Harvey and the Producer

You may have been wondering just who the person I’ve referred to as The Producer. After hearing me blather on about my own experiences, let’s take a moment to find out about Stacey Evenson, the producer on Arc of a Bird.

Stacey is not an easy person to categorize, not in the kind of she-was-a-quiet-girl-who-kept-to-herself-before-the-Incident kind of way, but more in the way she is uniquely her own type. She worked tirelessly during the production phase of the film and has been a tireless promoter of it, spending her own money to travel here and try to network with distributors and studios.

The best way to describe her is to present two stories that kind of bookend the experience here in Cannes. [IMPORTANT NOTE: I’ve been given The Producer’s permission to use these stories.]

On the first day Stacey arrived in Cannes, I pointed out the penthouse suite of the Weinstein Brothers (mentioned in an earlier post) and said: “Maybe our goal for networking should be to meet Harvey Weinstein.”

She knew it was a joke, but Stacey is also the kind of person who shrugs and thinks: “Well, why not?”

For the next couple of days, we would see a limo with tinted windows and she would say: “Do you see Harvey?” On Saturday night, dressed in formalwear, on the Croisette across from the Weinstein penthouse, we joked about the idea of just standing on the street and yelling “Harvey! Harvey!!” until somebody made us stop.

Since the building is terraced in the understated manner of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, I had the idea of scaling the building one terrace at a time. “All we need,” I proposed. “Is a good sized step ladder.” We’d jump from the top step and use a rope to pull the ladder up after us.

Then there was my idea of a slingshot…. What if we were to take our DVDs of Arc of a Bird, put them in a slingshot and shoot them to the penthouse balcony. The DVD has a roughly Frisbee shape that might make it aerodynamically easier to hit the top of the building. The downside, of course, is at that velocity the DVD could become a lethal weapon. In addition to potentially ripping the patio umbrella to shreds, there was a chance we might hit someone in the neck, sever a carotid artery, and kill her or him (or Harvey!) I could see the headlines: FILM MOGUL DECAPITATED BY INDEPENDENT FILM. (I’ve heard there are some in the film industry who might like to see that headline, but we’ve got no beef with the man. Then again, we don’t have a slingshot either.)

And so on the last day of our five day stay in Juan de Pins (two train stops east of Cannes), Stacey announces at breakfast she is going to get that DVD to Harvey. “Okay, sure” I say with the same noncommittal tone you might affect if your mother said she was going to take up salsa dancing. If you say so….

Cannes-ily we decide that the back entrance of the building (north of the entrance facing the Croisette) may be the best bet in terms of security. She heads in. I hide behind a palm tree. (I would do this if my mother was taking salsa dancing too, except there are no palm trees in Michigan.)

She comes out a few minutes, grinning. “They said it’s a couple doors up.”

“You just asked the person in there where Harvey was at and they said ‘a couple doors up’?”

“Yup.” And she is off to the next entrance halfway up the block.

She disappears in this second entrance and reappears. “They said ‘One more door,’” she says with the same optimistic tone she had before.

“Who is this ‘they’ you keep talking about?” But she’s gone. “Hey! I don’t know if I’ve got Jeff’s cell number on me,”

I call after her. Jeff is her husband – and I’m sure he knows better than to have ever said: “Let’s go meet Harvey Weinstein.”

She disappears through the door and I keep on walking past the door.

She reappears a few minutes later smiling. “Got it to him.”

I laugh. Sure you did – but here, in her words, is what happened:

“It was a good thing those two people were going in in front of me because it’s a locked door and a security guard is there. I was able to walk in behind the couple and go to the elevators. I took the elevator up and when you reach the top floor, there’s a narrow hallway and then suddenly you are in the open area, all white, that says ‘Weinstein’. There’s a woman on a phone sitting at something like a hostess station. Two people walk by and the hostess waves them in as she’s talking on the phone. And then after a minute, Harvey comes around the corner, talking to three assistants – all taking notes on their Blackberries.

“The woman gets off the phone and I give her the package. I tell her it’s for Harvey and she says she’ll make sure he gets it. Meanwhile Harvey’s talking to the assistants and one of them, a woman, begins to explain about some deal that has obviously been a problem.

“Harvey stops her and says: ‘Wait. You don’t know who might be behind you.’ And I’m the person standing there right behind her.

“I say ‘Hello’ and they look at me. They motion for me to take the elevator down as they continue talking, but they aren’t talking business when I get on. And that was it.”

While the act itself was fascinating for me, what struck me the most that morning is the way The Producer told the story so matter-of-factly when she came out of the building. I kept asking her questions, driving her for details and she seemed so nonchalant.

That is… until an hour later, when spontaneously she began talking about it with the kind of animation and emotion you hear happens with trauma victims. “It was so amazing just walking up and handing them the DVD. I can’t believe that really happened.” Clearly she was coming to appreciate her own audacity, the Audacity of Holy Cow!

If it had been me however (which it could not be since I don’t lack that kind of chutzpah), I would actually be embellishing the story an hour later: “And then, then Harvey said: ‘You look like our lost brother, the Third Weinstein.’ And we began discussing making a film called ‘The Third Weinstein.’”

The second story is shorter and, as I say, has been sanctioned by The Producer….

On Friday evening, we attended the Short Film Corner Networking Happy Hour. By the time we made it through the mob to the bar where beer and wine was being served, all that was left were bottles of Rose. A Frenchman behind me kept repeating: “I am French. We do not drink Rose.” a remark that sounds appropriately bourgeois the first time its spoken, but by the third time is sort of international behavior for “asshole”. (Of course, when the peristaltic action of the crowd brought him belly to belly with the bar, he shut up and drank the dreaded Rose.)

By the time I had fought my way back to open air, Stacey was standing with a man in his mid-forties who was regaling her with tales of Cannes’ gone by. He was a Brit who worked in the film industry and had returned to Cannes. As we pressed him for some details, his stories didn’t always seem to jibe and he mentioned he was going to a premiere party that night for Mariah Carey’s new movie.

A very hot ticket, he assured us. He was given a ticket by her bodyguard. We didn’t ask for any more details.

But before parting, he asked for our cards and handed his to The Producer.

Stacey took one look at the card and announced brightly. “Oh, so you do stand up too!?!”

“Pardon?” he said.

“You’re a comedian!” she pressed with a brief waving of hands that said ‘audiences?’ ‘microphones?’ Then repeated: “Comedian.” Seeing the blank look on his face, she added: “On your business card, it says--

“Oh!” he said drawing that out in a way only the British can. “Oh, no. You see ‘comédien’ is the French word for actor. You see? This is my business card for work here in France.”

I’m not quite sure what either story has to do with the other, but there you have it: the Producer.