The Wrecking Crew

There was a time when I endeavored to spend as much time on film and television sets as possible so I could observe directors, actors and production teams at work. I was quite successful at this and at one point secured some minor bit of work on a Dean Martin film, The Wrecking Crew, that would be shooting for a few days on location in Palm Springs. This film would turn out to be the last in the Matt Helm series--a sort of James Bond knock-off that didn't take itself very seriously. I was told to report to the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway whose cable cars carried passengers 8500 feet above the desert floor to the top of Mount San Jacinto.

Normally, the cast and crew of a production are mandated by union rules to be transported to and from locations by the transportation department, which is to say the Teamsters. In this instance, I was granted an exception. While I wanted to make the trip in my recently acquired GTO, it was undergoing a complete engine rebuild and I drove to the location in a Ferrari Berlinetta Lusso instead. It was a fun, high speed drive out from Los Angeles and the crew had already been shooting when I arrived at mid-day.

The cable car delivered me to the top of the mountain and I was able to observe the flurry of activity that is a movie set. Half of the people were working diligently, the other half waiting for them to finish so they could go to work. One of those waiting was a beautiful woman, one of the film's leading ladies. I remember her sitting in her 'director's' chair that had her name printed across the back. I hadn't heard of her but she was something special. As I recall, she was wearing a pink outfit and pillbox hat that Jackie Onassis would have worn. Though she was not in the scene that was being set up, she chose not to withdraw to some private area and hide herself away. Sitting there in the middle of all the activity she was apart but not aloof. It also seemed to me that she enjoyed being there; much of this industry going on around her was ultimately setting the stage for her. She was an extraordinary woman who radiated a sense of serenity. Her name was Sharon Tate.

Throughout the rest of the day, I took notice of another blond woman on the set. She was getting a lot of notice and attention from cast and crew alike. One after another, the males on the set made their pilgrimage to flirt with and hit on her. From my vantage point, nobody seemed to have scored any points but the parade continued and it kept things interesting to see who would try next and to anticipate the result.

When we wrapped for the day, a bus took most of the cast and crew down the hill to our hotel in Palm Springs. I left somewhat later but blew past the bus as it was about half way down the tortuous road. Later, when everyone had been delivered to the hotel, I found myself checking in at the counter next to the mystery blond who had been getting so much attention all day. As we were being given our room keys, I asked her if she liked Chinese food. She smiled and told me she loved Chinese food. "How soon can you be ready?" I asked. She told me to collect her in twenty minutes and held up her room key for me to see the number. As she walked away, I became aware that many of the men who had made their attempts with her that day had just witnessed what had happened. She was almost twice my age and I don't think they appreciated that a teenager had succeeded where they had not. C'est la guerre.

As it happened, she really did like Chinese food. I think she liked the Lusso, too. After dinner, we sat by the hotel pool talking for what seemed hours. Later, she took me by the hand and we left the pool and the small talk behind.

Every experience I've had on a movie set was incredible. This one was, perhaps, the most memorable and a landmark for me.

Count Giovanni Volpi di Misurata

There was a time when I was transitioning from a life of "adventure" to a life of filmmaking. I had a girlfriend during that period who worked for Tony Ford, the vice president of television packaging at the William Morris Agency in Beverly Hills. Tony would occasionally throw parties for friends and clients that we would attend. Guests included show business stars like Neil Simon, Marsha Mason, Red Buttons and Vince Edwards. These gatherings were always interesting and it was usual for the evening to turn into something of a vaudeville show with Red leading the way with a soft-shoe performance and a song or two in which others would join him. These exhibitions were always spontaneous and unrehearsed and all the more enjoyable for it.

Once in conversation with Tony, the subject of Venice came up and I asked if he knew of Count Giovanni Volpi di Misurata. Count Volpi had commissioned the famous Ferrari Breadvan that was owned by my good friend Matthew Ettinger at the same time I had my GTO. He not only knew of him but apparently knew him. "They hold the Venice Film Festival in his house," was Tony's reply. At the time, I didn't know if he was speaking literally or figuratively but I got the point. A half a lifetime later, I came to understand to what degree Venice is Volpi's house when I read The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt during an overnight train ride from the south of France to Venice.

Over the years, I have visited Venice often. Sometimes I went with someone I loved; sometimes with someone who loved me. I took my father there once for dinner. On another occasion, I was there to shoot scenes for my movie Point of Departure. Another time, I had the pleasure of speaking with Gregor von Bismarck who directed a film based on the novel Vaporetto 13 by Robert Girardi parts of which were shot in the house of--Count Giovanni Volpi di Misurata.

