once guest edited the Toronto Sun. As a thank-you they sent him a red Toronto Sun newspaper box filled with booze.
Just before lunch I spoke with Bob Newhart, my last interview for Elf. When I was a kid one of the first records I remember was a comedy album called The Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart, and I had always enjoyed his shows. We talked about the use of forced perspective rather than computer generated special effects to create Newhart’s elfin appearance in the North Pole scenes. He told me that he was always placed eight to ten feet away from Ferrell so they could be in the same frame but appear to be of different sizes. We’ll use more of Newhart on the show when the movie comes out in November.
After lunch (pasta with tomato sauce and chicken parmesan) I hoofed it over to the ritzy-ditzy Mark Hotel on Madison Avenue at east 77th Street to do the interviews for In the Cut. On the walk over it seemed that every one I passed on the street was wearing very expensive clothes and walking a small yappy dog. I managed to navigate around the old ladies with dogs and large shopping bags and arrived at the hotel early with the hope of starting my interviews before my scheduled time. No such luck. The schedule was out of whack because Meg Ryan had decided to pack it in early. The rumour was that she was tired of answering questions about the nudity in the movie, and on that level I don’t blame her for leaving, but I was disappointed not to be able to speak with her.
Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Meg Ryan’s sister who lives above a strip joint in NY’s East Village. She’s the daughter of actor Vic Morrow (who was tragically killed on the set of The Twilight Zone movie) who once said, “I could never play the ingenue, the girl next door or the very successful young doctor. That would be a bore.” Her choice of parts reflects her penchant for quirky roles, and In the Cut is no different. Her Pauline borders the line between needy and obsessive that subtly hints at mental illness without resorting to histrionics. It is her best and most substantial role since 2001’s The Anniversary Party. We talked about shooting in the 100 degree humid weather of New York in August and how the sticky, steamy atmosphere influenced her work.
I enjoyed talking to her, but was completely distracted during the interview by the loud, weird breathing of one of the cameramen. It was so loud that I thought he was going to blow a lung and keel over. She didn’t seem to notice, or maybe she was just used to it, but I was totally thrown off by it.
Next up was Mark Ruffalo. We had spoken at the recent Toronto Film Festival for the movie My Life Without Me, and I find him to be an easy going and interesting conversationalist. In Toronto we spent most of our time talking about my watch. It is a Tissot Touch watch like Lara Croft wore in the movie Tomb Raider 2. I’ve had mine for a couple of years so the novelty has kind of worn off, but when I showed him how it had sensors in the face crystal which turn the watch into a compass, a altimeter, an alarm clock, and how it tells the temperature he was blown away by it. I forgot to check this time to see if he was wearing one…
We chatted about his research, and how he rode with New York City cops for a time to prepare for the film. I mentioned the clothes he wore, which seemed perfect for his character, and he told me they bought all the costumes from a recently cancelled television show called The Job for $400.
I had a substantial wait after the Ruffalo interview, so I hung around in the hospitality suite and talked to some of the other reporters. It’s usually a good place to gather some gossip, and today was no different. I picked up one juicy tidbit, but I’m not really at liberty to reveal exactly who it was about so I’ll use the old gossip columnist’s anti-defamation trick of giving you some obtuse clues and letting you figure out the identity for yourself. Here we go… One very famous actor who has made a career of appearing politically aware and compassionate, but is actually a giant pain was overheard ordering his flunkies to pick up a birthday present for his actress wife. Apparently he didn’t really care what the present was, just so long as it was expensive. In the end after several suggestions a Prada jacket was selected. Just as the gossip was starting to get good, I got called away…
The last interview of the day was with the Jane Campion. The New Zealand-born Academy Award winning director (she won for Best Screenplay for The Piano) and I spoke about adapting the popular novel into a film, and her decision to change it locale from the west side of New York to the east. She wanted more of a feeling of claustrophobia and the East Village offers a funkier (read: rundown) ambiance than the more upscale West. You’ll see more with Leigh, Ruffalo and Campion on an up-coming Reel to Real.
The workday was finished, but I had managed to weasel my way onto the guest list for a party on the 80th floor of the Empire State Building for nine o’clock. In all my trips to NY I have never bothered to check out the building, and this party offered not only the chance to see one of NYC’s landmarks up-close, but to also grab gratis drinks and food at the same time. The party was thrown in honour of the Hollywood Foreign Press who were in New York to see Elf. The Hollywood Foreign Press are the voting body of the Golden Globes, and because of that they tend to have pretty good parties. There were not only Elf martinis and finger foods but the actual elf himself, Will Ferrell and the rest of the cast.
I didn’t realize the cast would be there until I noticed James Caan standing next to me at the bar. Wow! It’s Sonny Corleone. Then I spied Ed Asner, Bob Newhart and Jon Favreau. Wow again. It’s Lou Grant, Dr. Bob Hartley and the guy from Swingers. Will Ferrell showed up by himself and immediately started chatting and hanging out with people. There was no VIP room at this party.
I chatted with Ferrell for quite a while, and we were just dishing some dirt about some of the ridiculous things some of the other reporters had asked him that day when a little girl came up to him with a question. She was about seven years old and had just come from a screening of the film. In the movie once Buddy (Ferrell) gets to the big city he continues the elf tradition of putting maple syrup on everything he eats. The little girl wanted to know why. “You don’t put maple syrup on spaghetti,” she said, “only on pancakes and omelettes.” Ferrell laughed, but tried to keep a straight face as he explained that elves like different food than everybody else. It was a nice moment that demonstrated what a nice, down-to-earth man he is. He’s really good with kids, and when I mentioned that he told me he and his wife are expecting in March.
Next I had my photo taken with Favreau, Bob Newhart and Ed Asner. That’s one for the scrapbooks. Once everyone’s eyes adjusted to the flash Favreau and chatted about the film, and I mentioned that I thought it was really cool to have used Dynamation pioneer Ray Harryhausen as the voice of one of the stop-motion animated characters. He told me they literally stopped him on the street, explained what they were doing and used a mini-disc player to record his one line right there and then. They didn’t even bring him into the studio.
It was a great party, but it got late really fast, and after a quick look around on the 86th floor observation level I hot-footed it back to the hotel and fell into a coma like sleep.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2003
This is a light day, and it’s a good thing too. I’m feeling a bit tired from last night’s party. I sift through the billions of ties I have with me, and realize that although I brought a lot of neckwear along for the ride, none of them really match the shirts I have with me. How is that possible? I choose one that I think looks OK, but later when I ask Teri if it is too much she politely says, “It’s not awful, but you’re knocking on that door…”
I had already seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre before leaving for New York, and while I’m not usually a fan of re-makes, this one is really scary. At the screening in Toronto I sat next to Teri who was wearing a turtle neck sweater. By the time we left she had screamed out loud not once, but twice (a first for me, I’ve never heard anyone yell in fear before at a movie) and her sweater was stretched out of shape from pulling it up over her eyes. I didn’t scream or cover my eyes, but I did consider sleeping with the light on that night.
We’re doing the interviews for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre at a gallery / warehouse space in the Meat Packing District called Eyebeam. The gallery is a not-for-profit new media arts organization established to provide access, education, and support for students, artists, and the general public in the field of art and technology. That makes it sound a whole lot nicer than it actually is. This is basically just a large open space that was clearly once used for some sort of industrial work. Nonetheless it is a cool space, and one of the upcoming shows sounds really quite wild. “Robot” is a four-day festival featuring a robotic talent show, exhibition, workshops, presentations, party and massage parlor. Do the robots give us massages, or are we expected to rub their backs?
While I’m waiting to shoot one of the other reporters tells me a joke. (If you haven’t seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre you need to know that the villain’s name is Leatherface because of his habit of making flesh masks out of the faces of his victims.) This guy was telling me that if this version of the film does well they’re going to do a Peta approved sequel. The bad guy’s name in that one? Pleatherface…
New Line has set up a Texas Chainsaw Massacre evidence room for us to shoot intros and extros while we wait to do our interviews. It’s a good idea. They are shooting in black and white, with a strange strobe effect on the camera so it looks like an old cheapo horror film from the 50s. I take advantage of the set-up and shoot some material for our up-coming Halloween show before being called away to do the interviews.
Jessica Biel is first. The last time I interviewed her it didn’t go very well, so I didn’t know what to expect this time around. I spoke with her last year for the film The Rules of Attraction. The interview was only four minutes long, but after two minutes I had asked her four or five questions and gotten four or five yes or no answers and a couple of nods. Nothing else. We sat in silence as I stared at her trying to come up with something to say that might grab her, and finally after thirty seconds or so I said, “Those are great shoes,” and she talked about her shoes and where she got them for the remainder of our time. Needless to say that interview never went to air.
This time she was much more willing to talk. Who knows what was going on last time… everybody has a bad day occasionally, and unfortunately I think I hit hers the first time we spoke. She described to me her love of horror movies, and how she loves the feeling of being scared. There was no dead air during this interview, and after it was done I complimented her on her shoes and left the room.
Next up were her co-stars Eric Balfour, Erica Leerhsen and Jonathan Tucker all grouped together. When they found out that I was from Toronto they all piped up with Toronto stories. The guys had done lots of work here (Balfour lived at Spadina and King for a time) and Leerhsen had visited the city. It’s difficult to interview three people at once, particularly when you only have a few minutes, but each of them had their say and all seemed like interesting people that I’d like to chat with again, one on one. If I had more time I’d ask Eric Balfour about his role on Six Feet Under and get him to tell me about Blessed With Soul, a band he had with Brittany Murphy in the early 1990s. I’d ask Jonathan Tucker about his father, Paul Hayes Tucker, who is the world’s foremost authority on Claude Monet and French Impressionism and I’d get Erica’s thoughts on celebrity from the point of view of someone whose father, Charles Leerhsen, was the longtime editor of celebrity publication US Magazine. That will all have to wait until next time. This time we talked about the physical demands of shooting an action / horror film, and I discovered that although Balfour broke his wrist while making the movie, he did it while goofing around on a basketball court and not while in production. He wore a specially made removable cast while shooting.
With a couple of hours to waste before the Kill Bill screening at seven o’clock I walked around lower Manhattan, sightseeing and shopping. I dropped by the famous Chelsea Hotel (222 West 23rd Street) to check out the art in the lobby. It bills itself as a “rest stop for rare individuals” and in it’s almost 100 year life as a hotel has seen enough action to inspire a hundred movies and a hundred more novels. A who’s who of bohemia has called the place home, everyone from William S. Burroughs to Tenessee Williams from Mark Twain to Sid Vicious. Even Julius Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb” spent time there. Rumor has it that Ethan Hawke currently resides there after his break-up with Uma Thurman.
It is a true landmark, although the front desk staff could use a lesson in hospitality. When I asked to buy one of the hotel’s t-shirts the man behind the desk, who looked like he had been awake since 1960, glanced in my direction and said, “I don’t think so.” I wasn’t sure what he said, so I politely asked him to repeat himself. This time he said a little louder, “You’ll have to come back during the day.” When I pointed out that it was only 4:30 pm he told me that all the merchandise was locked up and he didn’t have a key, then, without another word he turned around and continued watching a small television propped up on a table behind the front desk. It was clear I was never going to get my shirt. I had to wonder if the crusty old guy behind the counter had been there since the days when Mark Twain frequented the place because it looked like the only bags he was capable of checking in were the bags under his eyes.
From there it was a quickish walk over to the Loew’s theatre on 34th Street to see a sneak peak of Kill Bill. I have been waiting patiently for Quentin Tarantino to make another movie since Jackie Brown in 1997. There was gossip that he was working on an epic Second World War drama; word spread that he was giving up directing to focus on his acting career and there were other rumors that he had flamed-out and simply couldn’t pull it together to do anything. I had heard many tings about the movie, both good and bad. People were complaining about the violence, to which Tarantino replied, “Sure, Kill Bill’s a violent movie. But it’s a Tarantino movie. You don’t go to see Metallica and ask the band to turn the music down.” Others whined that there was no character development.
What they are missing is that Kill Bill is a thrilling, samurai sword swinging romp that shows Tarantino working at the top of genre busting game. By taking elements from all the grind house movies he grew up watching – Samurai movies, revenge dramas, kung fu films, spaghetti westerns – and artfully blending them together he has created a new kind of genre film with one foot reverently in the past while the other mercilessly kicks you in the head. It’s a bloody (apparently he used over 100 gallons of fake blood in the last scene alone), excessive and exhilarating ride. Oh yeah, and Uma Thurmond wears a tight yellow jumpsuit just like the one Bruce Lee wore in his last film Game of Death. When it was over I wanted the projectionist to rewind the film and start it again. I haven’t been that jazzed at a screening in a long time.
After the movie I went back to the hotel and over drinks and food discussed the movie with the other reporters before calling it an early night.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2003
A beautiful day in New York, and happily enough, a day off with no interviews or screenings. My pal Teri and I meet in the hotel lobby at ten o’clock with the plan to walk around and sightsee. Our successful experience with the Empire State Building excursion brought out the inner tourist in both of us, so we headed down 6th Avenue in search of A. a Starbucks, and B. touristy fun.
Once fully loaded with caffeine we headed downtown. Our first stop was The Strand book store at Broadway and 12th Street. I love this place. The original store opened in 1927 on 4th Avenue when that stretch of property was known as the Book Row of America. Most of the other shops are gone now, but the Strand lives on in its new location (since 1958) with all its musty, cluttered charm. They advertise that the store contains 8 miles of books, and I don’t doubt it. Books literally spill off the floor to ceiling shelves and are piled on tables and on the floor. It’s a mix of new and used with the largest rare book collection in New York City. I pick up a copy of Steve Martin’s newest novel, The Pleasure of My Company.
After some more window shopping, and a confirmed Michael Stipe sighting (he was walking on Broadway with a plastic shopping bag in his hand) we had brunch at The Noho Star (330 Lafayette Street). I’ve passed this place a million times and have never gone in, but I had always heard they had really great homemade ginger ale. I didn’t have any on this visit, but I will go back. My Eggs Chiapas (Crisp Tortilla, Sunnyside Eggs, Guacamole, Cheddar, Bacon and Refried Beans) were unbelievably tasty and the service was very good.
From there we wandered down to Canal Street. There is nothing quite like Canal Street’s loud and dirty street mall. If you can navigate through the crush of humanity that congregates there on the weekends you can buy everything from knock-off Gucci bags for $30 to miniature turtles for $3 to watches and belts for $10. If you feel like bartering this is place to be. Each of the tiny little stores has pretty much the same thing, but at wildly different prices. Prices will drop faster than ^&*(&(*)__*()&&^%$ if you mention that you can pick up an item cheaper at a stall a few doors away. I don’t much like crowds, so after a cursory look around I had seen enough.
Back up Broadway and over to the Bowery, with a quick side trip to CBGBs. This is the legendary punk rock club that spawned the careers of The Ramones, Blondie, The Talking Heads and Patti Smith. I have seen several shows here, and although the floor squishes under your feet and the smell of stale cigarettes will probably never go away, (even though smoking was banned in NYC last year) this claustrophobic sweatbox has a certain punk charm about it. It has remained virtually unchanged since its heyday in the late 1970s, although apparently they have fixed the leaky ceiling that used to rain foul water down on the stage and the customers from the flop house above.
After a quick walk through the East Village it was time to head back. We had spent seven hours walking in circles through the lower part of Manhattan, and although it’s early I plan to stay in tonight, order some food to my room and read up on Kill Bill.
MONDAY OCTOBER 6, 2003
Today is the day I get to meet Uma. I wish I had ties that matched my shirts. Damn.
Quentin Tarantino has cancelled on us. Apparently he is sick after traveling all over Europe in the last week to promote the movie. That’s disappointing, but we’re still getting Lucy Liu, Daryl Hannah, Vivica A. Fox and, of course, Uma.
The interviews are divided up into two sections. Lucy, Vivica and Daryl in the morning and then we come back and speak with Uma in the afternoon. My flight out isn’t until 7:45 pm, so no matter how far behind they are running (and they will be running behind) I won’t be in any danger of missing my plane.
Lucy Liu is first. In the film she plays O-Ren Ishi, a cold blooded assassin who becomes the first female head of the Japanese Mafia. She’s perfect for the film, possessing physical grace, presence, strength, personality and as Roger Ebert pointed out, “the ability to look serious while doing ridiculous things.” We talked about the background of her character. “I think she’s a good person,” she said. “Quentin didn’t want to make a specific protagonist / antagonist stereotypical idea of what the bad guy should be. He gives her a backstory and the animation [which explains O-Ren’s violent past] which gives her a feeling of warmth, and hopefully you don’t think she is completely cold blooded at the end.”
Next I spoke with Vivica A. Fox. She has the smallest role in Volume One, but who knows, she might be back for Volume Two. We mainly spoke about her role’s physicality and how she trained seven hours a day for three months to prepare for the part. She also had high praise for Tarantino. She told me she didn’t know what to expect when she saw the film for the first time. “When I saw the final product I thought ‘Wow, there is a reason why Quentin is a director and his films are so successful.’”
Like some many of the people I spoke to over this week-end in New York, I had just interviewed Daryl Hannah a few weeks ago in Toronto. Last time we spoke for a much different kind of move, Casa de Los Babys, a quiet John Sayles film about American women in an unnamed South American city waiting to adopt babies. In Kill Bill she plays assassin Elle Driver, a character inspired by a legendary Swedish revenge flick called They Call Her One Eye in which Christina Lindberg plays Frigga, a young victim of white slavery who is raped, mutilated (hence the eye patch) and beaten throughout most of the film. She then rehabilitates herself and seeks revenge on those who did her wrong. It was the first film to ever be banned in Sweden, and was described by TV Guide as a “totally vile and obnoxious action film.”
“I’ve never played a full-on villain before,” she said. “I played a villain in Blade Runner, but she had a quality of vulnerability and innocence. This character has none of that. She’s just evil.”
Uma Thurmond gets angry to play The Bride in Kill Bill. She has sworn revenge on the group of DiVAS (Deadly Viper Assassination Squad) who raided her wedding and killed everyone, leaving her for dead. The action in the movie begins when she wakes from a coma four years after her ill-fated wedding day. One by one she seeks payback on the sexy killers who tried to do her in.
Tarantino and Thurmond first discussed the story at a party during the shoot for Pulp Fiction in 1994. Over drinks they created a revenge fantasy, with Uma playing a Bride hell-bent on retribution. Nothing came of the idea until many years later when the two reconnected at the Miramax Oscar party in March of 2000. Uma mentioned the story and Tarantino promised to write her the script in time for her thirtieth birthday which was just three weeks away. He missed that deadline, but in the next year-and-a-half cranked out a 222 page script that would eventually become Kill Bill Volumes One and Two.
In person Uma is very tall, (about six feet), lithe and yes, very beautiful. I had never met her before, although I once saw her on the street at the Cannes Film Festival and remember thinking that she almost glowed. I have since read that cinematographers like lighting her for film because her skin reflects 40 % more light than most other people. Today she is wearing jeans, sneakers, a white shirt, a denim jacket, and it should be noted for you gossip hounds, a giant wedding ring.
I reminded her of a quote I had read about her time spent working with the fight masters who taught her the moves she uses in Kill Bill. She said that the most important ting she learned from them was how to learn. “I almost felt like I was a baby, which I really was,” she said, thinking back to her training. “It was humbling to look at this mountain of expertise and work that was set out for me. I had to get very, very small and jut work on the tiniest things at a time. At first you would have thought I was going to learn [simple moves] like one, two, three, four. I can do that, but [this was going to be difficult with] with the amount of battling that I have and Quentin’s improvisational style and how he made the movie.
“The clicking part for me was when I realized that there was not going to be any ‘one, two, three, four.’ It was going to be improvisational and they were going to invent new fights on the spot and say, ‘Now you’re going to 5, 7, 12, 15…’ They were just going to make it up and it kind of re-wired my nervous system because it is so terrifying. That’s what I finally understood that I had been set up to do. To achieve this film I had to be able to synthesize all this new information and execute it on the spot. I guess it is the difference between learning a dance and knowing how to dance.”
That was it. My last interview of the weekend and it was only 3 o’clock. I’m not booked to leave until 7:45 pm, but I’m itching to get home so I take my chances and head out to the airport. There are seats on the 5:10 flight, so with a mountain of interview video tapes and 500 ties, I get checked in and leave several hours early, anxious as always to get home and sleep in my own bed.
My horoscope for Friday says, “Life looks a bit grim today.” I have a long day of travelling, seeing movies and running around today, and I refuse to accept that particular celestial prophesy. So I check another paper. “If a partnership is not working out the way it should…” This one isn’t shaping up very well either. I’m willing to read every newspaper and magazine on the airplane until I find a horoscope with some good news. OK, I check the Toronto Star. More bad news. What am I doing on an airplane? It’s not like I really believe in horoscopes, but I do occasionally read them, and I’m just surprised that all of mine are so negative. I didn’t think they’d tell you really bad things… Anyway, I finally find some hope in the pages of Vanity Fair. “Just because you are experiencing a little retrograde blip in your 3rd solar house…” (WHAT!) I won’t share the whole new agey thing with you, but to sum up, it basically says everything is going to be OK, which is good because it is my second trip to New York this week, and I’m tired and grumpy.
Luckily I’m not superstitious, (despite my little freak-out about the horoscope) because if I was I would never have gotten on either of the out going planes from Toronto. On Monday I left from Gate 13. GATE 13! I didn’t know they had Gate 13s. I assumed that they wouldn’t, just as most hotels don’t have 13th floors. Then today I scheduled to leave at 1 pm, or 13:00 on the 24 hour clock. Seriously, I know people who would have let this get the better of them. Not me, I bravely forged on and got on the plane, mostly because I had a First Class ticket, courtesy of my friend Teri Hart who wheeled and dealed us into the pointy end of the plane with the bigger seats and decent food.
On Monday, as I reported in an earlier diary, I flew American Airlines with disappointing culinary results. This trip was a vast improvement with a light lunch of cold chicken, pesto pasta shells, some brie and a spinach salad with roasted garlic and chive dressing. For dessert there was Lindor chocolates. I have eaten better food for sure, (Air France still takes the award for best in-flight food) but at least this was a bit more substantial than the packets of pretzels they heave at you on other airlines.
Our flight was on time, which I found surprising considering that New York had just been buried in snow. I left last Tuesday and it was cold, but still quite pleasant. On Wednesday they got more snow than they had all of last winter. By the time I arrived on Friday most of it was gone, but travelling by car was still a take-your-life-into-your-hands kind of proposition. We got stranded at LaGuardia (located in the aptly named town of Flushing, NY) for a while because there simply were no cabs to be had. None. There was a huge line, and every ten minutes or so one lone cab would come by, pick up the first person in line and the rest of us would shuffle a couple of inches towards the front, like cows on the way to the slaughterhouse. Then a slightly sleazy looking man named Larry approached us and asked if we wanted to take a limo downtown. He’d give us a lift for fifty bucks, which is about twice would it would normally cost, but the option was to stand in line and slowly grow old, or get downtown before my next birthday. We took the limo. What he didn’t tell us is that we would be sharing it with seven other people. It was starting to feel like a shady deal, but we really didn’t have a choice, now that we had left the line whatever progress we had made towards the front was lost, and we’d have to start all over again. So we hop in with the other passengers – five elderly ladies from Alabama and a father and daughter from Richmond Hill, Ontario.
It was cramped, with one old woman virtually sitting on my lap. Her name was Kathryn and she hails from Jacksonville, Alabama. In the course of the trip we learned that she agrees with “that Canadian woman who called Bush a moron,” has an “unmarried 36 year-old son named Brendan,” has been married twice, and has a Chihuahua-Jack Russell terrier mix named Little Patches. She was hysterical, with a lovely, sing-songy Southern accent. Little did I know at the time that save for travelling companions, she would probably be the nicest person I would speak to over the course of the weekend. More about that later.
Get to the hotel in time to check in, drop off my bags and leave immediately to see Gangs of New York at the AMC Empire Theatre in Times Square. The Essex House is a fine-looking old art deco New York hotel with a great view of Central Park – I can see the skating rink from my window, and hear the clomping of the horse drawn carriages – and very central. The hotel is just steps away from Carnegie Hall, Columbus Circle and shopping on Fifth and Madison Avenues. Close-by is Saks Fifth Avenue, Museum of Modern Art, Radio City Music Hall, St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Rockefeller Center. Too bad I’ll be too busy to actually see any of this stuff…
It’s dark by the time we get to the theatre, but Times Square is so lit up it seems like mid-day. The theatre is huge, with twenty-five screening rooms. Never have I seen so many escalators. We worm our way through the maze of hallways and escalators – it kind of looks like that famous M.C. Escher painting of the interconnected stairways – until we get to theatre number seven. The seats are like large leather airplane seats, which is good because Gangs of New York clocks in at almost three hours. I grab some popcorn, some pretzels with a dipping sauce and two cokes ($15.50 USD) to share with Teri. We’ve been talking about the French Onion Soup at the Essex House all day. She claims it’s the best in the world, but we didn’t have time to have any. Maybe later, for now we’re stuck with fake cheese, fake butter, popcorn and pretzels.
