I lived in Paris and made my first film there. The idea of doing the impossible--or, the improbable, at least--had become an approach to life I had already embraced since surviving a head-on collision on the Ventura Freeway and racing around Los Angeles streets and canyons with my friends in Ferrari race cars and living on movie sets and film locations as if these were things everyone did and there was no reason to let it go to one's head. Family friend and my mentor, television director Paul Stanley, answered my question about the best preparation for becoming a director being to live a full life and I took his advice to heart. He was quite right.
Living in Paris was inextricably linked to cinema and filmmaking. Thanks to the Laemmle Theatres in Los Angeles, I was able to see a constant flow of French and Italian movies long before cable TV and later Netflix came along to make world cinema available effortlessly. Those movies insisted I move to France.
One of my pleasures when I lived in Paris--and continues to be when I visit--is to walk and experience different parts of the city at different times of the day. Walking the side streets of Saint-Germain-des-Près one night taking pictures of doorways or discovering small parks in residential neighborhoods on quiet afternoons was always rewarding even though I wasn't the most prolific photographer until more recent times. One night, strolling near the Guichets du Louvre, this Ferrari was parked unattended and begging to be photographed. It ended up on the cover of my book Ray D. Shosay's Journal: Dispatches from a (junior) suite in Paris.
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