It is strange how certain people hover on the periphery of your life exerting an influence sometimes greater than those you've met. I became aware of Gianni Volpi at the age of 19 and felt his influence in a number of ways throughout the course of my life. He has taken on mythic proportion and it is likely I will never meet him, more's the pity. I suspect we could spend an entire evening over dinner and never get around to the subject of Ferraris. Perhaps to have met Venice is to have met Volpi.

Lewis Hamilton at Elysée Wednesday

Champion Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton stopped by Elysée Wednesday last night with with Nicole Scherzinger of the Pussycat Dolls. Chad Glass returned from his exhibition in Portland with stories of the impact made by his Triptych and "Papa dans le noir". Djeneba Aduayom introduced Francis Onelum to the group as well as a book of her beautiful photography. Todd Varble, Richard Mitchell and Jeanetta Dumouchel--who managed a photo of Philip Seymour Hoffman at an adjoining table--were the official photographers for the evening. Carbon McCoy spotted not one but two Ferrari Superamericas and about a half dozen Lamborghinis cruising by evidencing the fact that Caffe Primo is far better for car-spotters than our previous venue!

Last night at the Elysée Wednesday gathering...

Last night at the Elysée Wednesday gathering, we had an exceptional crowd including several producers--one whom I met at Cannes with a very interesting project about Brigitte Bardot, several Ferrari friends, some writers and a poet--Elena Secota--whose book is now in galley form, two designers--one from France (Djeneba Aduayom), the other from Malaysia (Poesy Liang), and a celebrated architect (Martin Marvel). I signed Todd Varble's copy of Marc Sonnery's book about the Breadvan which featured an interview about my experience with that famous Ferrari.

Roy Martens spent the evening with us and he proposed we do a television series together that looks to be a lot of fun for both of us.

All-in-all a great evening!

Good Friday

I once broke someone's leg in a Little League baseball game. I was playing catcher and he slide into home plate. I was in his way and tagged him out with the ball that was in my mitt. Perhaps I should have stepped aside to clear the way for him and his cleats that were aimed at my face. I didn't know any better and stood my ground with a tag that was rather forceful. As I write this, it occurs to me that the slide may have caused the fracture but at the time, and for all the intervening years, I assumed that I had broken his leg. I'd never had so much as a sprain with all the football I played.

On April 12, 1963, my father and I got an early start. We climbed into a recently acquired Cadillac Coupe de Ville that I didn't much care for--it was white like a kitchen appliance with a black fabric interior that sported some white leather trim and I preferred the silver-blue de Ville that it had replaced--and headed south to the Naval base in Long Beach. A friend of my father arranged for us to go out on a Navy mine sweeper to observe a mine sweeping exercise. As we proceeded along the 110 Freeway, a stone hit our windshield leaving a large, star-like crack. Looks like the windshield will need to be replaced, I thought to myself.

It was an interesting day aboard the ship and watching the mine sweeping operation was exciting for me. We ate in the ship's mess and later I began to feel sick to my stomach as a result of the soup I had with lunch. I was shown to a bunk where I could rest and spent the balance of the exercise trying to feel better. I was still a bit wobbly when we docked but we had been invited to dinner with friends, so we stopped off in Westwood where I was given a 7-Up and my father spent the evening eating and talking with our hosts. We took our leave at about 10 pm.

I don't remember much about the ride home. I was tired and slept most of the way. As we neared the Topanga Canyon exit from the 101 Freeway. I opened my eyes to see two headlights swooping down on us like a bird of prey coming in for the kill. I had the impression of the white hood of our car flying up to obscure the view through the windshield. It was a very brief impression followed by total darkness.

"These two are dead," I heard a man say. I wondered if he was talking about me and my father. I was slumped down in the front passenger seat and saw that the windshield was broken and mostly missing. I couldn't move my left leg (later I learned it had been dislocated) and I could only move the top part of my right leg. It had been broken in two. Suddenly, I began bleeding from a large cut on the right side of my forehead. I turned to my father and said, "I think my leg is broken." "That's good," he said, meaning that if that was my only injury...

It wasn't too long before the Fire Department ambulance arrived. They took my father out first. Because the damage to my side of the car was so severe, they had to take me out from the driver's side. As I passed the steering wheel, I noticed that the spokes had broken and the rim was hanging from the steering column. Neither my father nor I had been wearing seat belts. They didn't have them in passenger cars back then.

We were taken to Westpark Community Hospital at the north end of Topanga Canyon Blvd. I kept thinking I was going to fall off the narrow stretcher. The paramedic was trying to stop my bleeding and shoved his knee against me so I wouldn't be thrown from the stretcher as we rounded corners. My father had fared better than I and didn't need the kind of attention I was getting. Weeks later when he came to visit me in the hospital, the paramedic said he felt like he was playing the piccolo trying to stop the bleeding. As soon as he staunched the flow from one area of the cut, it would flow from another.