I have been curious about Gangs of New York for some time. I know that Martin Scorsese originally wanted to make this movie about twenty-five years ago, but it kept getting shoved to the back burner. Even in it’s most recent incarnation it seems to have taken some time to get to the screen. Leonardo DiCaprio has been circling around this script since he was seventeen, well before his success with Titanic, and in fact he told me he actually even changed agencies to make himself more available to Scorsese. The director always takes a long time to edit his films, sometimes as much as a year-and-a-half or two years as in the case of The Last Waltz, but Gangs has been so highly anticipated, that the delay raised doubts in people’s heads. I have been hearing rumblings from people that the constant delays and changing release dates signify that the movie isn’t any good. That if they had a winner they wouldn’t have done re-shoots. Well, that’s all just conjecture. I’ve seen it, and while you’ll have to wait for the whole review later this month on Reel to Real, rest assured, Gangs of New York isn’t Martin Scorsese’s Heaven’s Gate. Daniel Day Lewis hands in a great performance as Bill the Butcher, leader of the Nativists and the supporting cast of British and Irish actors are impressive. It’s a good movie with plenty of Scorsese’s trademark visual flourishes and an interesting story. Tune in to find out more.
After the movie we make our way down the maze to a chartered bus that will take us back to the Essex House. I finally get to have my French Onion Soup, although by this time it’s edging up to mid-night. Soup, a couple of drinks in the bar and its bedtime.
Saturday December 7, 2002
What has happened to E! News? It’s absolutely terrible. I got up early this morning to the music of clomping horse hooves in Central Park, switched on the television and was assaulted by the most lamebrain, empty headed drivel I have seen in a long time. Is this what now passes for entertainment journalism? I could only watch a couple of minutes before my disgust got the best of me and I changed the channel.
After my shower, as I am loading up my travel case with all the little soaps and shampoos from the room – the Essex House has particularly nice ones – I am still marvelling at how insipid that show was. Little did I know I was about to spend the rest of my day with people exactly like the ones I turned off the TV to avoid.
My first interviews of the day were for a film called The Pianist. I missed seeing it in Cannes this year, where it deservedly won the top prize. I haven’t liked the last several Roman Polanski films, but I saw The Pianist a week or so ago in Toronto and was very moved. It is an incredible film, with a beautiful lead performance by Adrien Brody.
The interviews are running a bit late, so I have a bite to eat in the hospitality suite. It’s the usual stuff, eggs, bagels, bacon, home fries, and I strike up a conversation with one of the American junketeers while I am eating.
“I just came back from doing the interviews,” he said.
“How’d they go?” I asked.
“Fine,” he said, “but I didn’t know Thomas Kretschmann was German. I would have asked him all kinds of different questions had I known.”
I don’t bother to point out to him that the last name alone might have been a give-away. Or perhaps that he plays a German in the film, or even that if he had bothered to read the press notes that we were all given that the first line of Mr. Kretschmann’s biography reads, “Thomas Kretschmann, born in East Germany…” Instead I sat there quietly with my eggs marvelling that this guy has the nerve to call himself a journalist. I wonder how he has managed to hang onto his job, when even the simplest tasks, like doing some research, are clearly beyond him. Later in the day I hear a story about another junketeer who asked George Lucas “whether Dark Vader was a good guy or a bad guy.” Honestly, it’s enough to make a hungry guy like me loose his appetite.
Anyway, my interview with Adrien Brody is first. He’s an impressive young actor who began acting at age twelve. He’s one of those guys that you probably would recognize, but not necessarily know his name. Movie buffs will recognize him from strong performances in Harrison’s Flowers, Bread and Roses, Liberty Heights and The Thin Red Line. He may be one of those “I know the face but not the name” guys now, but that will change with the release of The Pianist. He’s in every frame of this movie, and hands in a memorable performance, one that will probably be recognized when it is time to hand out the Oscars. He’s quite thin, but very intense. We talked about the responsibility of playing a true-to-life character, and working with Roman Polanski, one of cinema’s greats. He felt a great deal of pressure to get it right because part of the story is based on Polanski’s experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto. See the rest of the interview on Reel to Real later this month.
Next up was Thomas Kretchmann. He has a small but pivotal role in The Pianist, and we talked about many things, and he asked about my last name. I explained that Crouse is a German name, but when my great-great-Grandfather came to America he didn’t speak any English and the customs people changed the spelling from Kraus to Crouse, and we have used that spelling ever since.
The rest of the day was spent waiting… and waiting… to interview the cast of Gangs of New York. As the day wore on it became painfully obvious that the situation was out of my control. There were a lot of press there and everyone was vying for the interviews with Cameron Diaz, Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day Lewis. My interviews were supposed to start at 3 pm, but by the time I actually sat down with Lewis, it was well past dark, and the talent was tired, and so was I. At 4:30 I heard one of Lewis’ people ask how many interviews they had left. Keep in mind they had been going since 9 am, and the day was almost over. “Not too many,” said the handler. “Only about 23 more.” Wow, it’s amazing to me that the actors have anything left to say after doing 50 or more interviews on the same day. At one point Lewis came out of his suite and hung out in the hallway. “I’m going to stretch my legs,” he said. “It’ll be better in the long run… I’m turning into the shape of a chair.”
I was concerned about the Daniel Day Lewis interview. I don’t know why but I had the idea that he would be very difficult, but just the opposite was true. He was very relaxed, and when he found out I was from Toronto he wanted to discuss Bowling for Columbine and the famous scene where Michael Moore goes door to door and finds many of them unlocked. I told him my door is always locked, and while Toronto is safer than many American cities we still have our own problems. He’s very good in Gangs, and I felt very lucky to speak to him, as he doesn’t make very many movies and doesn’t often speak to the press.
More waiting… then Cameron Diaz… be still my beating heart. She’s funny, lovely and a good interview. When Harvey Weinstein, the head honcho of Miramax poked his head into the suite to say hello she sat up and yelled “Pappy!” When I left I congratulated her on the film. She said she’s very proud of it, and even though there are a lot of interviews scheduled today, she’s more than happy to talk about a project she really believes in.
At this point, after a long day of waiting around I’m told that the Martin Scorsese interview isn’t going to happen. I’ve spoken to him before, so I wasn’t too upset, but I would have liked the chance to speak to him. He’s one of the best filmmakers going, and a very interesting guy. There is an energy to him that I have rarely ever seen before. He has a very domineering personality, a strength that comes through in his work. In the end though, it would have driven me crazy to only have a couple of minutes to chat with him. I’ll wait for another time when there is time to have a proper conversation.
More waiting. Everyone is getting edgy. Leonardo DiCaprio is my last interview of the day, and he is getting burned out. A long day of talking to the press has taken a toll on him, and all he wants to do is stand in the hallway and smoke cigarettes. Can’t really blame him, but I need this interview, so I struggle on. I finally get him, two and a half hours later than originally scheduled, and he put on a good game face. We discussed his character, and the fact that he has been attached to this project for a very long time. See the whole interview on Reel to Real later this month.
I have what I need, finally to do a story on Gangs of New York, and make my way to airport. The snowfall of a couple of days ago has made travelling in the city difficult, and when I finally get a cab, it is quite late and I’m in danger of missing my flight. It’s only seven miles from the hotel to the airport, but it takes about 40 minutes to make the trip and cost about $20 US. When I get to the airport there is no one there. It’s a ghost town. I thought maybe something had happened and the place was shut down. Actually, though, because it was late Saturday night there are very few flights, so I breeze through check-in and just make it to the plane.
The plane is empty, so I catch so sleep, and land in Toronto just in time to make it home and catch Saturday Night Live. Funny to run from one city to go home and watch a show shot in the city I had just left.
When I get back I check my e-mails and discover that I am booked to do one more trip to New York next Friday. FRIDAY THE 13th! As I said earlier, it’s a good thing I am not a superstitious person.
I’ve been to Las Vegas three times. Once to get married; once to try and sell a television show and now, to interview Nightmare on Elm Street baddie Freddy Kruger. The movie is called Freddy Vs Jason, and in an effort create a buzz around the film’s August 15th opening, New Line Cinema has invited the press and a few dozen radio contest winners to Bally’s Hotel on Las Vegas Boulevard to attend a press conference followed by press one-on-one interviews with the characters. To be clear, I will not be interviewing Robert Eglund or Ken Kerzinger, the actors who play Freddy and Jason, rather I will be interviewing them in character as Freddy and Jason. It’s a cute idea, but remember, Jason doesn’t speak… this is going to be a challenge. I hope this trip to Vegas is more successful than my previous ones.
On my flight to Vegas I got bumped up to first class. Thanks Air Canada! The food was tasty up in the pointy-end of the plane. I had a salad course with a spinach pie, Edam cheese and grapes, followed by broiled chicken with broccoli with a light peach cheesecake for dessert. Thanks Air Canada! I hope you don’t go out of business.
I arrived at McCannan airport exactly on time after a four-hour flight from Toronto.
When I arrive it’s noon – the hottest time of the day – and I have to wait outside for a cab. A digital sign nearby reads 115 degrees. Later I find out that the high for the day was 128 degrees. I don’tknow if you have ever experienced that kind of heat, but when the hot breeze picks up it feels like Satan himself is breathing on you.
Like everything in Vegas, Bally’s Hotel is huge –five restaurants, hundreds of slot machines and almost three thousand guest rooms. That’s enough guest rooms so that every man, woman and child in the small town that I grew up in could have their own room. Park Place Entertainment, the company that owns Bally’s also owns Caesars, Paris and a number of other hotels in Vegas and across the world. In Vegas alone they offer up over 14, 600 rooms.
At least it is nice and cool inside. The air con bill must be astronomical… you can almost see your breath in the casino.
My room is large with a king size bed, a giant blue velvet sofa and a floor to ceiling window that runs the length of the room. Too bad it overlooks the hotel’s giant air conditioning units. Stuck in the window is a small sign warning that it is moth season. “Swarms of moths flying around the building are attracted by the lights…” Vegas is the “brightest” city in the States. There are lights everywhere – bright neon, flashing bulbs, 80 foot tall lit up signs – no wonder there are clouds of nasty moths attacking the city and the hapless tourists who are foolish enough to open their windows.
The interviews are on Tuesday so I have Monday to wander around and get acquainted with the Vegas strip. I’m glad to have some down time. We’ve been busy lately with screenings and in the last couple of days I have had to interview Peta Wilson (from League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), cover the Toronto Trek, a science fiction convention, tape interviews with the stars of the television show Buck Rogers in the 25th Century Gil Gerard, Erin Gray and Felix Silla and Buffy the Vampire Slayer actor Anthony Stewart Head. When I insisted on calling him Anthony Michael Hall, I knew I needed a break. Vegas came along at the right time. I’m reminded of the Hunter S. Thompson quote from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas… “Every now and again when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is top load up on heinous chemicals and drive like a $@&(%@$ from Hollywood to Las Vegas…” OK I didn’t load up on heinous chemicals, and I flew rather than drove, but you get the idea.
There is something about Vegas that makes me feel excessive. I want to wear shiny shirts and tip cocktail waitresses crisp fifty-dollar bills. I want to drink champagne and take Jacuzzis. Ride in limos and bet everything I own on a roll of the dice. In short, I want to behave like Robert Evans every time I come here.
I manage to keep those dark impulses under wraps, and spend the next few hours walking around. Vegas is like no other place I have ever been. At Harrah’s I see an eighty-year-old woman wearing black leather gloves playing two slot machines at the same time. There is a blank look on her face, and while she is playing a game, she doesn’t really seem to be having any fun. I wonder to myself how often she sits there, all alone, gambling. Later I see a man the size of a Coke machine teaching his nine-year-old son how to play slots on a miniature toy machine. I start to feel kind of numb, with the strange sights and the constant clanging of the machines dulling my senses.
I don’t feel so much like Robert Evans anymore. I think of Fear and Loathing again, this time a quote from the movie. “What was I doing here? What was the meaning of this trip? Was I just roaming around in a drug frenzy of some kind? Or had I really come out here to Las Vegas to work on a story? Who are these people, these faces? Where do they come from? They look like caricatures of used car dealers from Dallas, and sweet Jesus, there were a hell of a lot of them at 4:30 on a Sunday morning, still humping the American dream, that vision of the big winner somehow emerging from the last minute pre-dawn chaos of a stale Vegas casino.”
I need to get away from the throngs of slot-crazed tourists. What better way to ditch the crowds in Vegas than to seek out something cultural? Sure enough, I made my way over to the Venetian Hotel, a massive place with canals running through it that is supposed to replicate Venice. It does a pretty good job, all that’s missing is the smell of the real Venice and the pushy Europeans… I make my way to the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum, located deep inside the hotel. As I suspected it is a vast wasteland, there isn’t a soul inside, despite the crowds that are hanging around the casino and shopping areas. I spend an hour or so looking at the American Pop Icons exhibit, undisturbed by @#@#$. (Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, Rauschenburg and Warhol)
I’m meeting some friends who are coming in from Austin, Texas. They arrive at 10 pm, and I meet them at the front desk. My friend Teri checks in, and gets a room on the 73rd floor. I help her up to her room with her bags. We open the door and are greeted by a long marble foyer. There is an echo when we speak. We continue through the foyer and into the room. All of a sudden my room doesn’t seems so big. As we step into her sunken living room we are blown away by the view just outside the picture windows. We can see the dancing fountains at the Bellagio and the Eiffle Tower that stands in front of Paris, Las Vegas. Wow. We turn around… there is a Jacuzzi, a shower stall the size of my apartment in Toronto and gold fixtures everywhere. We nickname it the Frank Sinatra Suite, and all of a sudden the excessive Vegas fever hits me again.
Before I can get into too much trouble I go back to my (tiny) suite and go to bed. Vegas will have to wait to see my Robert Evans impression…
Tuesday July 15, 2003
Up early. First up today is an event at the Jubilee Room downstairs in the casino. It is usually the home of an old-style Vegas show, complete with showgirls and loads of glitz and glamour. In fact, when the clothing designers were making the costumes for the show, they used so many sequins, that they caused a worldwide shortage. Apparently there are over 8000 feet of sequins on display. I don’t think there will be much in the way of sequins today. I’m here to see a mock conference between Freddy and Jason, where they will face off against one another.
The theatre is big… no surprise there. According to the hotel’s press info the stage is half the size of a football field. Should give Freddy and Jason lots of room to tussle.
Why is it that strange things happen to me every time I get off a plane at LAX? It’s almost like I start to hallucinate. I begin to see odd things, and the going gets weird. Perhaps I go crazy from the heat, but I don’t think so. I’m reminded of a quote from Mark Twain wherein he says, “It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense.” I was in LA to see the movie Secondhand Lions and interview its stars, Robert Duvall, Michael Caine and Haley Joel Osment. Sounds simple enough, but it took a turn for the weird on Saturday.
I arrived on Friday after a long day. We had a connecting flight in Dallas which added a few hours onto the usual flying time. Dallas airport is no place to get stranded. The food court doesn’t exactly look hygienic, and the young woman working at the Seattle’s Best looked at me like I was a dog with two heads when I asked what kind of teas they had. In the departure lounge I sit next to a guy with a long braided beard, cowboy hat and “straight from the hills accent” who is talking on his cell phone to his “Mama.” I now have a deeper understanding of the movie Deliverance.
The weather in LA is beautiful. It’s not my favourite city, but I do have to admit that just stepping off the plane into the sunshine put me in a pretty good mood. Ditto the hotel. We’re staying at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, and I defy anyone to be in a bad mood while staying there. The food and service are great, and the lobby smells like orchids. I have a lovely room looking south towards the Hollywood sign and a television in the bathroom. I can shower and watch VH1 all at the same time. It’s good here.
I head down to the bar for some food and spot Robert Duvall having tea with a friend. After a quick bite (three mini burgers: one portabella, one sirloin and one turkey, $17) we head over to the Beverly Hills AMC to see the movie. The movie open until late September, so you’ll have to wait until then for a review, but I can tell you it is a family movie about an introverted boy (Osment) left on the doorstep of a pair of eccentric great-uncles (Caine and Duvall), whose murky backgrounds and exotic remembrances stir the boy’s interest and re-ignite the men’s lives.
After the movie we headed back to the hotel. On the outside patio I hear a woman tell her friend, “He’s going to have to come to grips with his childhood trauma sometime. I’ve told him what he should do is write a screenplay about it. It would be so therapeutic, and it would be totally castable.”
We also spot Tori Spelling and Tara Reid, who seem to be having the kind of fun that only young, rich girls are able to enjoy. Because I am not a young, rich girl I go to bed early and read my press notes. It’s been a long day.
SATURDAY AUGUST 9, 2003
I have a 10 am start time for my interviews. After some breakfast (fruit, scrambled eggs and a bagel) I am called away to speak to Haley Joel Osment. It’s 10:01 – things are running efficiently. As I am walking down to the room I see Osment and Michael Caine ahead. When they meet they embrace warmly, genuinely happy to see one another. I guess the chemistry I saw in the movie last night between them was real.
Once in the room with Haley Joel, I am impressed at how composed he is. He’s like a 50 year old man trapped in a 15 year old’s body. His answers are thoughtful and lucid, and he’s very articulate. He keeps a busy schedule and I asked him if he ever takes time out from being a movie star to be a kid. He told me he goes to a regular high school, has a good group of friends that don’t treat him like a Hollywood star and that he is learning to drive. I thought it was funny that after all this boy has achieved in his life that he is just learning to drive now. He seems so much older than his 15 years.
Next was Michael Caine. I interviewed him at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, and found him very easy to talk to. Before the cameras start to roll I ask him if I should call him Sir Michael (he was knighted in November 2000) or Mr. Caine. He says, “Please call me Michael.” I have a hard time with that for some reason, and end up referring to him as Mr. Michael Caine instead of one or the other. I tell him that I asked Richard Attenborough the same question a number of years ago to which he replied, “Call me Dickie!” Caine added to my story, “I’m sure he called you Darling, because he can’t remember anyone’s name.”
I asked him about the Academy Awards show of a couple of years ago when he singled out Haley Joel Osment for praise in his acceptance speech. He told me that he got two jobs out of that Oscar night. When Secondhand Lions director Tim McCanlies saw Osment and him together on the red carpet before the ceremony it gave him the idea to cast them as nephew and uncle in the film. Director Phillip Noyce was also watching that night and was inspired to cast Caine as Thomas Fowler in The Quiet American. He’s a pleasure to speak to, and you can see the whole interview on Reel to Real when it airs in late September.
Sometimes I am shocked by the level of professionalism of some of the other “reporters” on these junkets. In the hall outside of Mr. Caine’s room I spoke with a television interviewer from Miami who was going in after me. As she was opening the door she looked at me and asked, “Michael Caine, he’s British isn’t he?” “Only the one of the great British film actors,” I wanted to say, “a man who was recently voted fifth all-time greatest British actor of all time.” Instead I looked down at her and replied, “Yes, I think so…”
The last interview of the day is Robert Duvall. This would be the third time I’ve interviewed him this year, and I was determined to finally ask him about one of my favourite films of all time – Apocalypse Now. He remembers me from the last couple of interviews, but can’t remember where I am from. I tell him Toronto, and that I met him at the festival last year. He went on to praise the festival and specifically Piers Handling, the director of TIFF. We discuss Secondhand Lions and working with Caine and Osment. With just a couple of minutes left in the interview I ask him about Lt. Col. Kilgore and the famous scene on the beach where explosions are bursting all around him, yet he seems like he’s unaffected by it all, and doesn’t even blink. We’ll air his answer next season on Reel to Real in a new segment we’re planning on great movie moments.
That’s it, less than an hour after sitting with Haley Joel; I’m done for the day. I go back to my room, change and head out for a walk. Nobody walks in LA except tourists and the homeless, but it was a beautiful day and I thought I’d take in some of the sights. Left the Four Seasons at 11:45 am and walked for the next six hours. The last stop was Hollywood Boulevard and Cahuenga, a name I can’t figure out how to pronounce, but I imagine it sounds like someone sneezing. The conversation back at the hotel would go something like this:
“Where did you walk to?”
“Cahuenga…”
“Bless you…”
The walk started with a celebrity sighting just a couple of minutes from the hotel. Steve Martin was sitting in the patio of a restaurant called Barefoot on Third Street. Dressed in a t-shirt and shorts, he was sitting by himself making notes in a large bound book. Instead of raving at Mr. Martin about how much I liked his last book and that The Jerk is one of my favourite movies, I leave him in peace and continue walking.
From there I criss-crossed the city, meandering down from Doheny Drive in Beverly Hills to Melrose Avenue, across the little side streets lined with pink stucco houses over to Sunset Boulevard and down to the Sunset Strip. Along the way I stop to have a look at a 1920’s vintage Spanish style house on North Crescent Heights Boulevard. It is a classic small LA house, the kind of place you could imagine Raymond Chandler calling home. I looked through its 2461 square feet, three bedrooms and 2 ½ baths. Took in the Italian tile in the hallway and imagined giving dinner parties in the octagonal dining room. The sales agent, a nice fellow named Mike told me the place was on sale for one week only, reduced in price to a mere $899,500. My pipe dream of living in my own little Spanish casa near the Beverly Center evaporated as the words were coming out of his mouth. I thanked him for his kind offer and moved on.
On the Sunset Strip I take a walk to the Chateau Marmont (8221 Sunset Boulevard). It’s known as the most discreet hotel in LA – you can pull off the Sunset Strip into the hotel’s garage in a split second, and be lifted straight from the garage to your room via private elevators. Everyone in Hollywood has stayed here at some point or another. Greta Garbo lived there in the 1930s; Led Zeppelin rode motorcycles through the halls in 1968; recently Colin Farrell was seen in a heavy make-out session with Britney Spears on his penthouse balcony and before he was famous Warren Beatty was tossed out for not paying his bill. One person who never had the chance to get kicked out of the hotel for misbehaving was John Belushi, who died in one of the hotel’s bungalows. Because of the discreet nature of the place many stars have used it as a place to hide out or behave badly. Harry Cohn, founder of Columbia Pictures said, “If you must get into trouble, do it at the Chateau Marmont.”
I’m not looking for trouble, so leave the hotel and stop by Mel’s Drive In (8585 Sunset Strip) for a bite. It is a family-run chain of restaurants based in San Francisco, famous because the original Mel’s was used as the diner where the kids hang out in American Graffiti. The original is long gone, demolished shortly after the filming of the movie, but in the late nineties Mel’s son took over the business, building new restaurants all over California.
The one on the Strip is in the location of the famous Ben Frank’s Coffee Shop. Ben Frank’s was a Sunset Strip institution, becoming legendary as a hip after hours hangout in the 1960s and 1970s. The Rolling Stones and Andy Warhol used to frequent the place and apparently Louis L’Amour liked to make notes for his cowboy novels at the counter at Ben’s. Mel’s is a pale imitation of Ben’s, but the 50’s style architecture appealed to me, as did the chance to sit in air conditioning while I ate.
After a quick Cobb Salad ($8.95) and loads of iced tea I headed for Tower Records (8801 Sunset Boulevard). Axl Rose used to work here in the early days of Guns and Roses, and it has the reputation of being then best music store in town. I prefer the Virgin Megastore (8000 Sunset) for its selection and helpful staff, but the Towers does have a certain kind of dirty charm. The rocker dudes that work behind the counter aren’t particularly helpful, but they sure do look cool.
The lengthy walk continued down Sunset and over to Hollywood Boulevard. I follow the long line of Walk of Fame stars on the sidewalk to the heart of touristville. (Here’s some trivia for you: The 3000 memorialized celebrity names take up almost 5 acres of sidewalk space.) I’m fine with cheesy tourist attractions, and even stop at a store to have my photo taken in front of a pseudo Hollywood sign while posing with a cardboard cut out of John Wayne. The girls next in line after me don’t know who John Wayne is, and ask if they could have their photos taken with cut outs of the Olsen Twins. Later I see a life-size representation of John Wayne made of dryer lint at the Ripley’s Odditorium. What befits a legend most…
I’m kind of riveted by this fabulously sleazy part of LA. It’s busy, with thousands of tourists stopping to have their photo taken at the site of their favourite actor’s star, but it is also kind of bizarre down here. I see an off duty Charlie Chaplin impersonator, in full make-up, but wearing jeans and a t-shirt, yelling at a younger boy. “You have got to be careful young man,” he said, looking the spitting image of the gentle tramp character, “or your life is going to swirl down the toilet bowl.” It’s a surreal moment in Hollyweird.
Just a few feet away someone dressed as Crocodile Dundee gives me a coupon for discounted cheesecake at a nearby restaurant. His friend, a man in a Jedi robe, assures me that the cheesecake is “the best in the galaxy.” I wonder if these guys, who I assume are out of work actors, ever imagined when they moved to LA that they would become cheesecake shills instead of movie stars.
