Rob Walker

When I first discovered the world of Formula 1, its composition was quite different from that of today. One of the significant losses for present day F1 is the extinction of the 'Gentleman Driver'--the sportsman who partook out of pure enthusiasm and who was, more often than not, wealthy to some degree. It could be argued that all drivers of the era were pure sportsmen as the pay they received for risking their lives was nominal. Ferrari went so far as requiring his drivers--John Surtees, for example--to purchase a Ferrari road car for PR purposes. In addition to gentleman drivers, there was one notable 'Gentleman Owner' in Formula 1. His name was Rob Walker, heir to Johnnie Walker Scotch. When I became aware of him, he was campaigning a Cooper-Maserati driven by the Swiss driver Jo 'Seppi' Siffert. He had previously fielded a car for Stirling Moss.

In 1966, I attended the Mexican Grand Prix in Mexico City. John Surtees, having left Ferrari, was now driving the vastly inferior Cooper-Maserati as were Jo Bonnier, Jo Siffert and Jochen Rindt. Jack Brabham and Denny Hulme were driving Brabham-Repcos and Jim Clark, Pedro Rodriguez and Pete Arundell were each in a Lotus-BRM. Graham Hill, Innes Ireland and Jackie Stewart were in BRMs. Dan Gurney was in his Eagle-Climax and Bob Bondurant drove an Eagle-Weslake. Richie Ginther and Ronnie Bucknum had Hondas. Bruce McLaren had his McLaren-Ford. Get the feeling?

Improbably, Surtees won with the Cooper-Maserati. Siffert retired with suspension failure. It was an exciting race and Surtees' win was especially gratifying after he received rather shabby treatment from Ferrari personnel at Le Mans subsequent to recovering from a bad accident and, consequently, left the team. After the race, I flew down to Acapulco for a few days. At the airport, I was standing in a rather long line for the ticket counter and found that the man in front of me was a familiar figure.

"Pardon me, but you are Rob Walker, are you not?" I asked.

He looked surprised and replied, "I am, but how in the world would you know that?" He didn't expect to be recognized in Mexico by a teen-aged Californian, I suppose. I explained that I was an ardent follower of Formula 1, which launched us into a post mortem of the race. I mentioned that his Cooper-Maserati had an unusual nose cone with a larger opening than the normal one and asked if it was to counter high track temperatures. He was impressed that I had noticed and confirmed my assumption. Our conversation continued until we reached the counter and we bid each other farewell.

I wonder if I would ever have such a conversation with any of the current team owners.

Montmartre

Although I knew early on that I wanted to make films, it didn't happen right away. I took film courses where I learned (from the heads of the cinematography and sound departments at CBS Cinema Center) how to make films, but not how to get to make them. When I asked my mentor back then, Paul Stanley, what was the best preparation for being a filmmaker, he responded by saying, "Live a full life". I followed his advice to a far greater degree than ever he would have imagined.

When I finally found the path, I moved to Paris to begin my career. I wanted to make the kind of films that came from France. For my first project, I had in mind doing a pseudo documentary about an artist who painted on the Place du Tertre in Montmartre. The style and tone was inspired by the Woody Allen film Take the Money And Run. I found an investor and began making my plans and engaging the actors with whom I wanted to work. A few days before we were to begin shooting, the investor fell out--he spent his money elsewhere on an impulsive spending spree. This eventuality wasn't covered in film school, needless to say.

That evening, upon returning to my apartment, I received a call from someone asking if I was still looking for an investor for my project. Yes I was, I told him. And so it was that the project went unfunded for only a few hours before returning to viability once again.

Before I could begin shooting, I was obliged to visit the Préfecture de Police to obtain a shooting permit. This entailed sitting across from a dour policeman while he read the entire script. He didn't smile--let alone laugh--once. When he was finished, he told me the mayor of Montmartre would not approve of the scenes where the gypsies pickpocket the tourists. I suggested that they should be more concerned with stopping the gypsies than obstructing filmmakers. He did not take my suggestion to heart. In fact, he demonstrated his disapproval by forbidding me to use actors or block traffic in any way. All I could do was to shoot stock footage and that, effectively, killed the project.