As they rolled me into an emergency room, I could see that my right leg made a ninety degree turn half way along the femur. Somehow, they got me off of the gurney and onto the operating table. They immediately elevated the foot of the table to promote circulation. Later they told me they couldn't find a pulse. Someone came at me with a huge needle that looked like it was for mending sails and I went unconscious. It was about 10:45 pm on Good Friday.

When I awoke, it was Easter Sunday morning. My private nurse introduced himself and filled me in on a few details. I'd been in a head-on collision. Two people had been traveling on the wrong side of the freeway and were killed instantly. I would later learn that their blood alcohol levels were so high, they shouldn't have been able to walk much less drive. The doctors thought so little of my chances that they ordered a private nurse for that first evening but not for the following morning figuring I would not survive the night.

My father suffered broken ribs, bruises and lacerations but I got the worst of it. We were both lucky as you don't generally survive head-on collisions on the freeway. The wrong-way driver and his companion were in an Opel Kadett which was was no match for the big Cadillac. The insurance photos I saw made the Opel look like an accordion. You could not make out where the doors had been. Our accident made the headline of the Los Angeles Times which reported that traffic had backed up all the way from Woodland Hills to downtown Los Angeles.

I spent weeks in the hospital. It was there that I read my first copy of Road & Track magazine and saw pictures of Ferraris and other exotic cars and discovered the world of Formula 1 and the writings of Henry N. Manney III. It began a whole new chapter in my life.

This is what appeared on the front page of the Los Angeles Times about the accident:

Everything and nothing

When an artist paints a picture, he often places shadows into which he might wish the viewer to see though he cautiously leaves out telling details wondering if someone might guess or intuit what is there seemingly unseen. I've thought of this many times in looking at a Rembrandt. I had the same thought looking at a photo of me at a friend's party not realizing that one could make out people in the dark background when the photo was sufficiently enlarged. I suppose the same is true of storytellers wondering who will read between the lines and who will read only from uppercase letter straight to the period.

One day I received a call from a friend whom I hadn't seen or heard from in many months. We still liked each other but ours had become different worlds. After years of living my life as though I were in a movie, I got serious about starting to make movies. This decision put me on a journey that would lead me away from more than a few friends and would ultimately land me in Paris, France where I shot my first film Montmartre. My friend, whom I'll refer to as James and it is most assuredly not his real name, wanted to meet me for lunch to which I readily agreed. We'd spent a lot of time together but I understood this lunch--coming as it did after a long silence--would prove to be out of the ordinary.

Back in the day, there was an establishment in what is now West Hollywood that had one kitchen but two restaurants attached with completely different menus--The Yellow Sub and The Red Barn. This was his favorite meeting place and so it was that he suggested I meet him there. We had a very pleasant lunch of pizza and fried chicken and exchanged news and anecdotes that would have made great headlines for anyone that had been paying attention but either they weren't or were being paid to look the other way. It was just like old times though they were not so old at that point.

Lunch was over and the conversation wound down to a prolonged silence. I let him have his time. Somehow, I knew I was not in a rush to hear what he had to say. When he spoke next, he commented about the gigantic Cadillac El Dorado convertible I was driving that had a (pre-cellular) telephone in it. I assumed it was an attempt to stall but he followed up by asking if I still had the briefcase phone. I told him that it had no function in the movie world and he let it drop.

"If I need you for some back-up over the next two weeks, would you be available?"

Suddenly, I knew everything and nothing at the same time. I knew what he needed from me--the sort of protection that doesn't come from Neighborhood Watch or from law enforcement until after the fact. I did not know what he was a afraid of though I knew he didn't scare easily. James had been a mercenary in the Belgian Congo and that is not something you volunteer for if bravery is an issue. I also knew that what he feared was not a result of any criminal activity on his part strange as that may sound, but there it is.

The two weeks came and went without a phone call. The storm has passed, I thought, and we were all better off as a result. Then, I get a phone call from a mutual friend. "Have you heard from James?" It was one of 'those' friends so I told him the story of our lunch meeting. He thanked me and hung up. It was another moment where you know everything and nothing all at once.

Days latter, the mutual friend calls again with a debriefing. James' body had been found in the desert. The men of whom he had been afraid were in custody and later went to prison, I'm told. The motive had been money--riches they assumed were his but sadly were not. I had to accept this at face value there being far too many dark shadows for even me to see into.

For some reason, it seems that James went ahead and met them without having called me. I can't imagine why. Just the presence of a friend in the room might have deflected all that happened that day. It might have meant everything. It might have meant nothing.

We'll never know.