I duck into the Frederick’s of Hollywood. The famous purple and pink lingerie store has been a fixture on the Boulevard since 1947 when its owner Frederick Mellinger became an overnight star and earned the gratitude of millions by inventing the push-up bra (originally known as the “Rising Star”). Such is Frederick’s contribution to Hollywood that November 8, 1989 was declared Frederick’s of Hollywood Day by Mayor Tom Bradley. To mark the occasion Frederick said, with tongue in cheek, “Frederick’s has always been a strong supporter of the community.” Over the decades Fredericks has kept abreast of the latest trends, and continues to dress major stars so that they may look good when they undress.
I’m here to have a look at the fabled Lingerie Museum located at the back of the store. Many exhibits were lost in the 1992 LA riots when looters ransacked the place, but there is still lots to see. It is a crash course in the history of underwear, beginning with a Missiles and Snowcones display, featuring 1951’s Pointette, described as “stitched four section cups designed for projection and separation.” Think Madonna in her pointy bra phase.
There are amusing slogans, like “Flats fixed here,” and “Beauty and the Bust,” from Frederick’s famous lingerie catalogue sprinkled throughout the displays, which feature bras with names like the Daring Deceiver (“Utilizes all possible cleavage!”) and Double Exposure.
Of course this is Hollywood, so no display would be complete with out a selection of celebrity undergarments. In the Lingerie Hall of Fame one can marvel at Milton Berle’s padded bra and sequined gown from his television show; an unusual bra used by Phyllis Diller that resembles nothing more than a strip of material marked with the instructions “This side up;” and a selection of undergarments worn by the likes of Judy Garland, Cher, Mamie Van Doren and Zsa Zsa Gabor. I left the store with a new appreciation of nipple pads and falsies.
I try and imagine 50 years ago when this was a glamorous part of town, when the showbiz elite would pop down to The Musso & Frank Grill (6667 Hollywood Boulevard) for shrimp cocktails and champagne. The Musso & Frank Grill is still here, but the only stars you’ll see are embedded in the sidewalk.
I see Bennett Cerf’s star in front of a store that sells Eminem bobble head dolls. I wonder if in 30 years the name Eminem will be as forgotten as Cerf’s. (FYI: Bennett Cerf was a humorist who was one of the founding editors of Random House.) I see the star for Zasu Pitts, the silent screen actress and inspiration for the animated character of Olive Oyl in the Popeye series, in front of a store that sells ridiculously high platform shoes with clear plastic heels. I go in and ask the girl working the counter if she knows who Zasu Pitts is. She ignores me and I leave. At least one older star hasn’t been forgotten. Elvis Presley’s star had fresh cut flowers on it.
Robert Vaughn’s star is located at the choice corner of Cherokee and Hollywood Boulevard. Just a few yards away, Charlie Chaplin’s star is covered with construction hoarding and I thought this was a might unfair. In the last decade Vaughn’s major contribution to the world of cinema has been a supporting role in Pootie Tang and those dreadful “Have you been injured in an accident,” commercials for Mark E. Salemone, and yet his star is much more accessible than Chaplin’s, the first great genius of the cinema. It doesn’t seem right, but then on the other hand, both Chaplin and Zasu Pitts have been immortalized on stamps, and I don’t think Robert Vaughn will ever be so honoured.
In fact, images of Chaplin are everywhere, second only to murals and images of Marilyn Monroe. Want a Marilyn keychain? No problem. How about a bottle of Norma Jean Merlot for fourteen dollars? If you’re a big spender you can pick up the name brand wine, the Marilyn Merlot for thirty bucks. How about a Marilyn license plate? Only $15. You can buy all that stuff that seems like a good idea at the time, but then ends up in the back of your closet after the vacation is over.
It’s getting late in the day, and I have just one more stop on my quick LA day trip – Grauman’s Chinese Theatre (6925 Hollywood Boulevard). Filled with exotic art from China and covered with a 90 foot high jade-green bronze roof, it is probably the most famous movie theatre in the world. In front of the theatre is the famous “Forecourt of the Stars.” The official story about this Hollywood landmark is that silent screen actress Norma Talmadge slipped into some wet cement in front of the newly built movie palace in 1927. Owner Sid Grauman recognized a good bit of publicity when he saw it, and left the footprint enshrined in cement, beginning a Hollywood tradition that over the next few decades saw over 200 stars leaving their imprints in front of the theatre.
The actual origins of the famous forecourt are a little less glamorous. Jean W. Klossner is the man who built Grauman’s. According to him nobody “slipped” or “fell” into wet cement there was no wet cement to fall into. It was all a carefully planned out publicity stunt.
The footprint and hand print idea came from Mr. Klossner’s family in the early 1800’s. As three generations of Klossners completed work on the Notre Dame Cathedral, they signed their work by pressing their hands in the fresh cement. Jean Klossner brought this idea over with him from Europe and used it on all the buildings he completed with the Meyer-Holler Construction Co. in Los Angeles. When it was time to finish Grauman’s, Mr. Klossner pressed his hand in the fresh cement out front of the theater’s right-hand poster frame, where it remains today, almost 80 years later. When Sid Grauman saw him do this, the two developed the idea to embellish the otherwise plain forecourt.
It’s packed at the Forecourt, but I still manage to wedge myself in and stand in Jack Nicholson’s footprints. I’m guessing he wears a size 10 as his feet were much smaller than mine. I hang around and watch the other tourists for a while, before grabbing a cab and heading back to the Four Seasons.
We have reservations for 8 o’clock on the patio of the Four Seasons, and after my six hour walk I need to chill for a few minutes.
At dinner I discover that the rest of the Canadians spent the day hanging around the pool. When I hear that Rosanna Arquette was also at the pool I regret not popping by to say hello. It’s nice up there, the waiters bring frozen grapes and fruit smoothies to keep you cool, and there is generally some pretty good star gazing.
It’s a beautiful Southern California night, and we have a choice table for people watching. We see an older man dressed like Elvis pull up in a $500,000 car, many Rolls Royces and Gary Busey. Remember earlier when I said that strange things always happen to me when I come to LA? Well, tonight would be no exception, and it would be my second strange encounter with Mr. Busey. (Caution! Dropping names ahead.)
On a hot June evening in 1992 I had dinner at a Wolfgang Puck restaurant in Malibu called Granita. We scored a great table on the patio, and were seated between Johnny Carson, who had just retired, and Gary Busey, who was celebrating his birthday. The meal was relatively peaceful until Busey started opening his gifts. He insisted on showing us each of his presents, which was fine, but he had a lot of presents, and we were trying to eat. Eventually we stopped commenting on the gifts and tried to enjoy our meal. It was then that I felt a bread roll hit me in the back of the head.
“Hey! Tell Wolfgang we’re having a food fight,” Busey hollered as he winged another roll in my direction.
I didn’t know what to do, and didn’t really want to get involved, but the rolls kept coming, so eventually I threw one back at him, hitting him in the chest. I’m sure Mr. Carson was impressed with my aim. Thankfully someone at the table (I think it was his mother) got him to stop, and we never progressed past the rolls into throwing hot entrees at one another.
I didn’t see Busey for another eleven years, and much has happened in the intervening years. He has worked steadily, mostly in straight to video movies that earn a “Terrible,” or “Appalling” user rating on IMBD; he had a plum sized tumour removed from his sinus cavity, has been arrested and become a born-again Christian. Most recently he has been starring in I’m With Busey, a reality show a la The Osbournes. I think the show’s tagline says it all: “Somewhere, between reality and insanity, Is Busey.”
He is sitting inside with a group of people, including a friend of mine from Toronto. At one point Busey decides that he wants to smoke one of his large Cuban cigars, and comes outside to our table. Actually he looms over the table, sitting on a ledge above us, with his feet resting on one of the chairs. Introductions are made. I tell him I am from Toronto.
“I have made ten movies in Toronto. Ten in Vancouver and three in Montreal,” he says loudly.
“I must have missed those,” I’m thinking, but say nothing.
When I don’t take the bait he starts spouting Buseyisms, which are basically acronyms of his invention which contain his philosophy on life.
“Do you know what FEAR stands for?” he asks me.
Not sure where this conversation is going, I say no.
“FEAR… False Evidence Appearing Real,” he says. “F-E-A-R.”
Wow.
“Do you know what LIGHT stands for?” he hollers.
Before I have a chance to answer, he says, “LIGHT! Living In God’s Heavenly Thoughts… L-I-G-H-T.”
I have a feeling this is going to go on for a while, so I order another drink.
They came in quick succession… GOAT! Get Over Adulterous Tendencies! BIBLE! Beautiful Instructions Before Leaving Earth!
Then, to make a peculiar scene even more bizarre we were joined by one of Busey’s friends, Sal Pacino. No, that’s not a typo, I said Sal Pacino, father of Al. Sal is in his eighties, but has a strong resemblance to his famous son. He was wearing a very cool belt with the letter “S” on the buckle, and didn’t say much. He didn’t have much of a chance to, as Busey holding court, sucking up all the air on the patio.
I wondered if it was just me who didn’t really know what Busey was on about, but later read a quote from his son Jake, who said, “He’s always telling stories about monkeys and toads and rockets… I can never understand what he’s talking about.” Good, even his blood relatives can’t comprehend him. I think if I could identify with what he was saying then I would have something to worry about.
Anyway, as quickly as he joined us, he was gone, leaving nothing but perplexed looks and a cloud of cigar smoke. It was definitely the oddest celebrity encounter I have ever had.
Strange as he was, Busey was entertaining, and after he left the party seemed a little less interesting. With my head full of Buseyisms I went to bed, no wiser, but a little more amused than when I woke up today.
SUNDAY AUGUST 10, 2003
Up early to head to LAX. I hate to leave, and as I walk past the patio I half expect to see Busey still there, preaching to a new group of people.
I arrive two hours before my flight only to find huge line-ups. The line to check in started outside and wormed its way through the terminal. Forty-five minutes later I get my boarding pass, only to have to go outside again and get in another line to have my bags X-Rayed and go through security. Time is ticking, and I want to get on this flight because it is the only direct flight to Toronto today. If I miss this one, I’ll have to fly through Chicago and won’t get home until almost midnight.
With just a couple of minutes to spare I sprint through security, grab a bagel at Starbucks and make it on the plane. Four-and-a-half uneventful hours later I am in a Toronto cab on the way to my house. It’s good to be home. The little pink bungalow on North Crescent Heights Boulevard will just have to wait…
Welcome to the Big Mango. Bangkok. As I sit here writing this it is 9 am in the morning, and the temperature is already approaching thirty degrees. Bangkok. Hot, crowded, exciting, frustrating and aptly named because at six foot four inches I have been banging my head on every low hung sign and short doorway in town.
I arrived Friday night after a grueling twenty-six hours of travel. I shouldn’t complain, apparently fifty years ago it used to take nine days by plane to get here. When I was a kid I was sure that by 2003 we’d have teleporters or high-speed space crafts for this sort of trip. Apparently I was wrong, and the best way to get here is the route I took.
I was pleased to see that I had been assigned seat 3-D, a very appropriate choice for a film critic, although I’m having a hard time remembering when the last 3-D movie I liked. The five hours from Toronto to Vancouver was brightened considerably by the selection of movies — one of which I hadn’t seen!!! That almost never happens when I travel, and I’m not sure how I missed Confidence when it was in the theatres. Rachel Weisz and Ed Burns play grifters who are indebted to a mob boss played by Dustin Hoffman, and while it’s not going to win any awards, it’s a pretty good airplane movie.
Vancouver to Hong Kong is a long haul. Seat 3-D reclined to an almost flat position, but I have a hard time sleeping on planes. At almost thirteen hours it is a hard flight, not helped by my choice of movie, Bad Boys 2. Unlike fine wine, this movie does not get better with age.
Hong Kong to Bangkok is only a couple of hours, and I flew on the top deck of an old 747. The last time I was in a 747 I was with my parents and there was a full bar on the upper level with a smoking lounge. The in-flight bars are gone now, and of course you can’t smoke anywhere anymore, least of all on a plane.
By the end of the twenty-six hours I had plowed through the new Patricia Cornwell book on Jack the Ripper (maybe the perfect airplane book… it is kind of compelling, but is so packed with facts and minutia that it kind of deadens the brain…), read three magazines, eaten four or five complete meals, several snacks, drank six or seven liters of water and one port. While I didn’t really sleep, I was able to get some rest so I felt pretty good when the plane touched down.
After being cooped up in a big metal tube for over a day I was ready to hit the streets immediately and see what Bangkok had to offer. It’s almost midnight, but it is thirty degrees and the air is thick with pollution and humidity. It is too hot walk – I’m told most Thais try to avoid walking in the heat when possible – and the BTS (above ground subway) is closed, so we can either take a taxi or a tuk tuk to our destination. Taxis are plentiful, but I think a tuk tuk would be more fun. They are motorized three-wheeled vehicles that can carry a couple people and are good for short rides and dodging in an out of traffic. The engines are notoriously noisy and it is a very touristy thing to do… but what the heck, I’m a tourist for the next ten days.
My first impression of Bangkok is that (at night anyway) it reminded me of the movie Blade Runner. Very new, modern looking buildings co-exist with crumbling structures which seem to have been built a century or more ago. You have to watch for the tangles of electrical wires which snake down from utility poles and the motorcycles which whiz past at alarming speeds. Ridley Scott must have used this landscape as the inspiration for the strange urban scenes of Blade Runner.
Bangkok-based Jake Needham is an ex-pat American who writes detective novels set in the city. His latest, Tea Money is particularly good, sort of like Elmore Leonard with an Asian twist. There is a passage in the book that talks about the area of town I went to on Friday night. “During daylight hours Sukhumvit Road was one of Bangkok’s principal traffic arteries, four lanes jammed with vehicles and the BTS (Bangkok Transit System) running on massive concrete pillars down the center. It slashed like a fault line across the part of the city where almost every foreigner lived. For miles it was lined with luxurious shopping malls, expensive restaurants and multi-colored hotels – most of them thronged every day with well-heeled tourists, foreign residents, and those adventurous Thais who didn’t mind so much mixing with either.
“In the hours after dark, however, a different breed took over the street. Even at its most benign, Bangkok was part Miami and part Beirut, and there was nothing benign about midnight on the fault line. In the late, late hours, Sukhumvit Road became Blade Runner country.”
Our first stop is to one of the city’s famous “entertainment districts.” People are bustling on Soi (translation: sidestreet) Cowboy, cooking food (chicken, fish, rice and bugs… yes, grasshoppers, cockroaches etc), begging for money and trying to lure you into the bars. Bars line both sides of the streets, and it is best not to make eye contact with anyone, otherwise they will follow you and try to convince you to spend money at their bar with a persistence that Hercules would admire.
The Long Gun is our first stop. Jim Morrison and the Doors are blaring, scantily-clad (but not naked) girls are dancing and the beer is cold. It feels kind of surreal to me, like I’m not really there, but actually watching a scene from a movie.
That feeling was re-enforced at our next stop in the Plaza of the Nana district. I actually felt like I was hallucinating, that the long flight and twelve-hour time difference had finally caught up with me. The scene at DC-10 was a combo of Blade Runner and Apocalypse Now as though directed by David Lynch, with a healthy dose of Striptease thrown in. If I was to cast the movie of this place the doorman would be played by Peter Dinklage, the 5,6,7,8s would play the house band and Lucy Lui would be the mama san. The girls danced to AC/DCs Highway to Hell, and for a moment I felt I might be along for the ride. We leave and finish the night at a regular bar across the hall. I meet some locals who convince me to ring the bell in the bar. I do, and then have to buy a round for the whole place. It’s a small bar and a round only cost $20 or so, so I rang the bell again and again until it was time to go…
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2003
Saturday morning came way to fast. With only a few hours of sleep it was time to drive to Kanchanaburi, a small town two hours away by car. We made it there despite my legendarily bad navigational skills. My directionally challenged method of course-plotting was further strained by a problem with the language. Some of the place names have more than thirty letters, some of which are silent and others which need to be emphasized. My favorite place was a small town with a very big name that translated into “The City of Nice People.”
The town is best known for is association with the infamous Burma-Siam railroad. During the Second World War the Japanese needed a railroad to move supplies the 225 miles from Burma to Siam. Engineers estimated the project would take 5 years, the army, however, had different ideas. Almost 60,000 Allied POWs and 300,000 Asians laborers were forced to work eighteen hour days on its construction to finish the project in a mere sixteen months. Approximately 30,000 of the POWs and 200,000 of the Asian workers lost their lives to cholera, malaria, malnutrition and maltreatment. The conditions were so appalling it is said that one man died for each tie laid.
The most famous stretch of the railroad is the bridge over the River Kwai, which runs the length of the town. David Lean’s famous 1957 movie told a cleaned-up version of the story, and while it is a great film, I don’t think the horrors of life on this chain gang could properly be captured on film, particularly when Lean made the picture, just a dozen years after the end of the war.
The town has become a resort town, although not a flashy one. In the center of town there is a large cemetery commemorating the soldiers who lost their lives building the Death Railway. Thousands of marble plaques are lined up in long even rows, manicured lawns on all sides. As I walked up and down the rows I was struck by the young age of many of the men, 23, 24 years-of-age. Most of them passed in 1944, which meant they had likely spent three or four years in the service — their whole adult lives in most cases. I was humbled to walk among them, and imagine the sacrifices they made for their countries.
From there I went to the Jeath Museum, no that’s not a typo, it is an acronym for the names of the six countries involved in the building of the railroad: Japan, England, America and Australia, Thailand and Holland. It was established by a Buddhist monk to give people a better understanding of how the prisoners were treated. None of the original huts the POWs lived in survived the war, but the long narrow bamboo hut that houses the bulk of the exhibition is an exact replica from the war. Inside you feel claustrophobic as the heat and humidity bear down on you, and can’t imagine how people were able to live under such conditions. Then you take in all the photos and paintings and realize that many of them weren’t able to live under those circumstances. I’m reminded of a quote from the movie. “I’d say the odds against a successful escape are about 100 to one,” says William Holden as Major Shears, “But may I add another word, Colonel? The odds against survival in this camp are even worse.”
On display are photographs taken by Thais and prisoners of war that depict the deplorable conditions. The Japanese did not object to photographs in the early days of the interment although later they prohibited prisoners from keeping any kind of record because if the bad reflection of themselves. The images that survived are horrific — skin disease and death; men, little more than skeletons wearing lion clothes toiling on the brutal heat. They are pictures that burn themselves into your subconscious.
The hotel was a welcome relief from the draining events of the day. The Felix River Kwai Resort overlooks the famous river and is just minutes away from the only surviving section of the original bridge.
The room is beautiful, two floors with two river facing balconies, one up and one down. Teak wood walls and floors. Two bathrooms, one with a Jacuzzi just steps away from the largest swimming pool I’ve seen. The sights of the day have weighed heavily on me, but the exhaustion of the trip has caught up to me and I embrace the comforting luxury of the hotel.
After a quick breather I take a walk over to the bridge. It is unassuming, and teaming with tourists and Thais who walk the tracks, even though there are no handrails and the wooden slats that separate you from the water look suspiciously like they need to be replaced. I didn’t come all this way to chicken out now, so I carefully balance myself and walk the original part of the bridge. Despite my nerves, I find it quite beautiful. Flood season has just passed so the river was filled to overflowing with a strong current that looks like it could easily drown anyone who had the misfortune to fall in. Beautiful but deadly. Again I think of the men who gave their lives to build the bridge. I wonder if they saw any beauty here at all…
By four o’clock the time change and constant travel had begun to catch up with me. I had been warned about “the fog,” and it seemed by the late afternoon that I was completely surrounded by it. The fog is a condition that happens when you have been traveling a great deal, zipping through time zones. It is a dreamlike state that envelopes you, making it impossible to think or even have a regular conversation. Luckily I was alone in my room. My first reaction was to sleep, but I was afraid if I slept now I would never adjust the time change. I soldiered through, and as I got a tenth wind, the mist started to lift.
Even in the midst of “the fog” I remembered not to drink the water. Before coming here I had every shot known to man, and for a while I felt invincible, like a Superman who was immune to anything the tropics could throw my way. Then I spoke with a guy in the Thai Airline lounge in Hong Kong who was on his way back to Canada. His stories of discomfort convinced me that I am a mere mortal, and have to be careful what I eat and drink.
Dinner was at a small outdoor restaurant called The Resort in town. We figured the place must be pretty good because we were the only farang (foreigners) in the joint. Delicious Thai food, with strips of fried basil and some very small chili pepper that was so hot it made my dinner companion’s tongue go completely numb. Delicious, but deadly.
It is at the hotel that I learn about the durian fruit. At the front gate is a familiar sight, a sign with a large red circle with a line through it. We’ve all seen these. No smoking… No Littering… No Dogs… No Film Critics… (I kid with you…) This one, however, has something that looks like a piece of watermelon in the banned area. I discover that it is something called a durian. Durian is a fruit: a big, green thorny fruit native considered to be the “King of the Fruit” throughout South East Asia. It has a creamy texture, and the taste of its flesh sends its eaters into ecstasies (and it has the reputation of being an aphrodisiac) But is has one drawback. It has an extremely offensive odor similar to stinky feet or Limburger cheese. Or perhaps stinky socks stuffed with Limburger cheese. In Thailand, I discover, it is illegal to bring a durian into a hotel or on public transportation due to its offensive smell.
This is hilarious to me. You can buy deadly hunting knives at the street markets but you can’t take a piece of fruit into a hotel. I make it my mission to track down a piece of durian fruit, although I’m told it is out of season.
I do the math and figure out I have only had about ten hours sleep in the last three days. I’m asleep before I hit the pillow.
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2003
I wake up Sunday feeling rested and on Thai time. The return trip to Bangkok takes considerably less time on the way back. There are no “rotit mak mahs” (phonetic spelling) or very bad traffic jams. That is the first Thai I learned… I picked it up from the tuk tuk driver on Friday night, and with the state of the traffic here it seems to be a good descriptive phrase to know, right up there with “Where’s the restroom?” and “Do you know where the hospital is?”
We have breakfast at the British Club. Wow. Founded on April 23rd, 1903 as a place for ex-pat British business men to have traditional English food, play snooker and generally keep the Empire’s flame alive in Thailand. It is an elegant old complex right in the middle of town that has been in constant operation, except for the Second World War when Bangkok was occupied by the Japanese. A large wooden sign in the lobby lists all the club presidents since 1903. The years 1942 – 1946 are simply listed as “Club Inactive.”
Many famous people have passed through the club’s doors – royalty, famous writers, and dignitaries. In fact, part of the movie Comeback, starring Priscilla Presley, Michael Landon and Edward Woodward was filmed there.
After a traditional English breakfast (with scones!) in the Winston Churchill Pub I toured the grounds, saw the snooker hall, the beautiful pool and outdoor entertainment areas. It is a lovely oasis; you don’t really feel like you are in the middle of a massive city. It is quiet and pastoral. And best of all, cell phones are prohibited!
Next was a long tail boat ride up the Thai River. These boats an affordable and unique way to see a different view of the city. We began the hour journey at the Pier Takesin Bridge. It bustles with activity. People are trying to sell you knock-off Calvin Klein wallets and wooden Buddha statues; while others are fishing for their dinners and still others are trying to lure you into renting their boats. The sights, sounds and smells are quite overwhelming, but exhilarating.
We negotiate and get a long-tail boat for ourselves for 700 baht (about $20 Canadian). They are indeed long-tail boats – the boat itself is roughly thirty feet long with a pointed stern that is typically decorated with a Buddhist good luck offering of silks or flowers. It isn’t the length of the boat, however, that earns it the name long-tail. Off the back end is a ten foot pole with a rudder attached. That’s how the captains navigate the boats through the choppy river waters. To get the lay of the land I am talking about and to see some really cool long tail boat action check out the James Bond flick The Man With the Golden Gun. The water chase (or “motorboat mayhem” as it is called on the DVD) was actually shot on this very river.
It is a spectacular ride, one that every visitor to Bangkok should take. It really shows another side of the city. The Big Mango doesn’t look like Blade Runner as you glide through the canals. Many of the houses are no more than roughly constructed shacks with only three walls. They are left open on the river side for ease of fishing, shopping from the rivers merchants and to catch any breeze that might happen by on the swelteringly humid Bangkok days and nights.
It is a fascinating glimpse into the lives of the people who live along the river. You do see the odd television and an occasional modern looking refrigerator, but for the most part it is like looking at a living time capsule. It is a lifestyle that hasn’t changed that much for many, many years.
It gets rather hot out on the water. To quench your thirst the river merchants motor right up next to your boat. Their small crafts are laden with odds and sods – wooden fans, food items, plastic toys – but most importantly (it is to me anyway!) Singha Beer. Singha is the official beer of Thailand, and was the first beer to be brewed here. We buy three; it is bad form not to buy one for the captain and continue down to the end of the voyage at the Grand Palace Pier. From there we take another boat, this time an express water bus to bring us back to the BTS. This too is an incredible ride. We could easily have taken a regular taxi, which would have been faster, but the boat is another unique little piece of Bangkok that I wanted to experience.