When I finally looked at the paperwork the policeman had issued me, I saw that the first page was the standard shooting permit. The second page had all of his restrictive stipulations. Guess which one I threw in the trash! I took my actors and blocked traffic in Montmartre with abandon for the next week.

The course of my life involved a number of shipwrecks the result of which things were lost at sea--and so it was with Montmartre. The finished master was gone and it was only a week or so ago that remnants in the form of some clips washed ashore. I have cut them down to just under ten minutes so they'll fit on YouTube and offer them to you here:

Enzo Ferrari

Back in the day, the Ferrari Owners' Club in Los Angeles held monthly dinner meetings with invited guests as speakers. One of these was Franco Lini who, at the time, was the manager of the Ferrari Formula 1 team. Talking with him afterwards, I made mention of the fact that I would be at Monza for the Grand Prix of Italy. He said, "Come see me when you are there", which was all I needed to hear.

Fast forward to September. The Saturday was sunny and warm and though I only had tickets for the race on Sunday, what better way to spend the day than to visit Franco Lini during practice for the Italian Grand Prix? I called a cab and instructed the driver to take me to the Monza autodromo. He knew the way. When we got there, the driver wanted to drop me off, but I had other ideas. At the first gate, I told the security guard, "Franco Lini mi ha detto di venire" (Franco Lini told me to come). The man couldn't get the gate open fast enough. Incredulous, the driver drove through towards the pits. "Non c'è bisogno di fare i biglietti?" (Don't you need tickets?), he asked me. We'll see about that, I told him.

We approached a second blockade and, though I suspected I would be turned away as we were very close to the action now, I repeated the magic words, "Franco Lini mi ha detto di venire" and the gate was practically shoved off its hinges. There was one last obstacle in the form of a pedestrian gate into the paddock and pits compound. I left the taxi driver to decide for himself whether to stay and watch the Formula 1 cars practice or return to his duties and approached the security man who was restricting traffic through the gate and who I could see was nobody's fool. After I threw him the line his demeanor changed, the gate opened and, if my eyes didn't deceive me, he saluted (!!).

Now I'm in the paddock. There is John Surtees going into the office, Jackie Stewart going out in the March, Jo Bonnier arriving in his Mercedes. Too much to take in all at once. I make my way to the Ferrari pits where, believe it or not, Franco Lini remembered who I was. This surprised me more than anything else and he seemed delighted that his name had served as an all-access pass. Not wanting to impose any further, I left him to his work and took up a position where I could watch the cars from above as they accelerated out of the pits onto the track.

Later, I found myself standing in the paddock again wondering what to do next. I am peripherally aware of someone staring at me. I look at him and he continues to look at me. He is a familiar figure and my first impression is that he is someone I know. Then it dawns on me I am having some sort of nonverbal communication with none other than Enzo Ferrari himself. I'd heard he didn't attend races, but later learned that he did come to Saturday practice at Monza. In any event, there he was and he kept looking at me. I took this as an invitation and approached him.

I said, "Buon giorno. La mia GTO mi piace molto" (Good day. My GTO pleases me very much) to which he responded, "Sì" as if to say "How could it not?". He was curious about how I'd come to own a GTO, being little more than a teenager at the time, and as we spoke, Juan Manuel Fangio walked up and joined us. He smiled at me and listened politely as Ferrari and I conversed.

After a time, I took my leave and wondered at how easily this encounter with two of the greatest figures in auto racing had come about. The taxi driver would never have believed it.

Marlon Brando

One evening, I was enjoying a John le Carré novel and a glass of Bordeaux when the phone rang. It was 11:30 in the evening and I knew, given that was the time my (Interview) television show concluded, that it was likely a viewer wanting to comment on the show. For the sixteen years the program ran on local cable, the phone always rang off the hook whenever a segment ended as my phone number was listed in the end credits of the show. (Interview) was a fictional televised interview with an actor playing someone who had lived an extraordinary experience and had written a book about it. The show always began with me saying, “Stevie Williams (or whatever the character’s fictional name might be), you’ve written a book. All Yours gives us a close-up view of a New York call girl’s life and elaborates on your cooperation with the New York Police Department’s manhunt for James Wells Campbell, the Perfume Killer.” How’s that for an opening?