It is essentially a bus on water. It docks at the small piers along its route, much like a bus at a bus stop. Because the boat is so big a helper blows a whistle, signalling the captain of the boat when he has to speed up or slow down. It is quite a show, and these guys have it down to a science. Between them they are able to dock, load customers and be back on the water in less than a minute. The elaborate marine choreography is almost as impressive as the view from the boat.
Bangkok has some of the best hotels in the world – The Peninsula and The Oriental to name two – and both were on our route. It was as we passed them that I realized that Bangkok truly is a city of contradictions where rich and poor, new and old live side by side. It can be a confusing place but in its disorder there seems to be strange kind of order. There has to be otherwise the city couldn’t work, and it is this conundrum that makes it such a fascinating place. I have been surprised by how little culture shock I am feeling. I expected to be completely dumbfounded by this place and the language and culture, and for sure there have been a few Lost in Translation moments, but by and large I don’t feel as alienated as I thought I would. For a country that is so protective of its culture and language (Thailand is the only country that uses the Thai language) there are many more English signs than I expected. Of course, I’m seeing ads for the new Britney Spears album and The Matrix: Revolutions everywhere I turn. As I walked past the Starbucks today, which was next to the KFC, across the street from the 7-11 (there are 7000 7-11s in Thailand) I realized that globalization is almost complete, and soon New York and Bangkok and London and Paris will essentially be the same place, separated only by religion, geography or customs.
That night we had dinner at an Australian bar called Busstop. You know, I used to really like the Green Mango restaurants in Toronto. Good, cheap fast Thai food was a staple of my diet, but since I have been here I have been spoiled. Once again my dinner companion got the hot chilli that numbed his entire head. I know my turn is coming. Later we went to a bar on the fault line called The Blue Barbeque and got to know the staff, and DJ. The staff had trouble pronouncing my name, so instead they called me James Dean, I guess because of my slicked-back hair.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2003
I’m disappointed. I’ve been here for several days now and haven’t seen an elephant. Ever since I found out that elephants are the only other animal other than humans to cry when they are happy or sad I have been determined to get up close and personal with one. Nothing yet, but if there are elephants to be seen, I will find them (the durian fruit is proving to be equally elusive).
The day begins with a shopping excursion to the department store at Chit Lom near the condo I am staying in. I’m looking to pick up some gifts and further my obsession with buying new shirts. I have to admit it, I have a problem. My name is Richard and I am addicted to buying shirts. One is too many and one hundred isn’t enough. It has been four days since I have purchased one and I am fighting the urge to buy! Buy! Buy!
As it turns out I don’t have to try that hard to control myself. As soon as I walk into the shirt department and started eyeing the merchandise a helpful young man approaches me and says, “We don’t have any big sizes…” These are not the words I wanted to hear. Not only can I not find a shirt to fit me, but I think he is implying that I am fat and out of shape. Maybe that’s just me being paranoid, but all of a sudden I am regretting the cool new Snickers Crunch! bar and the Chicken Namtog flavoured potato chips (made by a Thai company called Tasto) I have eaten over the past couple of days. I move on with what’s left of my dignity.
Ironically I take solace in lunch. After walking around and window shopping I decide on a place called MK. I have been seeing them everywhere. It is a chain of restaurants that is actually quite a remarkable success story. The chain was founded by a woman who began her business by selling food on the streets of Bangkok. She gave credit to people, cooked good food and turned her small business into an empire. The idea is that you order your ingredients and cook the food yourself in a broth-filled wok that is attached to your table. I love the idea, and although I think I ordered poorly (I couldn’t really understand the menu or the cooking instructions) it was really fun. I also discovered that when you order an iced tea in Bangkok it comes with milk and l-o-a-d-s of sugar, blended with ice.
I have been hearing a Thai rock band named Paradox since I have been here. Apparently they are two young guys barely out of their teens who have created quite a splash. I like their song Sexy even though I have less than no idea what they are actually singing about. I was joking to a friend that the boppy little pop songs on the album could actually be about genocide, terrorism and George Bush for all I know, but whatever they are about they have a good beat and you can dance to it. I have tried a couple of stores and haven’t been able to find the CD; it’s very popular and is sold out everywhere. I finally buy a copy of it at one of the big department stores, along with some Thai hip hop and rock & roll by Spydamonkee and Playground respectively.
I spent the rest of the day walking around and getting my bearings. Being on my own in the city has given me more of a feel for it. I don’t have the safety net of having someone with me who lives here as a tour guide, so I have to figure it out for myself. The day goes well, I don’t get lost and I manage to make it back to the condo on time and in one piece.
For dinner we have chosen a restaurant / surf shop called Larry’s Dive in the Klongtoey district. It is run by a Canadian guy from British Columbia who has lived in Bangkok for about fifteen years. Despite their food service guarantee: “Served in thirty minutes or its cold,” the food is quite good. If there had been a problem with the meal, the menu suggests e-mailing complaints to: prisonqualityfood@5-star-hotel-prices.com. It’s a pretty funny place particularly because the guy who owns it isn’t named Larry.
From there we head back to The Blue Barbeque for a nightcap. We are greeted with chants of “James Dean! James Dean!” which makes me laugh. Hollywood movie culture has permeated Thailand in a big way. Aside from the bootleg DVDs available on the streets, there are also many giant movie theatres (I hope to visit one of the major theatres later this week) and there seems to be a video store on every block. Once again I realize that movies really are a universal language when I am trying to order fish in a restaurant from a server who doesn’t speak a word of English. I try to say it in Thai (“bplah,” phonetic translation: pla) and when that doesn’t work I mime a fish, making a shadow on the wall. “Nemo!” she yelled, excited that she had figured out my bizarre clue.
One of the bartenders at The Blue Barbeque who witnessed my lame attempt to order fish, and who speaks some English decided to teach me how to speak Thai. She wrote Thai words for me in phonetic English and I then had to guess what they meant. We started with “Khop khun krap,” which I knew meant “Thank you.” Next was “Kid tung mark krap,” which I was told meant “Miss you so much.” I asked her how to ask for some food in Thai. She wrote, “Pom lor mark.” When I repeated this the waitress looked me quizzically and started to laugh. I found out later it actually means, “I am a very handsome man.” When I left I asked her how to say “Good night.” She wrote, “Khun Jiab soy mark mark krap.” Again the other girls laughed. Her name is Jiab and she had me say, “Jiab is very, very beautiful…” It was time to call it a night when I began falling for those kinds of practical jokes.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2003
It’s the beginning of my fourth full day in Bangkok and I’m feeling a little rough. I guess all the shots and vaccines in the world can’t prevent you from having a headache after a late night in a bar.
I’m getting braver with the BTS all the time. Today I was able to go further and transfer without getting confused or lost. I wanted to see the Jim Thompson house which is reputed to be one of the best museums in Bangkok.
Thompson was an American architect who came here in 1945 as the Bangkok head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a predecessor of the CIA. Like many others when the war was done he stayed in Asia. In 1948 he founded the Thai Silk Company. Through his expertise he revived the ailing silk industry and became a celebrity in Bangkok. He was known as Thailand’s most famous American, a local hero, and after his disappearance during a walk in the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia in 1967 he became a local legend. He vanished without a trace, leaving behind many unanswered questions – did he have a heart attack, fall off a cliff or was the CIA involved? It’s all very season two of Alias.
Along with questions about how he died he also left behind a compound of six teak houses which he had moved from the Ban Khura and Ayutthaya provinces and reassembled in Bangkok. I managed to find the museum, but it was closed for a special function, so instead I hired a tuk tuk driver to cart me around for a couple of hours.
The tuk tuk thing is a bit of a scam, which I had heard about, but got sucked into anyway. I spoke with the Thai attendant and told him I wanted to see some Buddhist Temples (or wats as they are called in Thai). He said he could arrange that, but also suggested a number of other stops along the way. I wasn’t terribly interested in the Thai Promotional Center or The Thai Fashion Center, but he assured me that they were on route and were well worth a visit.
Talk about “rotit mak mah” (traffic jam), we putted along through main streets, side streets, alley ways in this noisy little tuk tuk that sounded like a cross between a lawn mower and a chainsaw. It is a cool way to see the city. With no doors or windows on the vehicle it’s up close and personal, but also smelly, dirty and very loud. It sounds as though you are rolling down a rocky hill in a large tin box. There is one cool thing about Bangkok traffic, however. Recently they have hung large digital time clocks by the lights which countdown the time until the light changes. It doesn’t help alleviate traffic but it does help pass the time as you are stranded in a “rotit mak mah.”
The first stop was the Lucky Buddha – a small temple downtown known for bestowing luck on those who visit. I stop in, removing my shoes before going inside the wat, spend a few minutes then it is off to our next stop which is the Thai Promotional Center. I have no idea what this is, but the tuk tuk driver told me I would save 30% on any purchases I made there. What I would be able to purchase he couldn’t tell me. I go inside and am immediately pounced on by several well dressed sales people who try to convince me to buy rubies and gold – all at 30% off market value. I excuse myself and quickly leave. I’ve heard about the gem swindles in Thailand. I can live with getting conned by a tuk tuk driver but parting with thousands of dollars for a worthless stone is another matter.
I’m a little disgruntled when I get back to the vehicle, but continue on to the next stop which is the Wat Traimit, home of the Golden Buddha on Charoenkrung Road. It was a hellish ride which took a long time, but it was worth it, the Buddha is spectacular. It is 700 years old, measures twelve feet five inches and weighs approximately five tons. Did I mention it is made of solid 18-carat gold?
It has a long and strange history. The Buddha was uncovered by accident in 1955. While expanding the port of Bangkok workers for the East Asiatic Company come across what appeared to be a simple stucco Buddha. The image was kept at Wat Traimit under a make-shift shelter for twenty years until a crane dropped it while moving it to a more permanent home. The plaster cracked revealing the gold Buddha underneath. The statue had probably been encased in plaster to hide it from Burmese invaders during the Ayutthaya period. It has been on constant display ever since, and many local Chinese residents come here to worship the Golden Buddha and earn merit by rubbing gold left on the temple’s smaller Buddha images.
I’m in a better mood now, but am expecting another scam at our next stop, the Thai Fashion Center. Sure enough, it is a tailor shop, specializing in making high end shirts and suits. When I tell the guy I’m not interested in buying a suit he kicks me out of the store. He was the first really rude Thai person I have met, but I was too mellowed out after my visit with Buddha to care.
Back at the tuk tuk I cut the ride short and have him drop me off at a nearby BTS stop. I pay him 40 baht which is about $5 Canadian and swear off tuk tuks forever. One more day of bombing around Bangkok and still no elephants (or durian fruit)!
It’s been a long few days (and nights) so after a quick dinner at a downtown restaurant called The Peak I come home, write this and call it a night.
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2003
Before I left Toronto my co-producer Claudio joked that I wouldn’t be able to kick back and relax on my vacation, that I just couldn’t stop working. I explained to him that I haven’t had a proper holiday for a long time and I was more than capable of putting the show out of my mind while I was in Bangkok.
I’m glad I didn’t bet with him because I would be a few bucks lighter if I had. I did a couple hours of work on the plane, but that doesn’t count as the vacation hadn’t officially begun, and on my first day here I had to return an emergency work-related e-mail. Beyond that I swore I wouldn’t work. Today I broke down, and checked my e-mail, work, personal and cell phone messages. Spent the morning returning calls – even though it was night time in Toronto – catching up on e-mails and trying to arrange a satellite interview with Billy Bob Thornton for the film Bad Santa. I would do the interview on the phone, while they shoot Billy Bob in New York. The time difference would be a drag for me, as it would be one am in Bangkok on Friday night… Anyway, I’m just glad I didn’t bet with Claudio.
I left the house at noon, and walked around the corner to an unusual Buddhist shrine I saw from the street last night. It is located on a little wedge of green between the river and the Hilton Hotel. In the daylight I could see hundreds of phallic statues grouped around a large ficus tree and spirit house. I discover that it is the Goddess Tuptin Shrine built by a monk called Nai Lert for the spirit who was believed to live in the large Sai (ficus) tree.
As with all shrines, people offer gifts to curry favour with the spirits. The basic gifts were all here: fragrant wreaths of “snow” – white jasmine flowers, incense sticks and pink and white lotus buds – and offerings of food. Less conventional are the phalluses that decorate the area. They are all different sizes, they are stylized and realistic and there are hundreds of them. The reason why this has become a shrine to the phallus is a bit of a mystery, but because of the sheer number of the statues the shrine has automatically been concluded to be dedicated to fertility.
It’s quite a sight, and I fill up the memory stick on my digital camera taking pictures of it.
I’m going to take the BTS to the National Stadium stop, a tricky little manoeuvre which requires transfers from one train line to another. The area around the National Stadium is a good shopping district, and is also home to the Jim Thompson House Museum. I went there yesterday but it was closed for a special event.
I take my time getting there. I’m having a bad Thai day. For some reason today everything seems a little harder than it should be. The BTS was really crowded, it is scorchingly hot and I got turned around and wandered aimlessly for a while. To combat the lost feeling I having I went to MacDonald’s for a blast of western food. Even though I am halfway across the world the Big Mac tastes exactly like it does at the McDs just around the corner from my house on Bloor Street. One thing, however, strikes me as different. As I sit eating my burger, a giant cockroach runs past. When I say giant I mean GIANT. To paraphrase Woody Allen, this cockroach was the size of a Buick, and just about as fast. No one is screaming or freaking out that a huge prehistoric looking dino-bug is crawling around them while they try to eat, but several girls next to me were clearly uncomfortable with it. One of them told a staff member, who then approached the evil looking creature, but instead of killing it, she put on a plastic glove, picked it up and deposited it outside. As a Buddhist she isn’t permitted to kill the bug. This was the cockroach’s lucky day.
From Mickey D’s I try and find my way to the Jim Thompson House. It is hard to find, and even though I was there yesterday, I get slightly lost. On my travels I pass by dozens of street merchants. Most just have their wares on small tables or blankets, and are selling everything from home cooked food to lighters. And socks. Almost every one of them is selling socks, which I find strange because hardly anyone here wears shoes. Everyone wears sandals, and thankfully no one is committing my most hated fashion faux paus – the toxic sandal with socks combination – so who exactly is buying the socks, and why are there so many for sale?
These peddlers exist in the shadow of the National Stadium, the new BTS and a giant shopping mall, another example of how old and new ways of life are co-existing here. Bangkok feels to me like a city that is on the verge of major advancement. A financial crash in 1997 left the city crippled – there are almost three hundred and fifty abandoned office towers here. The skyline is dotted with half built buildings, some are crumbling, others are now being finished, some six years after being deserted.
In the last six years the city has gotten itself back on track. There is construction everywhere and Bangkok has one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Things are changing rapidly. A few years ago cell phones were only for the rich. In a country where a decent meal for one can be purchased for 20 baht, they cost 42,000 baht and weren’t that common. Now they only cost 3,000 and are everywhere. Nose jobs too are apparently very popular, and only cost a paltry $200 USD.
The BTS which connects the city with above ground trains has also changed the complexion of the city. Areas that were difficult to get to before are now becoming popular, and conversely, parts of town that aren’t near a BTS stop are suffering. The train, (coupled with a new air conditioned subway that is due to open in April), is going not only cut down on traffic and pollution, but open up the city for business and construction. The times they are ‘a changin’ in Bangkok.
I find the Jim Thompson Museum tucked away at the end of a crowded and noisy soi (sidestreet). My guidebook says it is one of the most well run museums in Thailand and I have to agree. Unlike the chaos which seems to accompany almost anything you try and do here, the Thompson Museum is relaxed and organized. For 100 baht (about $3 Canadian) you are given a ticket, a time and a letter. The time on the ticket is your start time, the letter is your group identification. At precisely the time on my chit a young women gathers me and my group and the tour begins.
The houses are beautiful. In the mid-fifties Jim Thompson (for more on him see yesterday’s diary) bought, restored and moved six ancient Thai houses and reconfigured them into one stunning complex, surrounded by a wild garden. Each room yields a treasure trove of antiquities, including eleventh century Buddha statues, blue and white Japanese dishware and some of the region’s oldest surviving paintings.
The tour guide supplied an encyclopaedia’s worth of information about the house and some interesting trivia about Thompson. For instance, traditional religious rituals were observed during the construction of the house, so much so that Thompson waited until a lucky date chosen by an astrologer to move in.
After the official tour I spent time walking through the grounds and having another look at many of the treasures. I spent most of the day there, much longer than I had planned, but it is so beautiful and peaceful that it was the prefect remedy to the Bangkok blues I had been feeling earlier in the day.
In the parking lot of the museum I also learned of another Bangkok custom. In order to maximize space in parking areas, cars are double parked, with the drivers of the outside cars leaving their vehicles in neutral. That way when drivers of the pinned in cars need to leave all they have to do is push the double parked cars out of the way.
The skies had darkened while I was at the museum, and I feared a rain storm. Rainy season is over, but I am told that one of the legendary Bangkok downpours could happen at any time. Not feeling like getting soaked and having to wade through two feet of water I headed to the Grand EGV at the Discovery Center on Rama 1 Road.
I had heard about the opulent movie theatres here and wanted to check them out. Their slogan at the Grand EGV is “We’ll treat you like a star,” and I have to say it’s kind of true. It is expensive by Thai standards, but is pretty cool. A Gold Class ticket will cost about 500 baht (about $16 Canadian), and entitles you to choose your seat, use the Gold Class lounge and sit in a special VIP theatre. The theatre is quite large with rows of large, red leather overstuffed seats that resemble a cross between a Lazy Boy and an airplane seat. The seats recline to an almost flat position, and should you feel a little chilly there is also a blanket and a pillow. There are conveniently placed tables for your snacks, and when you order a drink, it comes in a glass not a plastic container. If you need anything you just alert the hostess or host who seated you and they will take your order.
That was the good part. The bad part was that I the only movie playing there that I hadn’t already seen was House of the Dead, a z-grade zombie flick based on a video game and shot in Vancouver. I like horror movies, but this is so bad I almost have to wonder if it wasn’t meant to be a spoof of brainless teen slasher / zombie b-movies. There is a great deal of gory stuff, zombies and humans get their heads blown off, legs are ripped from their sockets and at least one hottie gets thrown-up on. It’s pretty graphic, which apparently is OK with the Thai censors who let the scenes of carnage through with no cuts, but crudely blurred out the breasts of two of the lead actresses – but only when they were on land, when they were swimming underwater the breasts were unblurred and unfettered.
Even though the movie was a horrible waste of time, the experience was great. Like North America there were lots of trailers, and several annoying ads, but unlike our movie going experience, Thais are expected to stand and “pay respect to The King,” while the national anthem plays. Just like North America, though, nobody stays for the credits.
Tonight we a trip planned to Pat Pong, a notorious area of town named after its one time owner, Chinese millionaire Khum Patpongpanit. It is probably the most famous red-light district in the world, stemming from its origins in the 1960s when dozens of Go-Go bars sprung up here to entertain airline crews and GIs on leave from the Vietnam War.
To brace ourselves for the gaudy go-go bars of “the Pong” we first check out an Irish pub called O’Reilly’s. A good mix of farang and Thais are eating and drinking when we get there, and I am delighted to discover that it is happy hour. A bucket of frosty Carlsberg hits the table, and we note that the labels come equipped with a temperature gauge that tells you how cold the beer is. On the back of the bottle there is a box with the word “cold” written in it. When the bottles are frosty cold the letters are bold, and become fainter as the beer warms up. Isn’t modern beer technology wonderful?
We are also there to see a Thai Beatles cover band that we have heard are really good, but after waiting for some time we are told that they are stick in traffic and won’t be arriving anytime soon. We leave and head for Pat Pong.
It is only a five minute walk from O’Reilly’s but the streets are so crowded with tourists and merchants trying to sell bootleg DVDs and CDs that the walk takes about twenty minutes. I’m told that is pretty good time for this neighbourhood. I’m also told to put my wallet in my front pocket and pay attention to it as there are pickpockets around. During the day the streets here are empty, it is an area that only really comes alive at night when the prostitutes and vendors take over. Street vendors set up tables on every square inch of the streets, and moving down the street to the bars is akin to running a gauntlet with sellers yelling and grabbing, trying to get your attention.
We choose a place called Goldfingers, a charming little place whose logo is a fist with the middle finger raised defiantly. As soon as I sit down the bartender offers me a drink and a twenty-five dinar bill inscribed with a picture of Saddam Husien. I have never seen one before so I pay him 200 baht (about $3 Canadian) for it. The music is loud, the dancing girls expressionless, and frankly I find the whole scene kind of sad. It’s not decadent so much as sleazy, and I began to find the forced conviviality of the staff kind of annoying.
I get separated from my friend, who I think has left without me. No problem. The seediness of the place is depressing to me and I leave a full beer on the bar and decide to shop in the street market. This is where I learn to bargain. Like so many North Americans I usually just look at the price tag, and decide to buy or not. I would never think to ask for a discount. Here you are expected to bargain, and no price is set in stone. When a watch seller asks 2500 baht, you can always get a better price, and several times as I walked away from a booth I would hear, “Alright 1000… 750… 500… 300… OK! OK! 200!” As the night wore on the sellers were almost giving their goods away. I ended up buying a really ugly tie for 60 baht, a small travel bag for 100 baht, a decorated gift box for 200 baht (bargained down from 550) and a bootleg of the Kill Bill DVD for 100 baht. I was curious about the DVDs. Apparently the police are cracking down on the bootleggers, but you would never know it from my trip down Pat Pong. Kill Bill hasn’t come out here yet, and the number one movie in North America that day, Elf, was also on sale.
I made my way back to O’Reilly’s bartering with street vendors and pushing my way through the drunken crowds. The Beatle cover-band had finally shown up and were near the end of their last set when I got there. They are four Thai men who are closer in age to the Paul and Ringo of today, but dressed in the white shirt, black tie style of the Beatles’ early Cavern period. The instruments are authentic, right down to “Paul’s” Rickenbacker bass. This was a real example of east meets west; of western pop culture insinuating its way into the fabric of Thai life. I didn’t get a chance to speak with the band, but from what I could make out from their between song patter they didn’t speak English very well, but when they sang it was without a trace of an accent and with perfect pronunciation. I can only imagine the slavish devotion these guys have given the Beatles records they apparently love so much.
After O’Reilly’s I was on my way home. It’s about two am, and there are hundreds of people on the street and the usual hellish Bangkok traffic so I decide to walk part of the way back to the condo even though I’m not exactly sure where I am. I got here on the BTS, and while it is closed now, one of the great things about having an above ground train system is that you can follow the tracks and retrace your steps. I also have a secret weapon, a homing device that should lead me right to the front door of the condo – the address of the place written in Thai.
I wait till I get to an area where the traffic has thinned and grab a cab. I show him the note and he takes me to a street corner that I don’t recognize. He doesn’t speak English, and I can’t get him to understand that this isn’t where I need to be. No matter, the cab only costs a couple of bucks, so I pay him and flag another. I show the second guy the note. He nods and takes me on a ten minute drive depositing me on a side street I have never seen before. Turns out my secret weapon, my address note is worth about as much as the Saddam Hussien dinar I bought earlier I the night… that is to say, nothing.
By this point it is getting quite late, and the city is pretty much pitch-black. Electricity is very expensive here so buildings do not leave their lights on at night as they do in North America. I am in the dark, both literally and figuratively. I can’t see any of the landmarks that I am so familiar with in the daylight hours, and I try and use my cell phone to phone a friend who lives here, but it has gone dead.
I am stranded and while I’m not getting panicked, Bangkok is a pretty safe city, I am getting very frustrated that I can’t find my way home, and that I can’t seem to make anyone understand where I need to go. I walk in the dark for about an hour. The streets are in pretty bad repair, so I was trying to keep an eye out for something – anything – that I recognized AND keep one eye on the sidewalk so I didn’t fall. Infuriating. It didn’t improve my mood at all when I fell into a pothole and banged up my leg.
Eventually I limp home, accidentally stumbling across the right side street. I must have looked frightful to the man at the front gate as I hobbled past with my torn pants and a sour expression on my face. Luckily he recognized me and let me in, giving me the customary salute. The guards at the gate of the condo are all ex-military and are very formal, saluting and clicking their heels every time a resident passes.
It’s well after three am when I push the key into the front door lock. It’s been a weird exasperating night and all I want to do is take a shower and go to sleep…
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2003
I get a slow start to the day. My knee hurts, my cell phone is dead and my secret homing device, my address note written in Thai, is useless. My mission today is simple: First, get someone I can trust to write the address in Thai. Second, juice up the cell phone. Third, get a get revenge on all taxi drivers in Bangkok. OK, I know it wasn’t the cab driver’s fault that I didn’t know where I was going and my written instructions were wrong, but dammit, I’m still not happy about being stranded in the middle of a giant darkened city where I don’t know my way around. Of course the only person I have to blame is myself, and I will come around to that way of thinking eventually, but right now I’m unhappy and my leg is throbbing.
My girlfriend calls from Toronto to tell me the self scooping kitty litter box is broken. Great. Thanks for the call. Now I can look forward to coming home to great big mounds of cat poo. The day is not improving.
It is ungodly hot so I decide to stay close to home and do my errands in the shopping plaza next door. It is huge and looms large in the neighbourhood and I have been using it as a landmark. Last night, however, it was completely dark, like it had an invisible cloak slung over it and completely useless to me as a marker.
On the way out I have the concierge of the building write detailed location information in Thai for me. I will not get stranded again.
I don’t do any real sightseeing today, just poking around in the shops and picking up some souvenirs. When I get back to the condo I decide to have a look at the Kill Bill DVD I bought last night. It is pretty good quality – although the picture is grainy and the sound occasionally goes slightly out of sync – and has “Property of Miramax” stamped onto the letterbox portion of the picture. It comes with a variety of subtitle options – Thai, Malay, English, and Chinese – and scene selection. I hadn’t expected so many special features from a bootleg. This clearly has been copied from an industry screener – the “Property of Miramax” scroll which runs the entire length of the film is a dead give-a-way – but I have to wonder how it ended up over here. I haven’t watched the entire film, but the scenes that I have watched seem to be somehow unfinished, as though this is a work print of the movie. In some scenes there is no music, and there are sync problems, which there simply wouldn’t be if this was a straight copy of the finished film.
Much has been made in recent months about bootlegging, and the origins of the copies. In the last year the major studios have instituted a policy of doing security at their press screenings, and while I can see their point I don’t think it is the film critics that are clandestinely pirating the movies. Clearly, as my Kill Bill DVD demonstrates the copies are being made long before critics or the public get a chance to see the films. It smells suspiciously like an inside job to me. Perhaps the industry should take a harder look at themselves and stop searching my bags every time I go to a screening.
As I soak up some air conditioning I take some time to reflect on the trip so far. Despite the familiarity of many things – the small Nissan trucks that seem to be everywhere, the English billboards that dominate the skyline, the Mrs. Fields’ Cookie booth in the grocery store next door, Bangkok is an exotic, strange place. I like the fact that Thais like to share everything. Beer is typically served in large quart bottles meant to be split among a group of people. Ditto with the food; splitting platters of food is the common practice.
The traditional greeting, the wai – which consists of the palms being pressed together and lifted towards the chin – is much more complicated than I originally thought. It is loaded with complexities of class, gender and age. According to my guide book each of these factors determines at which height the hands must be held at. Certain people you do not greet with the wai, children and street vendors for example. I have chosen to simply mirror whatever greeting I receive, and so far have not run into too many problems.
The national anthem is played not only before all performances in theatres and at the movies but also twice a day through the radio and in public parks. At 8 am and 6 pm it is polite to stop and stand still for the duration of the song. To not do so is seen as disrespectful to the King and the country. By the way, Thais will not stand for any criticism or defamation of their royal family. Disrespecting the King can lead to jail time.
There is a lot to absorb here.
We had dinner at a place in Nana called Woodstock. It is in The Plaza, a dodgy looking three story complex of girly bars. As we walk up the stairs to the bar we are accosted by women who are looking for our business. Inside Woodstock is an oasis of normalcy. There is a pool table, a large wooden bar, a good sound system that pumps out American tunes from the 60s and fully clothed waitresses. In the corner a large screen television is tuned to a soccer game. We have a quick bite – enchiladas and burgers – before worming our way back to the condo through the busy streets. There is always lots of activity, especially after night fall, but tomorrow we have a trip planned to Pattaya, the infamous destination of US marines on R&R during the Vietnam War, so despite the temptations the dark has to offer, I opt for an early night.
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2003
The Pattaya trip has been delayed until tonight so I have some unexpected time to continue roaming around Bangkok and checking out the sights. There is a high tech looking food court in the shopping mall next to the condo I have been wanting to check out, so I began my day there.
From the outside it looks like an upscale food court that you could see in any mall. Two things set it apart – the spectacular view of Bangkok from the wrap-around windows and a unique bar code system of payment. When you enter they give you a card with a bar code on it, every time you order something they swipe your card which registers your barcode number at the cash register. When you are done they pull up your account and you pay one cashier instead of paying each vendor individually. I tried to explore the whole place and ended up with a bizarre variety of lunch foods – dim sum, a pizza slice, a small noodle soup and a Caesar salad.
Fuelled up and ready to go I set out for the first grand ad venture of the day. I have heard about the Grand Palace, and caught a glimpse of it from a cab last week, but it is really far from where I am staying and so far I haven’t had the courage to try and navigate my way over there. I had a Buddhist tell me the other day that I have long ears – just like Lord Buddha – so I will have a long and happy life. I am trusting her instinct on this, and assuming that everything will go well on my journey to the Palace. I start the trip on the BTS, transferring once and ending up at the National Stadium. From there I have to get the number 47 bus which should take me right to the Palace.
It sounds really easy, but there are 93,000 busses in Bangkok, some of them make regular stops, others are express busses. Express busses take longer runs and don’t stop at every bus stop. If you’re not careful you could easily find yourself on the outskirts of town, lost and traumatized. The other thing to note is that while there is ridiculous traffic everywhere in Bangkok, the bus drivers seem to have been trained at some Nascar racing school and drive as though they are being chased by a herd of wild elephants.
I get on the first bus with a 47 on the side and ask if it goes to the Grand Palace. The fare collector has no idea what I am talking about, so I give her some money – about ten cents – and sit back for the ride. The buses are large, with wooden floors and no air conditioning. Apparently there are busses with air con, but they are more expensive and they haven’t caught on with the hoi polloi. Traffic, or the rotit mak mah is extreme, but the driver seems to be able to keep the pedal to the metal and keep us careening forward. We cross several bridges, turn down dozens of side streets and motor on for about twenty-five minutes. I’m getting concerned (and a little sea sick) so I get off when I see some royal looking golden buildings in the distance. I figure I can walk there and get my sea legs.
The buildings that I thought were the Grand Palace aren’t even remotely royal. My fear has become reality. I am lost in some weird neighbourhood in Bangkok. It’s hot, so I decide to sit and try to figure out what to do. I buy a bottle of water from a street vendor. She didn’t have any ice and it was so hot the water was almost boiling in the bottle. I wish I had a tea bag. In the distance I see another number 47 bus weaving down the crowded street. I flag down the bus, and the guy barely even slows down. I am determined to get out of here so I run and jump from the sidewalk and make it on the back platform of the bus. Someone pulls me in and I get a seat. I feel like James Bond. The fare collector this time assures me I am almost at the Grand Palace, and I pay her ten cents.
As we pull up in front of the palace I see why it is called “grand.” It is a complex of dozens of buildings, mostly gilded with jade and gold. Intimidating armed guards with sub machine guns are everywhere. As I walk toward the entrance, which is jammed with people coming in and out, an attractive woman approaches me with her hand outstretched.
“I’m from the Grand Palace, and I wanted to let you know that we are closed today,” she said in perfect English.
“Really,” I said, “then why are all those people going in and out of the gates.”
“They’re Buddhists,” she said, “only Buddhists are being allowed in today. It is a holy day. Perhaps I could arrange a tuk tuk tour for you instead.”
This clearly is a scam to sell tuk tuk rides. Just then I see a bus of German and English tourists pull up and enter the gates.
“Are they Buddhists?” I ask.
“They must be,” she replied, and realizing she was caught kind of scurried away.
The palace is spectacular. Established in 1782 it houses not only the royal residence and throne halls, but also a number of government offices as well as the renowned Temple of the Emerald Buddha. It covers an area of 218,000 square meters and is surrounded by four walls, 1900 meters in length.
The center piece of the whole complex is The Emerald Buddha. Enshrined on a golden traditional Thai-style throne made of gilded carved wood, known as a Busabok, in the ordination hall of the royal monastery, the sacred image is clad with one of three seasonal costumes (summer, rainy season and winter). The costumes are changed three times a year in a ceremony presided over by His Majesty the King. The Emerald Buddha is in fact carved from a block of green jade and was first discovered in 1434.
Now I have to get back. I figure if I just go in reverse, that is, take the number 47 bus on the other side of the street, I’ll be fine. I wait, and wait for about an hour until the right bus comes along. Same deal, no air con, wooden floors and a driver who seems to be on a race against time. The traffic is thick and so is the air. You can actually see the smog hanging in the air today. It looks like a low hanging blue cloud that envelopes the street. I develop a sore throat from the pollution on the ride back to National Stadium.
Once safely in an area I am familiar with I was able to find my way home, stopping first for some delicious noodles at a street vendor. The whole meal, with noodles, chicken and a drink cost me about one dollar Canadian.
That night we went to an English pub to meet some ex-pats who have lived in Asia for decades. Each of them told me a similar story. They had all come to Asia to work for a year or so on contracts and never left. One man, originally from Toronto, had just moved to Bangkok after almost twenty-five years in Hong Kong. He was asking me about Yorkville, and if there were still coffee houses there. The hippies moved out decades ago I told him, and the only coffee houses there anymore are Starbucks. We stayed at the pub until eight o’clock, just long enough for the traffic to die down. It never goes away, but it will be lighter now.
The designated driver got the car and off we went to Pattaya. Well, off we went around the corner. It took us almost an hour to round the corner to get on the highway. I’m told the traffic here is really unpredictable, and part of life in Bangkok is planning your day around how long it will take you to get places. Apparently everyone is always really late or really early for everything. No one is ever on time. I can understand why. We were stopped at one red light which didn’t change for twelve minutes. Then when it did, it only went green for about two minutes. In the two minutes we managed to move forward about two feet.
Once we got on the highway the driving was easy breezy, and in two hours we were in Pattaya. After checking into the Hard Rock Hotel we took a walk downtown. Did I mention that Pattaya was a favourite spot for American GIs to go and blow off steam during the Vietnam War? It is a still a pretty wild place, with hundreds of open-air go-go bars lining every street in the downtown core. It is pretty intense. There are hundreds of bar girls who approach you as you walk down the street, grabbing you and trying to get your attention, and they will follow you for blocks if they think you are interested.
Occasionally you see a go go bar that is indoors. If what I am seeing outside is any indication I can’t even imagine what happens behind closed doors.
We finally find a place that looks reasonable and order two beers. Almost immediately a street vendor approaches me and tries to sell me a cage of small live birds. No thanks. By the time we were ready to order another round people had tried to sell us jewellery, ornate traditional Thai hats, postcards and a Lemur (small monkey-like animal). The Lemur was cute, and I believe, endangered, but there was no sale.
We stay until the end of the night, and make our way back to the hotel. I’m staying in the Beatles Room, and have large portraits of John Lennon and Paul McCartney hanging over the bed. It’s been a long day – the kind of day that would kill an ordinary man – so I crash out under the likeness of Lennon and dream of Lemurs.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2003
Saturday is spa day! For the next eight hours or so I plan to lounge by the Hard Rock Hotel pool in a rented cabana, sipping refreshing fruit cocktails and soaking up the sun. It’s really hot, so I’m staying in the shade, but I’m sure I’m getting a suntan through the thatched roof of my cabana.
The pool is massive, with a man-made sandy beach all around it. On the other side of the pool is today’s “entertainment,” a lounge band from Malaysia. They drone on for an hour or so, massacring everything from Sultans of Swing to Something Stupid. Their show coincides with the beginning of the final World Cup soccer game. From the bar inside you can hear cheering and shouting for the game, which at some points thankfully drowned out the band. At the end of their set the singer thanked us for listening (like we had a choice) and mentioned that “we’ll be in the lounge tonight…” I know I WON’T be in the lounge tonight.
My idea of hell used to be an endless loop of Britney Spears singing a duet with Barry Manilow. Now I know who the back-up band would be.
I have heard a lot about Thai massage and wanted to get one, but most of the places in Bangkok looked like brothels disguised as massage parlours so I took a pass. Here at the Hard Rock I felt comfortable, and it is my spa day…
The massage is unbelievable. It took about an hour and cost the equivalent of $20 Canadian, but is worth so much more. I haven’t been pulled and stretched like that every before. The woman giving me the massage looked like she only weighed ninety pounds, but she had hands like vice grips, and at one point was crawling around on my back like a spider. After we were done I tingled for the next couple of hours. I haven’t felt this relaxed since 1982.
The idyllic spa day in Pattaya came to an end when the sun went down at six pm. Hopped in the car and drove back to Bangkok. I have to pack as I am off to Hong Kong in the morning. Somehow I seem to have more room in my bags for the trip home than I did when I arrived. Don’t know how this is possible, when I have been buying things left and right. Dirty clothes, I guess, don’t take up as much room as clean ones…
For my last night in Bangkok we have decided to go to a place called Admakers. It’s not far from the condo, has live music and is open late for food. The place is packed when we get there, filled with Thais drinking and eating, waiting for the headlining band to begin. It has been so hot that mostly I have been drinking juices and beer, but tonight I felt like a gin and tonic. When I ordered it the waitress asked if I would like a bottle. In Thailand it is customary to buy an entire bottle, and if you don’t finish it, they will put your name on it and keep it until the next time you come in. The people next to us were working on a sixty ounce bottle of Johnny Walker, and putting quite a dent in it. My friend is a regular at the bar, so when I declined to buy an entire bottle of gin he and the server decided that it would be OK to give me the bottle of another regular and they would settle up later. Apparently I’ll be drinking some stranger’s gin.
The band were taking the stage just as a group of English soccer fans came in. England won the World Cup earlier, and they were out celebrating. In tribute the all-Thai band played We Are the Champions by Queen, although they pronounced “champions” like the French word for mushrooms. No matter, the Brits were happy to be the “mushrooms” of the world.
Later the band played a note for note cover of Bohemian Rhapsody and a long passage from The Wall. If you had closed your eyes you would have sworn (except for the occasional lapses in lyrical accuracy) that it was 1978 again, and you were at an all-star classic rock concert.
The band were still head banging when I left, off to bed to get some rest before an early morning flight to Hong Kong.
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2003
It’s too early to be awake, and the car I hired to take me to the airport is late. Quite late. Repeated phone calls to the Airport Associate car agency don’t seem to be helping, so I have to resign myself to the idea that the car will arrive when the car arrives, and if I miss my plane, I’ll just have to get another one later in the day. I sit outside the condo waiting and I can hear lizards crowing and birds sounding-off. Bangkok is almost relaxing at this time of morning before the hustle and bustle of the day starts.
When the car arrives the driver assures me we will make it to the airport on time. Much like the bus drivers I had earlier in the week, this guy was apparently looking to set a new land speed record for driving in the city, and we seemed to get to the airport in mere minutes.
I’m kind of back on schedule, which is good, because Bangkok airport is chaos. So much for the relaxing sounds of lizards and birds. Now I am surrounded by confusion, crowds and crazed travellers. There are line-ups everywhere, none of which seem to go where I need to be. I spot an executive class wicket with no line-up, and give them my ticket. Soon everything is good. Someone comes and grabs my bags while another helps me find my way through customs and to the Thai Airways Royal Orchid Lounge. I’m going to make my flight, and I have time to chow down. I grab some tea and a weird assortment of dim sum and sandwiches and wait.
The flight is packed, but whizzes by and soon we are in the Hong Kong International Airport. It is a massive place, probably the biggest airport I have ever been in – you have to take a train from customs to the baggage carousel – but also one of the best designed. It’s very modern and quite beautiful, despite the large photos of martial arts legend Jackie Chan that seem to be everywhere.
I take the high speed train to Kowloon, it takes about half and hour and costs a fraction of what a cab would cost. From there I transferred to a free shuttle bus that dropped me off in front of my hotel, The Sheridan in Kowloon.
I’ve stayed in a lot of hotels, but I have never seen a bathroom like this one before. All the fixtures (except the toilet, thankfully) were made of see through glass. The sink was transparent, so was the counter and the tub. Very cool. The room also had speakers wired throughout the place so you can listen to music or the television no matter what room you are in. I need that at home. This hotel room is way nicer than my house in Toronto.
I loved Hong Kong. It felt like New York to me, only amped up about twenty times. I didn’t do anything special, just walked around and took some photos of the hundreds of signs that hang over every street, overlapping one another. It looks like a giant movie set.
Buying some postcards almost ended up being a traumatic experience. I turned down a small alley toward a vendor selling souvenirs. As we did our business I notice more stores further down the alley. When I get down there I see even more stores up ahead. I explore and poke around. Do you remember the giant maze in the movie The Shining? That’s kind of what this strange underground mall was like. Hundreds of tiny little stores and booths situated in this mind bending maze that went on forever. I got lost for quite a while, and just when it seemed like I was never going to see daylight again I exited into a smelly lane lined with garbage cans and populated by mangy looking cats who were feeding on the trash. I ran the gauntlet toward the street, avoiding the swipes and hisses of the street cats.
I haven’t been feeling well for a day or so, ever since my bus ride in Bangkok where I breathed in enough toxic pollution to make Keith Richard feel queasy. I head back to the hotel and transparent fixtures to get ready for dinner. I’m just grabbing a quick bite from the buffet in the hotel restaurant. I’m not even particularly hungry, but I should eat something. Here’s where Hong Kong and Bangkok differ. In Bangkok I could grab a bite to eat for next to nothing, in Hong Kong my buffet and a green tea cost almost $70. It was good, but after spending so much time, and so little money in Bangkok it was kind of a shocker.
After dinner I bought some cold medication from the pharmacy across the street, loaded up on codeine and watched some TV.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2003
That’s it. The trip is over. All I have to do now is get home. Getting from the hotel to the airport is easy, it was just everything else that seemed really hard. I knew there was going to be big trouble in little China when I tried to check my bags through to Toronto, only to be told that I only had a ticket as far as Vancouver. Don’t get me wrong, Vancouver is beautiful, but I didn’t want to get stranded there.
To buy a ticket from the west coast to Toronto was going to cost about $2000, which was more than I wanted to pay. After several phone calls to the airline it is discovered that it was them who made the mistake. I’m told not to worry about it.
“Great,” I said, “let’s check my bags through to Toronto.”
“Well, we can’t actually do that for you,” I’m told. “We’re not sure when you’ll be leaving Vancouver.”
At this point I realize that I should be worrying about the latter half of my travel plans, but the plane is about to take off. I get onboard for a thirteen hour flight, not sure if I will be stranded in Vancouver or on my way home on the other end.
I decide to enjoy the flight as much as possible, after all there is nothing I can do now but wait. After some artery-clogging pasta I sleep for a time, watch several movies, have snacks, read and try not to think about the frustration that lies ahead.
We land in Vancouver. I speak to the inappropriately named courtesy desk people. They refer me to another desk about twenty-two miles away. Remember what I said about the Hong Kong airport – how well run and well designed it is? Well, the opposite is true of Vancouver. It is a rat’s nest of corridors and ill conceived design. I find the desk, and after a really annoying conversation with the attendant I manage to get a ticket for the flight I was supposed to have been on all along.
On the final leg of the journey I let my mind drift back over the past ten days. Asia was everything I hoped it would be – chaotic, exotic and stimulating – and several things I didn’t expect it to be – highly Westernized, hotter than blazes and strangely serene. I learned a lot and took hundreds of photos, but now it is time to return to real – or maybe that should be reel – life.
Some days it would be better just to stay in bed. Even before I left my
house I had the uncanny feeling that today was only going to bring heartache and misery. I had heard part of a news story about a government strike in France, but didn’t get all the details. Even thought I was about to leave for Paris, I thought, who cares if the mail isn’t getting delivered? Next time I won’t be so smug.
To be safe I looked on the internet for details, and there was nothing about a strike, so I called a cab. Thirty-five minutes later I begin to think that maybe it’s the Toronto cabs that are on strike, and not some postal workers in Europe. When the cabbie finally pulled up in front of my house I was running quite late. He guaranteed me he could get me to the airport on time, and then drove down a one-way street (which I didn’t even know existed, despite living in the neighborhood for six years), running into a dead end. We have to back out, and narrowly miss hitting another parked car. “No problem,” he says as we idle in traffic. Thirty five minutes later I arrive at the airport, forty dollars poorer and twenty-five minutes late.
The Air France people are helpful and despite my late arrival take good care of me. For the first time in my traveling life I have to fill out a Sars form. I give them my name and address and promise not to spread Sars in Europe. OK, off to the plane.
The flight is good. Air France’s Business Class is lovely, with large seats, lots of leg room and good food — dinner was a hors d’oeuvre of lobster accompanied with a mango salad, followed by tournedos of beef with sun dried tomato butter, artichoke bottom filled with ratatouille, Parisian potatoes and French green beans with a chocolate mousse for dessert – and several movies to choose from. I watched a bit of Frida and parts of Just Married before catching a few minutes sleep. I was woken by a loud yelp. Apparently the woman in the next aisle screams in her sleep. After that I was too unnerved to nap. Later I have breakfast — fresh fruit, yogurt, pastries and freshly squeezed orange juice — and finish reading my notes for the
trip.
There is always much to do. I tend to over prepare because I find the first couple of days at Cannes always leave me unsettled. In my heart I know that no matter how much I plan, in the end it is up to the cinema gods (and some really tired publicists) to dictate what is going to happen to me over the next ten or twelve days.
As we are landing in Paris I do one last check of my ticket for the connecting flight to Nice. It says I don’t leave until 9:25 pm. Must be a mistake. My itinerary says I am scheduled to fly out at 10:30 am. I stay calm and figure I can sort it out once we’re on the ground.
Nope. It’s chaos in the airport. Flights are cancelled. People are confused.
There are long wait lists for flights that will probably never happen.
You see, there is a strike. A general one day strike was called in Paris on
Tuesday to protest the government’s plan to change the state pension plan.
After some tussling with the ticket agents we opt to take the confirmed
9:25 pm flight — a full twelve hours after we landed — rather than wait around for waitlisted flights that are likely going to be cancelled.
A number of us rent a room at the closest Hilton to drop off our equipment and luggage and head for Paris. If you have to be stranded somewhere
Paris is not a bad choice. At this point I’ve been awake (with the exception of my interrupted nap) for about twenty hours, but I am excited at the chance to see one of the great cities of the world. By the time we get to Paris it is actually cold. Not a big deal, except that I am dressed for the South of France which is hot and steamy. I have to buy some clothes. Not a bad way to kill a day — shopping in Paris — but not what I had in mind.
Paris is a bit of a blur. We start at the Trockadero, which is the perfect vantage point to see the Eiffel Tower, which is much larger than I imagined it would be. Next we made our way to the Arc d’Triumph and walked down the Champs d’ellysee, stopping every now and again to check out a cafe or a store. We also went to Notre Dame. I was blown away by the gothic architecture and the fact that I was standing in a building that was over 700 years old, but something that happened outside the cathedral was quite strange. As we walked down the street enjoying the sun I noticed that it had started raining — on the other side of the street! If we had moved just a few feet to our left we would have been soaked. I’ve never seen such a thing. I was either hallucinating, or that was an omen of some kind.
We head back to the airport to confirm our 9:25 pm flight at 6:30. We wait.
And wait. All seems to be going well. Then at 9:00 pm there is an announcement. The flight has been cancelled. Up until that point I was fairly good natured about this whole thing. It was a large inconvience, but I got to spend some time in Paris, and although I was very tired (32 hours, no sleep) I wanted to support the workers who just wanted the pension they had worked for. Power to the people! But after the plane was cancelled, after I had waited thirteen hours for a flight that wasn’t going to happen, after I had been snubbed by a Parisian cab driver, a surly shuttle bus attendant and a host of others, I begin to think there is a wide-ranging Gallic plot to make me unhappy and uncomfortable. I really need to sleep.
We find a hotel nearby, although the shuttle bus driver doesn’t stop the first time around and our five minute drive turns into a forty-five minute sight seeing tour. We arrive at the Ibis Gare around 11:30 pm. Here’s a
French travel tip: Never stay at the Ibis Gare!
I set the alarm clock on my cell phone for 7:30 and fall into a fitful, but coma-like sleep.
WEDNESDAY MAY 14
The strike is over, although I later hear from Katrina Onstad that she had travel trouble on Wednesday because one train engineer decided to wage a personal strike and not drive the train she was one. Our plane to Nice leaves on time, and although it is crowded and the seats are small, I don’t care. I just want to get this trip properly started.
I realize I’m still feeling the residual tired / grumpy feeling from yesterday. Five or six hours of sleep isn’t enough to compensate for pulling a thirty-six hour all nighter. I know I’m out of sorts when I note that it isn’t even nine am and I have already yelled at two people.
That feeling fades when we get in the cab to take us to Cannes. The weather is beautiful, the scenery spectacular and while it doesn’t make up for the lack of sleep and inconvience it sure makes me feel a lot better.