The show would go on for twenty-eight minutes weaving the tale I had created for the actor to recount all the while doing nothing to give away the fact that it is a performance. In his review of the show, TV critic David Gritten used my quote “It’s as true as anything you’ll see on television including the six o’clock news”. Because the stories were so sensational but told in an understated and thoughtful, Charlie Rose manner, viewers accepted the shows as real even though an actor’s credit appeared in the end credits.

On this particular evening, I let the answering machine (pre-voicemail) take the call and continued reading my novel. As it was with answering machines of the time, one could hear the cassette turning as it played the outgoing message. Then, a click and the other cassette would begin to turn taking the caller's incoming message. Over the years, I produced 500 half-hour segments of the show and each one produced a dozen or more phone calls. I felt if the message was important enough, I could return the call in the morning.

About four or five minutes later, I became aware of the fact that the voice-actuated machine was still taking the caller's message. My curiosity was aroused--who would leave such a long message? I turned up the volume and could hear the voice of a man speaking in perfect French but with the worst accent imaginable as though doing an impression of an American butchering the language. Since my outgoing message was in both English and French--I began my career when I was living in Paris--it wasn’t unusual to have French speakers leaving messages on my machine. However, this man was talking about how many Hispanics live in Los Angeles. Interesting, perhaps, but not a conversation I was interested in hearing. I lowered the volume and returned to my book.

After another five minutes or so, I hear that the machine is still taking the caller's discourse and, as much out of irritation as curiosity, I pick up the phone and ask, "Mais, qui êtes-vous, monsieur ?" (Who are you?). He answered, "Je suis Marlon Brando et je veux savoir pourquoi votre répondeur automatique a un message en français et en anglais." (I am Marlon Brando and I want to know why your answering machine has a message in French and in English).

As one might imagine, there were other things I would have wanted to talk about with Marlon Brando, but this was what he wanted to know so I explained that I was a filmmaker who worked both in Paris and Los Angeles. He seemed to like this and we went on to talk about other things but he seemed fixated on the number of Hispanics there were in Los Angles. I wondered to myself if he had the driest sense of humor I’d ever come across of if he was an obsessive-compulsive sort who would work a subject to death like a pit bull. He had a reputation for being a practical joker and I wasn’t certain this wasn’t one of his pranks.

Finally, Marlon tells me he had just seen one of my (Interview) segments and wanted to have a cassette of the show for his personal library. He asked what it would cost to buy a copy and I told him twenty dollars. I had no desire to have his money, as you might expect. I was hoping to receive a check made out to me or my company and signed by Marlon Brando. When someone showed up with a $50 bill, my plan for having Marlon’s check framed on my office wall was scuttled.

Some months later, I was trying to help a friend of mine who was a casting director break into producing. He'd found a book he liked--Waiting For The End Of The World by Madison Smartt Bell--and I made contact with the writer and his agent and negotiated an option for my friend. He then needed a director but he wasn't sure about whom to approach. I suggested Marlon Brando. Marlon had directed the movie One-Eyed Jacks but only after Stanley Kubick had left the project and only, I suspect, so he wouldn't have to give back money he'd already been given for the project. Still, it was worth a try.

I called Aiko, Marlon's secretary, and asked her if he would welcome the submission. She called back later to say that Mr. Brando would be interested. I drove a copy of the book up to his house near Coldwater Canyon. A couple of weeks later, Aiko called me to say that Mr. Brando liked the book and the idea of directing the project but was leaving for Tetiaroa; would I mind waiting until he returned in a month or two? I didn't mind.

The project never went beyond Aiko's phone call as events in Marlon Brando's personal life overtook him and directing a picture became the least of his concerns. My interchange with him was as interesting as it was uncommon. On and off the screen, he was a character.

In the end, though he outfoxed me on getting his signature on a check, I did get something of Marlon’s that I prized. It was a script he had written about a DEA agent which was sent to me via my agent at APA Larry Masser. Not a bad trophy, after all.

Bunny Brunel

French bassist Bunny Brunel composed and performed the score for my movie Fait Accompli which I shot in Los Angeles, Palm Springs and Ensenada. Here he can be seen performing his composition Temperamental with Frank Gambale on guitar in Hyderabad, India.