We arrive by mid-day and get settled into Casa Reel to Real, which is a large apartment close to downtown. We have stayed in this building for the past two years, but this is the first time in this flat. It’s very spacious, with a large balcony and two bathrooms and multiple rooms, but feels like it was decorated by Cheech and Chong. There is definitely a 1970s den vibe going on here. Who am I to complain. It’s got a bed!!!
We shop for some groceries, get our press passes and cell phones before shooting some beauty shots of Cannes. I’m too tired to hunt down any interviews today, but not too tired to go the Toronto International Film Festival Party. I go to this every year. It’s a lovely event in an apartment off the Croisette, with good home cooked food and lots of wine. It is a good chance to hang out with all the Canadians who are covering the event and trade gossip and movie reviews. This year Roger Ebert and his wife showed up. Mr. Ebert told a fascinating story about Japanese “benti” performers who, in the pre-sound days would act out movies alongside the screen. He recently uncovered a troupe of benti performers in Mexico and hired them to perform at his annual film festival. You could see his enthusiasm as he described their work. Part performance art, part cinema history. I wish I could have seen it.
I must be getting old because I wasn’t the last person to leave the party. I called it quits and checked out the bed at Casa Reel to Real. Tomorrow we start in earnest…
THURSDAY MAY 15, 2003
My day started off with a bang. Literally. I went to an 8:30 am screening of The Matrix Reloaded at the Lumier Theatre. I kept an eye open for Katrina who said she would be there, but the theatre seats 2700 people – the population of the town I grew up in – and somehow I missed her.
I must admit, I didn’t really understand the original Matrix, so it stands to reason that I’m not really in tune with the sequel. I’m not a big fan of science fiction, but I AM a big fan of good looking women who kick butt and blow things up, so I enjoyed Reloaded. After an initial big bang in the opening scene the first hour drags slightly, with long talky sequences involving Oracles, alternate worlds and other things I didn’t really understand. But when it picks up, man look out. There is a wild sequence in which Neo battles hundreds of clones of the evil Mr. Smith and a twenty minute car chase that’ll blow the back of your head off. The little boy that I keep hidden away deep in my subconscious loved that scene.
Then it ends. Suddenly. Abruptly. It’s a cliffhanger that will either drive you to drink, or wet your appetite for part three of the series.
We have a deadline of 3:30 pm to shoot the entire show, package it and send it back to our editor in Toronto. Trouble was, with the strike and the general lethargy after our long trip we didn’t have anything prepared. All the interviews I had set up from Toronto had been cancelled because some of the talent wasn’t able to get to Cannes, or, by us arriving a day-and-a-half later than we had planned we had missed them.
I called Katrina and she was able to spare an hour between screenings, so we met at the Cadadian Pavillion to shoot the show open and reviews for The Matrix Reloaded and The Barbarian Invasions.
As Katrina left we bumped into Kelly Alexander from the Toronto International Film Festival. She is very knowledgable about the Marched u Film – the market where the business of Cannes happens – so I grab her and do a quick interview about how films are bought and sold.
Next we go into the market. It’s a vast maze of hundreds of cubicles with music blaring out of each one. Everyone here is trying to grab your attention, and spending too much time here wouldn’t be good for your health… sensory overload. We’re here looking for interesting filmmakers to interview to round out the Marche du Film piece. Almost immediately we come across Menahem Golan, who like so many others in the film business got his start working with Roger Corman in 1963. Since then he has produced or directed hundreds of films, discovered talents like Jean Claude Van Damme and Sharon Stone and ran Canon films in the 80s. He now lives in Isreal and still proudly produces low budget action films for the international market. We discuss the Cannes Marche, which he has attended for forty years, and he still displays an incredible love for the business and movie making. “If you make good movies with a beginning, a middle and an end for less than 3 million dollars,” he tells me, “you have to be an idiot to loose money.” He’s a character – part player, part carny sideshow barker. When we first meet I notice that everyone in his booth are wearing t-shirts silk screened with the posters of his movies — titles like Death Game and Speedway Junky – except for one guy. Just before the cameras roll, Mr. Golan barks at the guy, “Where’s your t-shirt? Don’t you have any sense of public relations?”
Just down the aisle from Golan we bumped into one of my favorite people – Lloyd Kaufman of Troma Films. He greets me warmly and thanks me for writing a complimentary review of his latest book, Make Your Own Damn Movie on the Reel to Real website. As usual Lloyd has surrounded himself with chaos — people dressed as the Toxic Avenger and other characters from his films — and is wearing emerald green pants, florescent yellow socks and a rather (for Lloyd, anyway) conservative suit jacket. I make plans to sit down for an on-camera chat later in the day.
I still freaking out because we don’t have quite enough for our first show, and the deadline is quickly approaching. Then, shortly after bumping into Lloyd I see another familiar face – Brian O’Halloran. He’s one of the Kevin Smith ensemble of actors, appearing in Clerks (the goateed guy behind the counter), Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. He’s in Cannes promoting his new film, the Toronto-shot Drop Dead Roses, a comedy about a store that specializes in sending dead roses or “slightly abused candy” to someone you have just broken up with. Funny idea. Again I dragged him over the Canadian Pavillion where my camera guy was waiting. We did a quick interview and discussed the movie, why he chooses to live in New Jersey as opposed to where all the other movie actors live, Los Angeles and his impressions of Cannes. He’s very funny, and you can see the whole thing on the first Reel to Real Cannes show.
We shoot the stand-ups (all the introduction etc) on the beach, and by 3:15 we have a show! Just in time to make the courier… I run over to the American Pavillion to grab some lunch. They have the best food on the grounds, and it’s pretty cheap. I have some gazpacho and a grilled cheese sandwich, before calling the Rogers show Daytime for the first of several live reports I’ll be doing for them this week. I like doing the reports, but just as I started to speak I got some interference on my phone and I couldn’t hear what the hosts, Anthony and Natalie were saying to me. So I just kept talking until they cut me off. Don’t know what it sounded like…
Afterwards I go to a screening of American Splendor, one of the “buzz” films of the festival. It’s an odd mix of documentary and fiction that chronicles the life of American Splendor author Harvey Pekar. You might remember him from his legendary appearances on the Letterman show in the mid-eighties. He was a regular guest until one night when he melted down and verbally attacked Dave and NBC. He wasn’t invited back for almost ten years. This is a strange, audatious movie that doesn’t work all the time, but takes interesting chances and should be seen by people who want something a little different. As Pekar Paul Giamatti (Man in the Moon, Planet of the Apes) does a great job as the sad sack curmudgeon.
I’m very tired after the movie, so I shove some pizza in my face and go home to bed. On Friday I have to set up interviews for the rest of the trip…
FRIDAY MAY 16, 2003
Today starts off slowly. With no appointments first thing in the morning I actually have time to have breakfast at Casa Reel to Real. When I get up our cameraman Frank has already assembled breakfast – fruit, juice, pastries and get this, he even pre-peeled the banana. If he wasn’t such a good cameraman I would hire him as my cabana boy. (I would, however, be hestitant to let him shop for us again. On the first day we picked up some groceries, and put him in charge of getting some cold cuts. Instead of buying some prepackaged meats, he decided to order hand sliced ham in his very limited French. Instead of a few slices to last us a couple of days, we ended up with enough ham to feed everyone in our apartment building for the rest of the Festival. In all about $30 USD worth of thinly sliced jambon…)
Now I have to make the rounds of the publicists. I should have done this days ago, but because of the strike everything has been delayed. At the first place I go I book interviews for the Animatrix, a collection of several animated short films, detailing the backstory of the “Matrix” universe, and the original war between man and machines which led to the creation of the Matrix. I’ve already seen them, and they are very cool, so we’re off to a good start.
I also hear a funny story about how one person got around the total shutdown of all transportation in France on Tuesday and made it to Cannes on time. Sensing there would be delays and trouble in France, this person flew to Spain instead, and then TOOK A CAB from Barcelona to Cannes. One can only imagine how much that cost.
I continue going from office to office. Many of the publicists are the same form last year, so I already feel I have a pretty good rapport with them. As the day wears on I book interviews with Gus Van Sant for his new movie Elephant, Harvey Pekar and the writers and directors of American Splendor, the director and cast of a quirky Norweigan movie called Kitchen Stories and the cast of a British film called The Mother, directed by Roger Michell (Notting Hill and Changing Lanes).
I also book several interviews that fall into the “just for me” category. I’m a pop culture junky, so given the chance to interview Cassandra Peterson AKA Elvira and Jerry Springer is an opportunity too good to pass up. Peterson is here to promote her self financed film Elvira’s Haunted Hills (!) and Springer is making his acting debut as a sleazy television producer in Citizen Verdict with Armand Assante and Roy Scheider. Too good to pass up. Then I book Jean Claude Van Damme. It’s the cult figure trifecta. My day is looking up.
To cap a pretty good day of scrounging for interviews I book a spot on the red carpet for a retrospective screening of the 1956 film Giant. Dame Elizabeth Taylor will be in attendance and I’m told I’ll have a good shot at speaking to hear. Next Wednesday is going to be an interesting day with Gus Van Sant, Jerry Springer and Liz Taylor on the docket…
I bump into Cassandra “Elvira” Peterson and have a brief off-camera chat. She’s lovely. Very nice and very funny. I think the interview will be a blast.
I hook up with Katrina and take in a 7:30 pm screening of The Mother. Elvis Mitchell (the coolest name in journalism) from the New York Times is there, so we figure we’ve hit on one of the hot movies of the festival. We were right. The Mother is a subtlily humorous piece about an older woman who falls for her daughter’s boyfriend. It’s a study of dysfunctional families, but without all the psycho babble. Great performances from Anne Reid as the Mother and Daniel Craig as her younger lover. It’s a sometimes shocking, sometimes heart wrenching story. It’s the best thing I’ve seen since I’ve been here.
We grab a bite to eat after the movie and head over to the Petite Majestic, an open air frequented by journalists during the festival. It is packed, as it is most nights with people standing on the streets and sidewalks. Everytime a car comes along the sea of people part to let the traffic through, then move right back into the street. Meeet up with Lloyd Kaufman, who introduces me to one of his newest interns, a guy named Daniel from Los Angeles. Daniel won the chance to hang out with the Troma crew in Cannes by winning the top spot of the Comedy Central quiz show Beat the Geeks. It’s an incredibly tough show to win, but Daniel tells me he had a leg up because he used to write trivia for a website.
We stay for an hour or so, until the beer kegs are drained dry… Home by 1:30 am and in bed seconds later…
SATURDAY MAY 17, 2003
I’ve seen many strange things in my travels. Today I found a new thing to add to the list of “things I never thought I’d see on the street” – CAT JUGGLING! Before anyone gets upset and reports me to PETA I should add that no cats were harmed in the making of this on-line diary. The juggler, dressed like seventeenth century royalty had two cats and a table of stuffed animals. As he held out his outstretched arms the cats would kind of dance on him, pausing every now and again to stand on their haunches or catch a stuffed ball thrown at them by an audience member. I’ve always had cats and have never been able to train them to do anything except sleep and take frequent naps, so I was rather impressed by this amusing, but deeply weird display.
From there, with visions of glissading cats dancing in my head I headed off to the Garden Terrace of the Grand Hotel. It’s a lovely, quiet open-air restaurant with lots of green space and shade, which is remarkable because it is located on the Croisette. I was set to interview the cast of Kitchen Stories, a quirky Norwegian film about Swedish scientists who studied the movements of housewives in order to design more ergonomically efficient kitchens. First up was the director with the unlikely name of Bent Hamer. He spoke English very well and when I asked him if he enjoyed being interviewed (he was just beginning his day, in all he’d do 40 – 50 interview today) he cryptically said, “I’d rather be interviewed than not be interviewed,” which I guess means that he was pleased that so many people wanted to discuss his movie with him.
Next were the two leads, Tomas Nortrom and Joachim Calmeyer. They are both veterans of the Norwegian stage and screen and were engaging, funny men to speak with. Joachim was recently made a member of the Knights of Odin, one of Norway’s highest honors. They smoked cigarettes and drank strong coffee while joking their way through the interview.
It is very warm but slightly overcast today, so it is the perfect weather for running around and finalizing some of the details for the next couple of shows. Spent the afternoon tracking down stories and in the process got a sunburn that later earned me the nickname “Lobster Boy.”
Took a detour into the Marche to speak to Lloyd Kaufman. He wasn’t in, but I did stumble across some unusual movies that people are trying to sell here. From Israel comes “Wisdom of the Pretzel,” “I’m Tired of Killing Your Lovers” is a new one from Greece, while the French / Italian co-production of “It’s Easier For A Camel” made me laugh. The plot synopsis for the Japanese film “Bright Future” stopped me dead in my tracks: “The enigmatic Mamoru lives alone with his poisonous but hauntingly luminous jellyfish…” That’s a must see. I think, however, that I’ll take a pass on Nursie – apparently she’s “losing her patients…” Funny tagline, but terrible poster. I’ll take a pass.
At 5:30 I line up for Gus Van Sant’s “Elephant,” and in doing so learned a nasty lesson about the press passes. I have a “carte rouge” pass, which means that it is pink, but with no yellow dot. I have had this pass for the past three years and have never had a problem gaining access to any event or screening — until today. I line up inside the Palais building with a group of other journalists, all of who had the pink, pink with a yellow dot, or white passes (there are other passes – blue, grey and orange – which are handed out to technicians and photographers and do not allow access to screenings). I wait for half and hour or so before the line starts to move. I flash my pass at the guy at the door and am turned away. “Blue carpet,” he says. “I don’t understand,” I say. “Blue carpet,” he says again, as though saying it twice in a slightly louder voice will help me decipher what he means. Eventually after some back and forth I begin to understand that I have to go outside and re-line-up on the blue carpet. The people with the yellow dots and white passes smirk at me as they go by… you see anyone with a white pass (Roger Ebert, Elvis Mitchell other VIPs) has total freedom to do whatever they like. I think they can even run for President of France if they like… Anyway, I go outside and it is chaos. There are hundreds of people lined up in behind barricades that snake around and around like a giant maze. At this point I want to give up, go up stairs punch the security guard and get on the next flight back to Toronto, but since I’m a reasonable man I get in line. I get pushed, have smoke blown in my face and soak up more and more sun until I finally make my way up the stairs to the theatre. On the way I pass the guy who kicked me out before. I have to control myself, because I don’t want to get banned from the festival… When I get to the theatre I get the last seat in the last row of the balcony. This movie better be good.
“Elephant” was worth the trouble it took for me to see it. I don’t want to give too much away because I think this movie should be seen with as few preconceptions as possible, but I will tell you it is set in a high school and involves a Columbine-like shooting. The sudden ending of the film (after a long, slow start) shocked people, but the reaction was generally very good. I can’t wait to interview the director, Gus Van Sant on Wednesday.
On my way to an Alliance Atlantic party check out a Ewan McGreggor photo-op. These are photo calls open to any journalists attending the festival and basically what happens is the stars stand in one spot and dozens of photographers yell their names, trying to get them to look at the camera. The competition among the photographers is intense, and I have seen fist fights break out when one guy thinks another guy has gotten a better picture. This one was a little more exciting than usual. No fights, but Ewan drove up on a motorcycle and spun his wheels, filling the whole area with smoke. When the fog cleared he was posed perfectly astride his motorcycle… At the party I saw Randy Quaid (who was wearing very dark shades, despite it being midnight) and spoke to Troy Garrity, who is Jane Fonda’s son and is starring in “Milwaukee, Minnesota” with Quaid.
When that party broke up a bunch of us went to the Petite Majestic and stayed out a little too late. It was fun, but seriously overcrowded. Got home far too late.
SUNDAY MAY 18, 2003
Up early despite being out late the night before. As I’m getting ready to leave the phone rings — the first interview of the day has been cancelled. Apparently the interviewee was out late as well… We reschedule, and I use the time to grab something to eat at the American Pavilion. I had the Cobb Salad wrap, and it made me happy. So happy, in fact, that I lost track of the time and was a couple of minutes late for my next interviews.
The afternoon is jam packed, and my late arrival for this interview means there will be a domino effect, and I’ll likely be behind schedule all day, with my carefully planned timetable falling to pieces.
In fact, I can feel my schedule crumbling into dust and blowing away as we start the first of two interviews for the film “American Splendor” twenty minutes late. I have two camera crews here, and on days like this when we have back-to-back interviews in different locations, I send one to location A while the other is setting up at location B. When I am done at A he tears down while I run to B and we flip flops crews all day. It’s a good plan when the timing works out, but I have a feeling the camera guys are going to be doing a lot of waiting around today.
Bob Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman are the writers and directors of “American Splendor.” It’s a really audacious film that blurs the line between fact and fiction while telling the true-to-life story of comic book character (and real guy) Harvey Pekar. We had to cut this one a little short because of time considerations, but we did discuss how the real-life Harvey likes to break rules, and it was that attitude that helped form the unusual structure of the film.
Next was Harvey and his wife Joyce Babner. Hilarious. Despite being a cult figure with an award winning comic book based on his life, many appearances on the David Letterman show, and a stage show and a movie based on him, Harvey always kept a full time job as a file clerk in a hospital. He just recently retired and Joyce tells me that she hopes the movie will attract enough attention for Harvey so he gets some more freelance work and keeps busy and out of her hair. Apparently he doesn’t know what to do with himself now that he is retired. Before the cameras rolled I asked about how they were enjoying Cannes. Joyce told me the best thing about being there was that their undergarments came back from the cleaners starched and “hermetically sealed in plastic.” She was very impressed by that. Harvey seemed kind of indifferent to the attention of having a major motion picture based on your life might bring. He doesn’t think he’s a celebrity, and just hopes that he can make enough off this movie to pay for his daughter’s education.
From there I ran to the Resideal Gardens around the corner to do another series of interviews for the film The Mother. I was a bit late, but my camera guy was there and ready to go so we made up a few minutes on my decaying schedule. The first pair I spoke to was Daniel Craig and Anne Reid. They play lovers in the film, with a huge age difference. She’s a grandmother; he’s her daughter’s boyfriend. Daniel told me he was feeling a little rough from the night before, but was in good spirits because the film had been received so well at the Director’s Fortnight screening. Anne was lovely, with a slightly bewildered air about her, like she had never done publicity before. The interview was very spontaneous and both were very funny. Next up was the pairing of writer Hanif Kureshi (The Buddah of Suburbia and My Beautiful Launderette) and director Roger Michell (Changing Lanes, Notting Hill). These men have worked together several times and have known one another for a very long time. Unfortunately I can’t repeat most of the interview here, but suffice to say we are trying to figure out a way to air it on Reel to Real so the bleeps don’t over power the interview. Hanif remarked at one point that he might possibly have intimate knowledge of Michell’s wife. Michell pretended to be outraged and said, “You’re telling me this on Canadian television! I have to text message my wife right now,” and pretended to storm off set.
From there we hurried to the rooftop of the Savoy Hotel to interview the Muscles from Brussels, Jean-Claude Van Damme. He’s in town promoting a movie that hasn’t been shot yet, but should start filming in August in Montreal. We positioned him by the pool overlooking the beach and the Carlton Hotel. Nice shot. To see everything in the background though, we would have to stand. He wasn’t thrilled at the idea because I towered over him, but agreed to do it anyway. Then he complained that the camera man was wearing a white shirt which he found distracting. I’m not sure if he was joking or not. Then he pretended to kick the camera man in the stomach. Again, I’m not sure if was kidding or not. We finally started the interview. My first question was about how he learned to speak English by watching The Flintstones. Ten weird, rambling minutes later when I was able to ask another question I was so shell-shocked I could barely think of anything else to ask, but managed to get a useable answer out of him about the role the Cannes Film Festival has played in his career.
After it was back to Casa Reel to Real to plan the next couple of shows while the guys logged the tapes we had shot over the last few days. We grabbed a pizza (Mexican pizza with fist-sized chunks of chicken on it) for diner on the way to Telefilm’s party on the beach. I knew we were at the right place when I walked down the stairs and saw a giant stuffed moose — only in Canada. Spent the party mingling, and talked to a number of people, including the managing editor of the greatest website in the world IMDB.com, while cramming as many of their delicious prawns into my face as I could.
It feels like I have been up for days… time for bed.
MONDAY MAY 19, 2003
Up early to shoot the stand-ups for the second of the shows we’re doing from here. We’ve arranged to shoot them on the Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machine’s promotional set in front of the Carlton hotel. Arnold Schwarzenegger did a photo-op there the other day and it is pretty cool. They have the fully operational robots, fake Arnolds and the Terminatrix statue. The nice people at Columbia also give Arnold’s jacket and gloves form the movie to wear while I am shooting. Sounds like a great idea, but the jacket weighs about 30 pounds, and while it is ventilated with bullet holes, it is still really, really super hot. Quite a crowd gathers while we shoot. They’re not there to see me, everyone is checking out the robot, which kind of looks like a streamlined tank with a face. Oh, it also comes equipped with machines guns that are pointed at me while I am taping the intros for the show. I wear the jacket, hoping to sweat off a few pounds…
Next we are off to the Savoy Hotel to interview Cassandra Peterson. You may not know her by that name, but you most certainly are familiar with her alter-ego, Elvira: Mistress of the Dark. For twenty years she has worn the black wig, flimsy dresses and hosted her own television show; appeared on “The Simpsons;” sold a lot of merchandise, including pinball and slot machines; pitched for Coors Lite and appeared in two movies. She’s in Cannes promoting her second film, the self-financed “Elvira’s Haunted Hills.”
She was great. We chatted for quite a while as the camera man got everything into place and she is very funny, very nice and very normal. She tells me she has been able to maintain a normal life because people don’t know her, they only know Elvira. It’s the best of both worlds. She gets to be famous, but not get bothered at the grocery store. We had a grand time talking… you’ll see that interview on the second Reel to Real show from Cannes.
From there wee ran to the Canadian Pavilion to meet Katrina to shoot some reviews. She only had an hour to spare between movies so we had to be quick. She’s a trooper. Despite seeing four movies a day — and writing about each one of them — she’s still making time to shoot with us. I appreciate it, as I couldn’t do this alone. We shoot on the beach, and discuss “Elephant,” “The Mother” and “Dogville.”
When she runs off to a screening I stay at the Canadian Pavilion for a press conference and grab a few interviews with Canadian directors Bernard Emond (20 h 17, Rue Darling) and Jean-Francois Pouliot, whose first feature film, Le Grande Seduction is closing the Director’s Fortnight.
At 9 pm we are invited to a party at The Cat Club. I’ve never heard of the place, but we decide to check it our anyway. The club itself is very cool, and quite packed. Should be a good party, except that I don’t think the owners of the club were ready for how many people were going to show up. There was a constant line-up at the bar as the ONE bartender tried to get drinks for the 300 or so people in attendance. And you know when the drinks are free people can get demanding. Then they ran out of beer just half an hour after the party began. We left before the crowd turned ugly.
Troma kingpin Lloyd Kaufman called and invited me to join him for a drink at the Carlton Terrace. I find my over there, and as usual, Lloyd is surrounded by Tromettes (the young women who follow Lloyd the world over) and an array of interesting people, including the English actor Max Ryan who plays Dante in the up-coming “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.” One of the Tromettes was wearing very dark sunglasses, even though it was quite late at night. When I asked why she said, “I got kicked out of here earlier and I don’t want them to recognize me.” I think the revealing outfit and the pink hair might give it away… We also meet a man who comes over to ask Lloyd if he would put him in the movies. He is six feet tall, around sixty years of age and kind of looks like an aging matinee idol. Oh yeah, did I mention he’s also crazy? Harmless crazy, but crazy nonetheless. He talks everyone’s ear off, and refuses to leave, even though no one is paying any attention to him, and Lloyd is calling him Frederico Fellini. At one point he asks what I do for a living. I tell him that I review movies and interview movie stars. “Perhaps then, you have met the love of my life,” he says with a flourish. “Michele Pfeiffer.” I tell him I haven’t, but that doesn’t stop him from asking me a dozen questions about her.
When it starts to rain, I take that as my cue to leave. I’m sorry to stick Lloyd and the Tromettes with the Frederico Fellini wanabe, but it was time to go. As I was leaving Lloyd pulled out the little digital camera he takes everywhere with him and go some shots of our new friend. “I think you’re about to miss a great Troma moment,” he said.
TUESDAY MAY 20, 2003
We finally get a day to sleep in. I thought the crew were about to mutiny if I didn’t ease up on the early mornings so I haven’t scheduled anything until one o’clock. What I haven’t told them is that while they are sleeping in, I’m going to be booking more interviews to keep them busy right until the end of the trip. While they sawed logs, I booked the cast of the Denys Arcand film “The Barbarian Invasions.” Denys doesn’t want to do any television interviews and the rumor is that he was so bothered by the bad reviews his last film, “Stardom,” received that he isn’t going to do interviews. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know.
First up today is Dale Heslip, a Toronto filmmaker who has brought his short film “The Truth About Head” to the festival. I recognize him, but can’t place his face. He is a commercial and video director, so it is unlikely that I would have interviewed him before. Before we start the interview he asks me if I used to work at Southern Accent Restaurant in Toronto. I tell I did, many years ago and he tells me he used to be a regular there. Good, that’s one mystery solved.
We discuss the film, which is a surreal 12 minute short about Ed, a man without a body. He has a body surgically attached only to discover he was happier before. It’s an interesting, funny bit of work, which reminded me Tim Burton’s “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.” It has a timeless quality about it, with one foot in reality and the other dangling somewhere over the Twilight Zone. Dale tells me he’s using this short as a calling card to try and get a gig directing a feature.
We pack up and move to the Savoy Hotel rooftop to speak to Armand Assante, who is here promoting “Citizen Verdict,” a film co-starring Jerry Springer. I ask him about his character in the film and get a fairly standard answer. I sense that maybe even he’s a little bored. He’s been answering questions all day, and I think he might be on auto-pilot, so I decide to change things up. We discuss the anti-landmine movement, a cause he is very involved in. and a documentary called “Blind Dragon” about the global landmine crisis that he is trying to get off the ground. You could see him get more interested, and by the end of the interview he was very chatty. After it was done he congratulated me on the interview, gave me his home address and asked if I would send a copy of it to him.
Next stop was the Variety Magazine Village, a compound set up on the Croisette for journalists to take a break and have a drink or a bite to eat. We’re here to interview Variety Managing Editor Tim Grey about how to survive the Cannes Film Festival. He turns out to be a funny guy who describes not only the best drinks, massages, and restaurants in the city, but also where all the best restrooms are. He described three different kinds: The Magic Toilet which “with just a wave of the hand over an electronic eye, the toilet seat lowers, complete with a lining of fresh paper.” Next was The Spin Cycle: “Push the button and the toilet seat does a 360 degree rotation, and what emerges is a seat with a clean plastic lining.” I was so excited the first time I saw this one I made everyone I was with come to the bathroom and check it out. The third kind was the Objet d’Art: “This is a reminder that lavatories are not only about technology, but about aesthetics.” There is a restaurant in town called L’Athenee which has hand-painted toilet seats. Grey says the restaurant boasts “great Greek food, a charming staff and a beautiful commode.”
It’s a beautiful day, so we take the chance to shoot a piece that will eventually be called “A Day in the Life of the Festival.” The camera guys followed me through the crowds on the Croisette over to the famous red carpet, into the Palais building to the media lounge and back out through to the International Village. It’s a quick tour of Festival grounds, and what goes on behind the scenes.
We next poked our heads into the Ontario at Cannes party at the Grey d”Albion beach. Nice party, but as with most of these events, if you aren’t situated right by the kitchen door you don’t get a chance to eat. Katrina and I bolt and grab a quick bite before seeing a 7:30 movie – my first of the day, her third.
The Fog of War is documentarian Errol Morris’ film about Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, who subsequently became president of the World Bank. It combines an interview with Mr. McNamara discussing some of the tragedies and glories of the 20th Century, archival footage, documents, and an original score by Philip Glass.
McNamara is a fascinating character who has walked the corridors of power his entire life, and has the insight to be able to look back at his long career (he’s 85 years-old now) and reflect. Twice during the movie he says that decisions he made in his military career could have been considered war crimes, and makes the point that some of these decisions may have been the result of bad information. “Belief and seeing are often wrong,” he says. The film is basically one long interview with him, broken up with archival footage, and it is interesting to note that at one point he says, “Answer the question you wished had been asked to you,” not the question you were asked. I think it would have been a challenge to interview him, but Morris manages nicely.
I am very far behind in my clerical work for this trip, so I spend the next couple of hours after the movie returning e-mails, up-dating the on-line diary and printing out schedules before meeting a large group of Canadians at one of the large hotels for a nightcap. I had a nice time, which is good because I don’t think I’ll ever go back there. You hear many stories about how expensive Cannes is. I have been lucky, and haven’t ever been burned too badly. Until last night. Two Heinekens cost 20E, which is about $30 US. I like Heineken, but not that much.
Off to bed…
WEDNESDAY MAY 21, 2003
I really, really hate having technical difficulties when we are on the road. Today we had two early interviews and had problems at both of them. First up was Jerry Springer… yes, that Jerry Springer. He’s in Cannes to promote a new movie called “Citizen Verdict,” in which he plays a sleazy television producer. I’m not going to make the obvious jokes here. He turned out to be a nice guy – very jet lagged – not at all what you would imagine. He’s thoughtful, insightful and has a good sense of humor. He was very tired, having flown in from the States the night before, hosted a party after his screening and now was up early to talk to the press. We were speaking to him on the rooftop of the Savoy Hotel with the sun blazing down and absolutely no breeze. It must have been 1,000,000 degrees, and Jerry was wearing a black suit.
We position him where we want him to be, wire him up with a microphone and… nothing. There’s no sound. It’s super hot, he sweating and we can’t get it together to have equipment that works. It only takes a couple of minutes to discover the problem, but it was embarrassing.
Next was Gus Van Sant who was scheduled to discuss his experimental new film Elephant with me. We set up on the Noga Hotel Beach in a very hip restaurant called Studio 5. The latest model BMW is parked kin the middle of the restaurant, and I take a few minutes to sit inside and play with the high tech radio. A young woman asks me if I would like to arrange a test drive. I have to decline because I don’t have a drivers license, but I arrange for one of the camera guys to take it for a spin. Van Sant arrives and we begin the interview. No audio problems this time, but he is coughing constantly. The first couple of answers probably won’t be usable because of his rasp. We get him some tea and continue the interview. The second bit of the interview is going much better until I hear a strange clicking sound behind me from the general direction of the camera man. I ignore it and continue on with the questions. I ask a long question based on a quote I had read from Ken Kesey. Kesey said: “When people go see a movie by, let’s say, Gus Van Sant they’re doing it not just to be entertained; they’re doing it because they want to become better warriors.” I was curious how he would react, and we got a very articulate, interesting answer that I’m sure would make great television… except that the clicking sound I heard behind me earlier in the interview was the sound of a camera breaking down. We didn’t get the best answer of the interview. I’m not happy, so I take a little walk to shake off the evil mood I’m now in.
Now for the glamorous part of the job. I sit at the computer for the next three hours e-mailing scripts to our editor in Toronto and researching tomorrow’s interviews.
At 4 o’clock I meet the crew at the Olympia theatre just off the main drag. It is a smaller theatre that is not part of the festival per se, but often distributors rent the place to showcase movies they are trying to sell. Today there is a screening of Giant, the 1956 film starring Rock Hudson, James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor. We have been invited to join the scrum on the red carpet, and try and grab interviews with the celebrities who will be attending. We don’t normally cover events like this, but I am told that Liz herself will be speaking to the press, and I don’t want to miss the chance to speak to a film legend.
We line up at four pm and are crammed into a small fenced-in area on the left side of the red carpet. The plan is that Elizabeth will walk up one side, stopping every few feet and chatting, then continue down the other side. Everyone should get a chance to grab and interview. She will, however, be quite late. The film starts at six pm, and we are told not to expect her until at least 5:30 or 5:45. These things never go as planned, and I’m fairly convinced that we won’t get to speak with her, but I’m willing to wait in the sun, pressed up against other reporters on the off chance that we can get her.
At 5:05 a black limo pulls up and Liz gets out. She’s on time. People are stunned. She’s never on time for anything. I later hear from a publicist that they told her the event was at 2 pm. By telling her the call time was three hours earlier than it actually was they figured they could get her to the appearance on time. In her mind she was arriving fashionably late – three hours late.
The photographers go crazy. “Leez! Leez!,” they’re yelling. There is a push forward as she stops to pose for photos. He’s wearing Fort Knox – enough jewels to pay the debt of several small countries, but look frail. She’s escorted by two men, one on each arm who usher her along. She stops at the reporter next to me. That probably means I won’t et her, as I’m sure they’ll try and move through the line fairly quickly.
But no! She stops in front of me. I ask her one question. Then another and another after that. I actually get her attention for a few minutes. I’M THE KING OF CANNES!
After I speak to her the rush her along to one more reporter, then hustle her inside. They missed one whole of side of the red carpet, including the reporter from Entertainment Tonight. For once, I think to myself, I get an interview that not even ET could get. A few minutes later a car pulls up to the front door of the theatre and Liz is helped inside. We hear later that she isn’t up to staying and had to be taken back to her hotel. As the car was pulling out I heard the woman from ET desperately yelling, “Hey Liz! Got a minute of ET!!!!”
After the red carpet we go down to the docks and shoot the tops and tails for the third Cannes show in front of the ocean and the huge yachts. Some of these things ae so large they have helicopter ports on them. One of them actually had two spots for helicopters to land… unreal. I heard that it costs $50,000 US to fill one of these up with gas.
We have a bite to eat and listen to a live jazz band before heading back to Casa Reel to Real to get ready for Thursday. I have many notes to read. It’s the last full day we’re here, and of course it’s also the busiest.
THURSDAY MAY 22, 2003
I’m up and out of Casa Reel to Real before anyone on the crew has even thought about waking up. While they lay dreaming in their beds I’ll be interviewing documentarian Errol Morris, director of “Fog of War” at the Carlton Hotel. Roger Ebert called him “a magician, and as great a filmmaker as Hitchcock or Fellini.” He has developed a new camera called the “Interrotron” which is basically a modified teleprompter which allows Morris to project his image on a monitor while looking directly at the camera, which allows both Morris and audience to achieve eye contact with the subject.
We discuss this new technology and the difference it makes to the viewer’s perception of the subject. Mr. Morris is a fascinating guy, but speaks v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y. I had lots to ask him, but at the rate he was speaking we ran out of time before I had asked half my questions. I hope to have the chance to speak to him again at the Toronto Film Festival.
It was at this interview that I really noticed the difference between British and American publicists. I hadn’t met the British publicist who was looking after Mr. Morris. She came up to me and pleasantly asked, “Could you remind me of your name?” Whereas the Americans are more likely to stare you down and bark, “Who are you?”
From there I met the crew at the Majestic Beach to interview George Stevens Jr. – son of “Giant” director George Stevens. I had spoken to him briefly the night before on the red carpet, but this was my chance to have a full length chat. We discusses his father, and his meticulous casting process. He was so fussy about casting, he would actually cast the personally cast the animals in his films. We also discussed James Dean, who died when his Porsche was blindsided by another car after leaving the “Giant” set. Stevens Jr. – who was close to Dean – told me how his father had forbidden Dean to drive during the shooting of the film in case he hurt himself in a crash. When Dean told the elder Stevens that he was going to race his Porsche the director made him promise he would ship the car on a flatbed to the race. Dean promised he would, but changed his mind at the last moment. When the news filtered back to the set of “Giant” Stevens Jr. says everyone was “terribly, terribly shaken.”
Since we are leaving tomorrow I have a few odds and ends to tie up – including getting caught up with this on-line diary. While at the press lounge I hear about the Vincent Gallo press conference for “The Brown Bunny.” Nobody that I have spoken to enjoyed this film, and I read today that, so far, it is the lowest rated film ever by a Cannes jury. Anyway, there was a press conference yesterday for the film, which Gallo directed, that sounded pretty entertaining. He told the gathered reporters that he had fired Winona Ryder because “she takes tablets which seem to have a bad impact on her behavior,” and said Kirsten Dunst had “a lunatic nasty woman as an agent.” The press conference sounds more entertaining than the movie…
The site of our next interview probably offers the best view I have seen of the city of Cannes – too bad it’s so windy we can’t take advantage of it. We’re on top of the Grand Hotel (home of the $15 Heineken) with a view of the ocean, the yachts and the beautiful old hotels of the Croisette.
We’re hear to speak to Time Magazine film critic Richard Schickle, who has just directed the documentary “Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin,” and Chaplin’s daughter Geraldine. Schickle is passionate about Chaplin’s films, although he will admit that for most of his life he preferred Abbott and Costello. He tells me he hopes this documentary, and the recently digitally remastered versions of Chaplin’s films will make people “turn off the rock music” and pay attention to these classic films.
He’s also kind of a crusty guy. When a Brazilian crew makes a ruckus next to us he scolds them, loudly telling them to keep it down. He took the words right out of my mouth…
Next was Geraldine Chaplin. This woman has lived a life that I can’t even imagine. I ask her about the challenges and benefits of being the daughter of arguably the world’s most famous man – certainly the most widely recognizable pop culture figure next to Mickey Mouse – and she smiled broadly and answered my question with a question. “What could be wrong with having a father that everybody knew and loved?”
Our next set of interviews is to be the last of the trip, and have been the biggest problem to arrange. Every year it seems that the most difficult interviews to set up are those with Canadians. This year the scheduling of the interviews for the Denys Arcand film “The Barbarian Invasions” has been nothing but trouble. The European publicist wasn’t returning phone calls, and it was frustrating not only for me, but for many of the other Canadians I spoke to. Finally the other day I managed to book interviews with the film’s three leads. Great. Well, not so great. I arrive at the location to find out that one of the interviews was cancelled, one was never scheduled in the first place and the third was delayed. Even though we can gone a fair bit of trouble to arrange the interviews I felt that it just wasn’t worth it. The camera guys wanted to catch some rays before our long trip home tomorrow, and I thought that if they want to make it that hard for us to publicize their film, I just won’t bother. We left.
I’m off to our traditional last night of the festival dinner in just a few minutes. It’s the one night we really treat ourselves and go out and spend some serious money on dinner. Covering the festival was a bit of a grind this year. I saw a t-shirt that read “Life is Short… Cannes Is Long” and it certainly felt long this year. I know that I’m looking forward to going home, but I also know that next year around April I’ll be just as excited about coming back to the long line-ups, the rude security guards and the long hours.
It is freezing in Toronto. Minus sixteen degrees, but with the wind apparently it feels like minus thirty-five. If it feels like minus thirty-five isn’t it actually minus thirty-five? I don’t understand. All I know is that it is cold. I swear I saw an old woman freeze solid and snap in half just off of Bloor Street on Friday.
I mention the weather because I am in a warmer place, a place where the ground shakes occasionally and a latte at the corner Coffee Bean will set you back six dollars, but at least it is sunny. Los Angeles. As I’ve written before it is not my favourite place but right now I am so desperate for warmth that yesterday I briefly considered lighting one of my cats on fire for the heat.
Saturdays are never busy at the airport but I gave myself lots of time to check-in, clear customs and security. I have been reading about recent changes at the border and I’m not sure if I’m in for a rough ride or not.
Not, as it turns out. I left my house at three-thirty and with the twenty minute drive to the airport I get checked-in and checked-out by customs and security in less than ten minutes. Because I am ahead of schedule and have lots of time the plane is late and we leave half-an-hour behind schedule. Luckily because there are no headwinds tonight we’ll still get in on time at eight-thirty.
The flight is uneventful – I kill time eating chicken with a mysterious red sauce (should have had the pasta), watching Finding Nemo and part of Matchstick Men, reading the new Elmore Leonard novel and listening to the new Danny Marks CD True.
I recently got a set of BOSE headphones and a portable CD player. The headsets are specifically designed for air travel. When they’re not hooked up to a CD player they can be used to listen to the audio channels on the plane or, best of all, they can also be used to block out sound. They create a cone of silence that blocks out the crying babies, airplane noise and sends the message to the person next to you that you don’t want to talk about politics, the weather, sex, George Bush or anything else. They make all sound disappear. Too bad BOSE doesn’t make something that would block out bad airplane smells.
Despite getting a late start we arrive at LAX early and by nine pm I’m checked in to the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. I decide to take a walk and stretch my legs after the plane ride. I brought a light jacket with me, but don’t need it as it is sixty-five degrees. Coming from the deep freeze that is Toronto that seems pretty warm to me, but I see the locals wearing toques and scarves. I notice one guy in the lobby of his apartment building bracing himself for the cold. He puts on a woolly hat and scarf, and pauses to check his look in the window. He walks out the front door, across the sidewalk, gets into his car and then takes the hat and scarf off! Good thing he had the hat and scarf. That might have been a chilly ten second walk otherwise.
It is a beautiful night, despite what the bundled-up locals might tell you. The neighbourhood is lovely, a mix of those cool little 1930s stucco cottages and mansions. Apart from the odd person going to or coming from their cars I don’t see a soul. The night is clear and the moon is full, illuminating the Hollywood Hills. It’s really nice, but there is always something about LA that I find off-putting.
As I walk around my mind wanders… Canada is not a country that tends to celebrate its heroes, whereas Los Angeles is all about self-congratulation. As I drove in from the airport I passed the Howard Hughes Parkway and the Avenue of the Stars. Granted we have a Mike Myers Boulevard somewhere in deep dark Scarborough, but we’re not generally in the habit of making grand statements to celebrate our achievers. Where is Peter Gzowski Park? The Margaret Atwood Atrium? Maybe Geddy Lee has a library named after him somewhere, but I doubt it. We’re simply not a showy people. As a result we tend to admire our celebrities rather than worship them. LA is such a celebrity culture that even John Tesh has a star on the Walk of Fame. John Tesh. Go figure. Perhaps it is the staid Canadian in me that that finds LA to be a little too much, a little too shallow and a little too quick to say “Look at me!” or maybe I just spend too much time alone thinking about this stuff…
I spend and hour or so walking, making it all the way to the Sunset Strip before heading back sufficiently tired to fall asleep.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 11, 2004
Up early to grab a bite before the interviews for The Butterfly Effect. I’m scheduled to start at 9:40, but I hear Ashton Kutcher is running late. There’s a surprise. I load up on big American breakfast food and wait.
At 10:15 I get in a line to speak to Amy Smart. She has appeared in a wide range of films from the good – How to Make the Cruellest Month – to the bad – Campfire Tales – to the ugly – Dee Snider’s Strangeland. You’ll also remember her from the teen flick Varsity Blues, starring opposite James Van Der Beek. In The Butterfly Effect she plays the same character four different ways: as a downtrodden waitress, a junkie prostitute, a preppie frat girl and as a granola eating hippie chick. We discuss the film and I tell her she is one of the few people I have met who was actually born and raised in LA. She tells me that growing up here gave her a good grounding for working in the film business. Living here she has seen it all – the ups and downs – and has a good grip on life in Hollywood. I liked Amy Smart, she was nice and lived up to her last name.
Ashton, as it turns out, arrived while I was in with Amy. I didn’t see him come in, and before you ask, Demi Moore was no where in sight. He was late, not because he was goofing off, or out punking someone, but because he was downstairs doing an interview with Access Hollywood.
When I get to the suite Ashton is talking heatedly with one of his people about the merits of Barry White vs Al Green. Ashton, who is dressed in a style I like to call Hollywood homeless – uncombed hair, expensive jacket over an old white collared shirt – prefers Al Green over Barry White.
I sit down and am told the cameras are rolling and the clock is ticking. They have a lot of interviews to do today and each one is timed carefully. Ashton doesn’t acknowledge me, despite me having said ‘hello’ and sitting two feet across from him. The White vs Green debate rages and my time with Ashton is running out and we haven’t actually spoken to one another yet. Finally he finishes his point and wordlessly turns to me. Half my time is gone.
I start to talk about the theme of the movie and how random events can have side effects many years later. He stares at me. I elaborate. More and more of my time is slipping away, and Ashton doesn’t seem to have a clue what I am talking about. Finally I say something that triggers a comment and he rambles about “self responsibility” for the remaining time of the interview.
Times up. I extend my hand to shake his and thank him (although exactly why I’m thanking him is a mystery to me). He shakes my hand, but doesn’t say anything. I leave the room not sure what to make of him. Like many pretty boy actors who are trying to make the switch to dramatic roles he wants to be taken seriously. The messy hair and aloof attitude are sure signs that Ashton the pretty boy has been supplanted by Ashton the thespian. It’s a tricky transition and for every Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp who has made the leap from pretty face to pretty good actor there are many others who discover that high cheekbones can only take you so far. The verdict is still out on Kutcher, but if The Butterfly Effect is the full extent of his dramatic skills don’t be too surprised in a few years to find him taking gigs on that great b-list dumping ground – the celebrity reality show.
I gather my tapes, throw everything in my room and head downtown for a day of shopping and sight seeing. It’s another beautiful day and in a quick phone call home I’m told that a sleety, rain-like snow is covering Toronto. I’m happy to be away. LA might be kind of ugly and not have any culture, but I’m willing to ignore that and soak up as much sun as I can.
On the way out of the hotel I have the first street celebrity sighting of the trip. Lara Flynn Boyle is driving an SUV on Doheny Drive, dressed all in black, she is waving a cigarette around like a baton. I can’t get a good look at her, but it appears that she has an enormous head. I have heard that one of the keys to success on the big screen is having a large head. If this is true I’m surprised she’s not a superstar.
By midday I’m at the Hollywood and Highland complex, home of the Kodak Theatre and the center piece of the gentrification of downtown LA. There are five floors of stores and restaurants connected to a courtyard designed to look like a soundstage on one side and Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on the other. I grab a quick lunch at Johnny Rockets. It’s a chain of retro burger joints that was, apparently at one time, Billy Wilder’s favourite place to eat. I order the kind of greasy, deep-fried food that killed John Wayne. My cheeseburger is topped with deep fried onion rings! Heart-clogging goodness! It takes a brave and courageous soul to eat like this…
On the way back to the hotel I walk past many sidewalk patios on the Strip. I try to image what this area must have been like in the 1960s before it went high-end. I picture hippies and go go bars, surfers in their Woodies and people in tie dyed shirts holding protesting the war in Vietnam and talking about free love. All that is a long distant memory now. The free love has been replaced by The Hustler Store where you can buy “love toys” but they certainly ain’t free. The only tie dye in sight is in the window of the Dolce and Gabbana store and probably costs more than a vintage VW Westphalia van and a bong put together.
My little nostalgic reverie is broken by a homeless man who has approached one of the restaurants. He is yelling at the Gucci clad diners, miming holding a gun. He’d line up an imaginary shot, yell BAM! and laugh maniacally. He was no threat, but it was unsettling.
A few minutes later I am walking past a strip mall and have lost track of the homeless guy. Suddenly someone grabs me from behind. My heart jumps and I assume it is Mr. Bam! from the patio. I quickly turn and was quite shocked… it was my friend Stefan Brogen on a break from shooting Degrassi: The Next Generation. We get caught up, trade some gossip and then I’m on my way. I have been out walking around for almost seven hours and my dogs are barking. Despite having loaded up on grease at Johnny Rockets I’m hungry again and order some food to my room. Eight giant prawns and a Cobb Salad later I settle in for a night of VH1 and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
MONDAY, JANUARY 12, 2004
I don’t like getting up early. I am a night person, and usually avoid the early hours like a kid avoid homework. Having said that, the three hour time difference actually works in my favour when getting ready to go back to Toronto – six am is actually only feels like nine am, still odious, but doable.
LAX is usually a bit of a zoo even on slow days, so I’m giving myself lots of time. When I get there I see line-ups everywhere, except at the American Airlines counter. This could either be a good thing or a really bad thing. Turns out to be a good thing – once I had checked in, had my bags examined, all I had to do was clear security. That’s the problem. The security check at LAX is located, I think, on the Seventh Level of Hell. To get there you must first shuffle through a maze-like series of line-ups, fighting demons all the way. OK maybe they aren’t real demons, but I think the people they have running this whole operation only have one purpose in mind, and that is to make it devilishly hard for you to get through the maze without screaming.
Once I got past the spirit-destroying chaos of the security check it was clear sailing. The flight is one time, and Joyce DeWitt, Janet from Three’s Company, is sitting a couple of rows ahead of me. I saw her at the departure lounge and she looks good. She does, however, have a normal sized head which might explain her lack of roles post Three’s Company. She still has the Janet haircut and doesn’t look much older than she did when she was on television every week.
I was amused by an announcement from the Captain. It was usual kind of thing right up until the last line. He began by telling us about the flight, then about the weather in Toronto and our approximate flying time. Then he added that the flight crew working this flight were the best on the planet. This became funnier as the flight progressed. I heard one of the “best flight attendants on the planet” tell one customer that they had run out of tea bags, and in future if she really wants to drink tea when she flies she should bring her own bags. Another managed to bump into virtually every seat each time she walked down the aisle. When I asked another one what kind of pasta there was I was told penne, although she pronounced it “penny pasta.” If this is the pick of the litter I’d hate to see the b-team.
I pass the time watching the in-flight entertainment. I haven’t seen the movie, so I kill almost two hours watching Denzel Washington race against the clock toward a ridiculous conclusion in Out of Time. It’s not a very good movie, and I think my time might have been better spent giving some etiquette lessons to the flight attendants. Maybe next time.
We arrive on time, and I watch Joyce DeWitt and playwright Brad Frasier joke and chat in the customs line. They are one or two lines away, stuck in a slow line. Lately I have somehow developed an uncanny knack of being able to always choose the best customs line. My line buzzed along and I was out the door and getting into a cab I’m sure before they were even halfway to the front. If I could bottle this line-choosing ability I’m sure I could make a fortune from frequent flyers.
Home. It’s cold and has snowed while I was away, but it feels good to be back. LA might have the sun and surf, but can you build a decent snowman there? I don’t think so.
When most people make New Year’s resolutions they vow to give up smoking or to lose ten pounds. Me, I decided not to buy soap for the next calendar year. It’s not actually as nasty as it sounds. Instead of buying bars of Ivory I’m just going to pilfer soap from every hotel I stay in.
There is a lot of soap in my future. This four-day weekend I’m off to Los Angeles for two days, then New York City for the balance of the trip. Two cities. Two hotels. Many bars of soap.
I arrive early for my two o’clock flight and kill time by waiting at the gate. For some reason there are two flights leaving from the same gate and it is very crowded. It also seems like most of the people here stayed home the day they taught lining up in school, so it is a kind of chaotic. In the melee I make the first celebrity sighting of the trip. Tim Roth is at the head of the unruly throng, and although he looks calm, if everyone in the crowd took one step forward he would be squished flat against the big sliding glass door that leads to the plane’s walkway.
The flight is delayed, and once we get into the air the turbulence is so bad that for the next five-and-a-half hours I feel like a James Bond martini – shaken, not stirred. Being whipped like a meringue for that length of time is no fun but it did lead to one of the more pleasant aspects of the trip. Usually on planes I do my best not to speak to anyone. A quick “hello,” or “would you like some pretzels?” to the person next to me is more than enough contact for me. I’m not on the plane to make new friends. On this flight, however, because the turbulence was so horrific the woman next to me started talking about the flight and we continued to chat for the entire flight. She is a producer of television commercials and was on her way to Los Angeles to shoot a car ad. The challenge of making this particular spot, she told me, was working with the ten baboons hired to jump all over the car. It’s a strange business.
She also told me great stories about working with Vadim Perelman, the Kiev born, Toronto raised commercial director, who recently made his feature debut with The House of Sand and Fog. He has a reputation of being very talented but also very difficult. His quick temper might stem from a troubled life – at one point he had to beg for money on the street so his family could eat.
Just before The House of Sand and Fog was released, she told me, Perelman held a screening for his old advertising pals in Toronto, followed by a cocktail party at The Windsor Arms. He invited everyone who had helped him in his career. While his guests drank champagne and chatted about the movie he stood to make a speech. After a few halting words of thanks he stopped and said, “I can run a movie set, but I can’t express my gratitude to you for all your help…” With that, teary eyed, he went around the room, hugged everyone and delivered personal messages of thanks to each person. It was an interesting story, and presented a much softer side of Perelman’s personality than I had heard about.
She also told me that Steven Spielberg has taken Perelman under his wing and is shooting a documentary about his life. Not bad for a guy who dropped out of Ryerson Film Studies after only two years.
So despite being tossed like a salad for the whole flight the company was good and the time breezed by.
Shaky town was a little chilly when we got there, but the palm trees swaying gently in the wind at least gave the illusion of warmth.
I don’t have any interviews scheduled today, just a screening of The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind at nine o’clock. This is where the time difference really kicks you in the butt. By the time I’m watching the opening credits it’ll be midnight, my time. It’s not the ideal way to see a movie, but it is my only chance to see the film before doing the interviews on Friday.
I took a shuttle bus from The Four Seasons to The Grove Theatre located at Fairfax and 3rd Street near the famous Farmer’s Market. The theatre is located adjacent a giant fountain that features a choreographed water show with lights, music and giant jets of water. It’s elegant in a showy kind of way and very L.A. but I’m too tired to be wowed by it.
I’m tired and hungry and have lost my cell phone at some point in the last couple of hours. As I walk into the theatre I’m imagining someone wracking up my phone bill, making long distance calls and phoning 967 numbers. Fortunately The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is so good it woke me up like a blast of cold water in the face, and purged all the thoughts of evil phone thieves from my head.
Before you ask, the movie’s unusual title is quoted from the poem Eloisa to Abelard by Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744). The script was written by Charlie Kaufman based on a story idea by director Michel Gondry. It’s an unusual story about Joel (Jim Carrey) who is amazed to learn that his girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) has had her memories of their bumpy relationship erased. Hurt, he contacts the inventor of the process, Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson) to have Clementine removed from his memory. As his memories of his ex-girlfriend disappear Joel rediscovers his love for her. From deep within the nooks and crannies of his brain Joel attempts to escape the procedure. As Dr. Mierzwiak and his team of technicians (Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood) chase him through the maze of his memories it’s becomes clear that Joel doesn’t want to let go of Clementine.
Ace Ventura 3: Who Let the Dawgs Out this ain’t. This is a dense, visually beautiful story of love as though told by Phillip K. Dick. Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet both give very strong performances – Carrey hasn’t been this good in a serious role since The Truman Show and Winset is sexy, funny and wistful.
After the movie I went back to the shuttle bus. The driver had found my cell phone on the floor next to my seat. I checked, no long distance calls had been made. Yah! I was still jazzed from the movie, and unexpected return of my cell phone as we left the parking lot. On the ten-minute drive back to the hotel, however, I could feel my lids getting heavy. Back at the Four Seasons I bypassed the bar, went to my room, packed the soap in my luggage and fell into a coma-like sleep.
FRIDAY, MARCH 05, 2004
It’s a beautiful day. I opened my balcony door and took in the sights – the palm trees, the Hollywood Hills and early morning joggers getting some exercise before the smog gets too thick. My interviews don’t start until three-thirty so I have most of the day to prepare and hang-out.
I start the day with some room service – a giant urn of tea, some Heuvos Rancheros and a smoothie made of fresh fruit. I weigh myself and discover that I’ve lost twelve pounds since the last time I stepped on a scale three weeks ago. Maybe I should have two orders of Heuvos Rancheros…
Outside the hotel I have two very random celebrity sightings. Billy ‘I’m not really a Hobbit” Boyd is waiting for his car from valet parking. He likely dropped by to say hello to LOTR cast mate Elijah Wood who was doing interviews upstairs. As Boyd’s car (actually, a giant silver SUV) pulled up, celeb number two showed his face. Penn Jillette, the tall half of magicians of Penn and Teller appeared, suitcase in hand. I half expected for fire to shoot from his fingertips, or perhaps to see him levitate his way to his car, but apparently all his magic props were packed away, and instead he simply waited at the curb like any other mortal.
The weather was hot and sunny, so with thoughts of the giant block of ice that has been sitting in front of my house since January I soaked up the rays and walked down 3rd Street. Along the way I passed a store called Meg’s which is owned by friends of mine from New York. We never seem to be able to hook up. When I am in New York they are always in L.A. and visa versa. I poked my head in just to check if they were around and for once the travel gods were smiling and we were all in the same place at the same time. The store is lovely, located in a trendy part of 3rd Street between Sweetzer and Kings Road. We chat for an hour or so, getting caught up and comparing notes on who had the worst flight in on Thursday. They won. I only had turbulence to deal with. Their flight was hours late, and there was no meal service because of the brutal turbulence.
From there I move on to the Farmer’s Market. The original Farmers Market was created at Fairfax and 3rd Street in 1934 when 18 farmers parked their trucks on vacant land at Gilmore Ranch to sell fresh produce to locals who flocked to the location. The first merchants at the Market – the farmers who sold produce from the back of their trucks – paid 50 cents a day in rent. It’s a little different since The Grove complex of high-end shopping opened next door, but some of the old-timers are still there. Du-par’s Restaurant has been there for sixty-four years and Magee’s has been serving Market patrons for 68 years.
Over the years many Hollywood stars have been associated with The Farmer’s Market, and it was once described as “the number one place in L. A. to spot stars” by the L. A. Times. James Dean is believed to have eaten breakfast at Farmers Market on the day of his fatal car crash (9/30/55), and Esther Williams once performed at Gilmore Stadium – she had a pool built and staged a water ballet – and when the show was over, the pool was immediately removed.
I find a nice sunny place to sit and work on reading my notes and sketching out questions for the interviews. I’m so happy be to sitting outside after the brutal winter we’ve had in Toronto that I have hard time concentrating on my work. I don’t make out lists of questions for these interviews, but I do try and familiarize myself with the information and make a few notes on things I’d like to cover. Usually I have a page of point form notes written in a scrawl that resembles hieroglyphics. Many times I have been doing an interview, looked down to check my notes and have been unable to read what I have written on the page. Today I take extra time to make sure my notes are legible.
Back at the hotel things aren’t running smoothly. The schedule is out of whack and Jim Carrey arrived really late, and is taking his time deciding on which interviews he would like to do. No matter, there are five interviews in total, so I’m not going to pull my hair out over whether or not I’ll get Carrey.
I’m scheduled to start near the end of the day, so I’ll likely be the last interview of this session for most of the actors. First up is Kirsten Dunst, who is tres cute with her short hair. She’s tired and looks it. It has been a long day for her and she clearly wants to get this over with. On camera the interview goes well, and we discussed the script and the emotional core of the film. She agreed with my analysis that the story can be as fanciful as you like as long as the emotional core of the film rings true.
She seemed relieved when the interview was over. A few minutes later we met in the hall just outside her room. She was with her publicist and wanted to drop by Mark Ruffalo’s room to say hello before she left for the day. I asked her how the day had gone for her.
“If one more person asked me, ‘If you could erase one memory what memory would it be?’ I was going to scream,” she said.
I pointed out that I hadn’t asked that question.
“Yeah, your questions were good,” she said. “And every man who walked into the room wanted to ask me about dancing in my underwear and they all used the word ‘panties’…”
Again, I pointed out that I hadn’t been one of the dirty old men who asked about her undergarments and mentioned that Mark Ruffalo is a whole lot more naked than she is in the movie. She giggled when I enquired if anyone had asked about Mark’s panties.
When she went into Mark’s room I heard her yell, “If you could erase one memory what would it be!” then the sound of uproarious laughter from the two actors. Apparently it was the questions of the day for all the actors.
I’ve interviewed Mark Ruffalo many times in the last year or so, and find him to be a pleasure to speak to. He’s open, funny and has a nice relaxed way about him. He’s also the only man (other than Viggo Mortensen) that all my women friends unanimously agree is husband material. We chat for some time, but most of the interview we can’t use because we unwittingly gave away the end of the film. Maybe much later we’ll use that footage once everyone has seen the movie.
Like everyone else on the planet I saw Titanic when it came out, but in the years since I haven’t given Kate Winslet much thought. I’ve seen her in the odd film, and actually really liked her performance in Quills, but she wouldn’t have made my top five list… until today. Her performance in The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is flawless, and completely different than anything else she has attempted before. And for the first time I thought she was beautiful. Really beautiful.
My newfound lofty expectations of her were more than met when I walked into her hotel room (oh no, this is starting to sound like a letter to Penthouse Forum). She’s down to earth, smart and used the word “whilst” effortlessly during our conversation. We discussed how people are used to seeing special effects in movies and can spot CGI a million miles away. This movies uses special effects, but of a more organic nature. There is very little computer manipulation of the images; instead director Gondry used older techniques. She described to me a rig that was attached to the camera lens that was made of two pieces of glass, and had a prism effect. When the two pieces of glass were shifted slightly she would disappear from the shot, even though she hadn’t physically moved. The “hand made” special effects give the movie a magical feel, and even though they are based on age-old techniques they seem very fresh. For more with Kate Winslet check out Reel to Real in March.
The final interview of the day was Elijah Wood. I’ve interviewed him several times for the LOTR films and am always amazed at how upbeat he is. The LOTR press days were vicious, every media outlet on earth was trotted out for these guys to talk to, and I can only imagine the stupid questions they had to answer. That’s bad enough for one movie, but to have to do it three times is just cruel. But he seems fresh and eager when I get him, even though he has been sitting in a stuffy hotel room under hot lights all day. Perhaps he really is a Hobbit with supernatural powers. We discussed how is character is being seen as the bad guy in the film, but I told him I didn’t see him as completely awful, just desperate. Really, really desperate, and this clouded his judgment. He agreed and expanded on my theory. More with Elijah Wood in March on Reel to Real.
I finished my interviews at ten minutes after five. Good thing too, my drive to the screening room for tonight’s movie leaves at five-fifteen. I’m off to see Spartan, a political thriller starring Val Kilmer and written and directed by David Mamet.
The screening room is in an office building just off of Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. As I walk down the hall to the auditorium I pass hundreds of framed photographs of a man with large, thick glasses hugging every celebrity you can imagine. Some are in black and white, some in lurid color, particularly one with an obviously drugged-out Paul Williams that looks like it dates from the mid-Seventies. It is a quite a collection… I haven’t seen that many b-list celebs in one place since Liza Minelli’s wedding. Anyway, the guy with Coke-bottle bottom glasses in all the photos is the owner of the screening room. I didn’t catch his name, but I spoke with him before the movie started. During our conversation he disappeared several times, only to return with more photos and memorabilia to show me. His prized possession was an honorary doctorate from a local university. “By rights,” he said, “you should be calling me doctor.” Hollywood is filled with strange characters.
Before the film he made a speech informing us that we are about to see “a beautiful picture, let’s not ruin it with noise from our cell phones…” I’m not sure I would call Spartan a “beautiful movie,” but it is an interesting one.
Val Kilmer plays Robert Scott is a career military officer working in a highly secretive special operations force. He is recruited to find the daughter of a high-ranking government official. His partner on the mission is novice Curtis (Derek Luke).
Soon the straightforward search-and-rescue mission becomes complicated by the political ambitions of those in high places – like Stoddard (William H. Macy), a political operative who may know more than he’s telling about the clandestine circumstances surrounding Laura’s abduction. Scott and Curtis are at the brink of tracking Laura’s whereabouts when the mission comes to an abrupt conclusion, with the media issuing reports of the girl’s death.
Scott returns to the quiet life and awaits his next assignment, but Curtis seeks out Scott to confide his belief that Laura is in fact alive. If she is, their continued unofficial investigation will put them as well as Laura at the center of a dangerous conspiracy that reaches the highest levels.
Sounds complicated, no? Well, it is, but in a good way. Think of it as a double episode of The West Wing, (one of the good ones from last season before Aaron Sorkin left), with sharp dialogue and a story that takes chances. I sometimes wonder why Val Kilmer is famous. He hasn’t had a hit in years and his Top Gun / Batman heyday seems like a long time ago now, but then I see him in something like this and am reminded what a good actor he is.
I’m ravenous when I leave the screening, and since I can’t afford to eat in any of the restaurants on Rodeo Drive we head back to the hotel, grab a table on the patio (!) and have a leisurely dinner. I’m in bed early ready to fly to New York the next morning.
SATURDAY, MARCH 6, 2004
I’m up at an hour that can only be described as “arse o’clock.” It is 4:30 am when my alarm goes off. I fight off the urge to hit snooze and hide out in my room. It’s still dark when I take a shower. It’s still dark when I check out of the hotel. Ditto with the cab ride to LAX. I was up so early that the sun didn’t start to drop rays until I was at the gate.
I wasn’t the only one who had to get up early that morning. I spotted Val Kilmer making his way to the departure area. He was leaving L.A. (or Valifornia as his fans call it) and making his way to New York to do a day of press to promote Spartan. In person he is quite striking looking, and he draws some attention from people at the airport. It must be his eyes. A website, valkilmer.com describes them as “greenish in color and very soulful.”
As we board the plane for the seven am flight I pass Val who is sitting in row A seat one. He nods at me as I pass and I mumble a “hello,” as I shuffle past him. I don’t think he could possibly remember me. I have only interviewed him once, and that was seven months ago on a press day in Toronto for Wonderland. He must have done fifty interviews that day, so either he has a terrific memory, or he always wanted to be an airline steward and enjoys greeting people as they board the plane…
Uneventful flight. The breakfast is pancakes with apples, a strudel and some tea. The movie is School of Rock and I have a chance to read an entire GQ magazine. The plane isn’t very full, and I have an entire row to myself. Other people are stretched across the empty seats, but I can never quite negotiate that. I’m too tall to lay down on a plane, my head always sticks out in the aisle, and I have had some unpleasant run-ins with service carts on other occasions when I have tried to catch a few winks in that position. There is nothing quite as unpleasant as being woken from a deep sleep by getting dinged in the head by a flight attendant with a heavy serving cart. I know. I have the bumps and bruises to prove it.
We land at JFK in mid-afternoon. No one, including Val has any idea where to pick up our luggage. It is a big barn of a place and there is no indication of which baggage carousel is ours. Eventually I spot Val sitting near a carousel and wander over. He says hello again and we chat. I told I had seen the movie the night before and enjoyed it. Then he said something kind of cryptic.
“David Mamet is so funny,” he said. “He should make more comedies.”
I don’t really know how to respond, as I didn’t find this movie particularly amusing. I think he might have been referring to his deadpan delivery of the dialogue and how that may have brought some humor to an otherwise very serious subject, but frankly I’m a little baffled.
Luggage in hand I grab a cab to The Regency Hotel on Park Avenue. The one bonus of getting into town later in the day is that the rooms will be ready. I sign in and go up to my room on the eleventh floor. I open the door and a blast of hot, dry air blows me backward. It’s so hot in the room I think my hair gel is going to melt (that could get VERY messy). As I turn down the heat and throw my bag on the bed I notice a squishing sound. I take a step. There it is again. Closer inspection of the floor reveals that it is soaking wet. Probably it has just been shampooed and to help it dry they turned the heat up to one million degrees.
It feels like my skin is starting to blister and I’m being cooked from the inside out (OK, I’m exaggerating a bit, but it was hot) as I call down and to the front desk and arrange another room. It’s on the fourth floor – my view is gone, but at least the carpet isn’t sweating. I notice that a “commemorative” bottle of Evian in my mini-bar is $12. I inspect the bottle and can’t find anything unique about it other than the outrageous price. Later, when I am out walking around I buy the same bottle of water on the street for $1. How says you can’t make money running a hotel?
I go out and walk around for a couple of hours and see a man in a cowboy hat with a belt buckle as large as a dinner plate. I admire the courage it takes to pull off a look like that but don’t it would look good on me.
Tonight I have to see Taking Lives at the AMC Theatre in Times Square. Saturday night in Times Square really has to be seen to be believed. There are more people at the corner of 42nd Street and Broadway than there are in the town I grew up in – it is jam packed. On top of that there are billboards and flashing signs on virtually every inch of free space on the buildings. It is a sensory overload.
The theatre is huge. I notice The Passion of the Christ is playing on five screens here, and there are line-ups at each theatre. I’m reminded of a headline I saw in the satirical newspaper The Onion earlier today on my walk: Jesus Demands Creative Control Over Next Film. Inside it is as chaotic as it is outside. This isn’t just a press screening, there will be a general audience as well. I like seeing movies in New York with regular audiences. Critics tend to be a jaded bunch, with a “seen it all” kind of attitude, so it should be fun to see it with an audience that will interact with the picture.
An FBI profiler (Angelina Jolie) is called in by French Canadian police to catch a serial killer who takes on the identity of each new victim. The first scream from the crowd comes about nine minutes in. From that point on there is a lot of commotion in the audience. People are shouting, “Don’t go in there!” as Angelina Jolie’s character moves to explore an old basement and “Told you so!” as Ethan Hawke reveals a dark secret. That kind of thing would drive me crazy normally, but here it seems to fit and gives me a good idea at how people will react to this movie.
I liked the movie. It is a good thriller in the spirit of 1980s fare like Basic Instinct and the Canadian in me is happy that it was shot and takes place in Quebec. Also, Ethan Hawke’s character comes from Nova Scotia (as do I) although he needs a little work on his accent.
After the movie I go back to the hotel, pack the soap (see page one of this diary) and go to bed.
SUNDAY, MARCH 7, 2004
I didn’t set an alarm to today because my interviews don’t start until three o’clock. My plan was to get up early, check out of the hotel, stow my bags, have breakfast somewhere and study my notes. Unfortunately I woke up an hour after I was supposed to have vacated the room. Whoops. The anxious maids in the hall are circling the room like vultures, waiting to come in and strip the bed and erase all signs of me ever having been there. They’ll have to wait, and I’ll probably get charged a fortune for a late check out.
During packing I realize that I have accumulated quite a lot of things on this trip and my luggage feels like it is packed with anvils. I leave the bag in the hospitality suite – I don’t have to worry about anyone stealing it because none of the pampered reporters on this junket could lift it – and go for a walk. It’s sunny and warm so I find an outdoor café on Lexington Avenue and have something to eat while I go over my questions.
Back at the hotel I’m told that Val Kilmer has cancelled most of his interviews for today. It seems he isn’t feeling well and needs to lie down. That’s funny, because he seemed OK when I spoke with his yesterday, but who am I to judge. I also hear a rumor that on the Jersey Girl junket at the Essex House (I’m not doing that one. I’m set to interview Kevin Smith in Toronto.) Miramax is not releasing the Ben Affleck tapes. Apparently Diane Sawyer is interviewing him on Primetime so to insure her exclusivity Miramax is hanging on to Ben’s junket tapes until after Sawyer’s interview has run. The day after Primetime airs the tapes will be sent to the junket reporters.
My first interview of the day is with Ethan Hawke, or as I like to call him, “the man formerly known as Uma’s husband.” I think it is rather brave of him to be doing a full press day like this when his marital problems have been so widely publicized. You have to figure that out of the forty or so interviews he’ll do today at least a few people are going to try and talk trash about Uma and their break-up. If I were him I’m not sure I would put myself in the position where I would be expected to discuss my personal life in a very public forum. I stick to talking about the movie and he seems a bit relieved.
Next up is French heart throb Olivier Martinez. He plays a by-the-book cop in the movie who doesn’t see eye-to-eye with Angelina Jolie. Most viewers will remember him either as Diane Lane’s lover in Unfaithful, or the bad guy who offered “One hundred meeelion dollars!” to anyone who could break him out of jail in S.W.A.T.. As I sit down he tells me he and the cameraman are having a competition to see who falls asleep first. It’s not the most promising opening to an interview I have ever had, but I soldier on and hope for the best. We discuss which is more fun to play, a good guy or a bad guy. He gives me a long winded answer about playing bad guys. I almost fall asleep during his answer.
There is a slight delay for my interview with Angelina Jolie. Apparently she is changing her clothes every few interviews so that all the footage from today won’t look alike. I wait in the hall until I am called in. Walking into the suite I see three or four people leaning over Jolie, primping her hair, and powdering her face. I can’t see her, but I’m sure she’s in there somewhere. When the make-up and hair people step away the effect is like the Red Seas parting, or a red velvet curtain raising behind which there is something extraordinary.
Jolie is quite remarkable looking, so much so in fact, that she almost doesn’t look real. She calls the raised veins on her forearms her best feature. I disagree. As GQ recently pointed, “To speak of her beauty in morphological terms – the lip cleavage, the puma eyes, those great heaving… blah, blah – is like pointing out the sun.” She is a mish-mash of unusual features – GQ recently described her face as “ripely round, yet violently angular,” with plumped lips and a forehead made for arched eyebrows. I think that any one of these features might look odd by themselves, but put together they form a whole that is undeniably striking.
We’ve all heard the tabloid stories about the vials of blood, eating disorders and the tattoos but there are no markings visible today, although she has a number of them. She has a koan inscribed on her stomach in Latin that translates to: “What nourishes me also destroys me.” Today she is the epitome of elegance. She’s open, looks you straight in the eye when speaking to you and gives thoughtful, interesting answers to my questions.
She plays an FBI profiler in the film and we discussed the similarities between that job and her day job as an actress. Both are observers and both have to have a keen understanding of human nature. For the full interview with Angelina Jolie watch Reel to Real in March.
She’s the last interview of the trip, and it is only four o’clock. My plane isn’t scheduled to leave until eight-thirty but I really want to get home, so I head for the LaGuardia hoping to make an earlier flight. The airport isn’t that busy, but apparently the flights to Toronto are delayed because of bad weather in Canada, so I have to wait until seven-thirty. I park myself in the executive lounge and wait. Trainspotting director Danny Boyle is also in the lounge – he’s shooting a film in Toronto and is probably waiting for the same flight I am – but he looks like he wants to be left alone and after doing interviews all afternoon I’m done talking about movies for today so I don’t approach him.
The flight is uneventful, and I’m glad to be coming home. It was a long, strange trip, but at least I was able to keep up with my New Year’s resolution – I came back with four bars of hotel soap!
Saturday morning my cell phone rang. “Have you seen CNN?” said the somewhat frenzied voice on the other end of the line. “It’s a High Terror Orange Alert in the States.” I tried to explain that we had nothing to worry about, that this was just fear mongering and that more people die each year from being kicked by mules than in airplane related accidents, but my words felon deaf ears. It was a friend of mine who was also going to Washington DC the next day to interview Robert Duvall and the cast of Gods and Generals. Despite my comments to her I have to admit that I was feeling a little uneasy about the flight. I have traveled under all kinds of circumstances – bad weather, in tiny little planes that didn’t look like they could muster the speed to get off the ground, in the middle of the night, at rush hour – but never during a High Terror Orange Alert.
