Hollywood Party
The party for the Golden
Globe nominees was high up in Beverly Hills. I had been invited by a woman who
has lived in Los Angeles for almost 20 years and is now a noted Hollywood
anthropologist. As we rounded a turn, a pair of big metal gates appeared before
us. Behind them, set on the crest of a hill, was a large white house in the
contemporary Californian style. In front of the gates, a dozen or so young men
stood around in dark uniforms.
I thought
for a moment that they were a brass band, but they turned out to be the valet
parkers. I was just realizing why the Californian unemployment rate is so low
when a dark Ford Windstar minivan pulled up next to us. We climbed in and were
driven approximately 30 yards to the steps of the house, where we got out
again. The front door was opened by yet more valets, and we were bidden
inside.
The hosts, veteran studio executive Mike Medavoy and his
wife, Irina, were there to greet us. Mike, a black V-neck jumper and
open-necked shirt covering his ample torso, looked like he had just stepped off
the 18 th green. Irina, it must be said, didn't. A striking blonde,
she was wearing high heels, velvet trousers, and a black cardigan that my
escort helpfully described as a "peekaboo top." As I struggled manfully to
avoid staring at her cleavage, she explained that the house had been built four
years ago, and that she had redecorated it throughout.
What she
didn't say, understandably, was that the house had been built for her husband's
previous wife, Patricia Duff, who had used it to throw fund-raisers for her
powerful friends in the Democratic Party. Then, Patricia left Mike and took up
with Ron Perelman, the Republican-leaning financier. At about the same time
that Mike lost Patricia, he also lost his job as head of TriStar Pictures. Even
here, where the locals are used to ups and downs of a personal and business
nature, that was considered quite a twofer.
According to my date, the real purpose of the
party was to mark Medavoy's return to the big leagues. As chairman of the
suitably named Phoenix Pictures, he is once more making films, including one
that might win an Oscar, The People vs. Larry Flynt . And in Irina, he
has a new wife who, while she might not have his ex's political clout, has just
as much glamour and sex appeal.
If
prestige in Hollywood is measured in pulling power, then Medavoy is definitely
back on top. Looking around, the first person I saw was Sean Penn. He was
standing alone in a corner, clad in black jeans, black T-shirt, and black
leather jacket. I was thinking what a good job he was doing of playing up to
his image as a brooding misfit when a bathroom door opened next to him and a
3-year-old girl walked out and jumped into his arms. He smiled broadly, mumbled
fatherly nothings into his daughter's ear, and carried her upstairs.
"Hollywood's gone baby," my date whispered.
Moving further into the house, I felt the same sense of
surprise that I always feel in the presence of movie celebrities: surprise that
they look so familiar. Here was James Woods, talking a million miles a minute
to Anthony Minghella, the director of The English Patient , and appearing
for all the world like he was playing the manic Richard Boyle in
Salvador . There was Gabriel Byrne, nursing a Heineken, every inch the
handsome villain of The Usual Suspects . And here was Jeff Goldblum,
angular and geeky, looking like he had just stepped out of that helicopter in
Jurassic Park . He was just back from Hawaii, where he had been filming
The Lost World , the sequel to that monster smash.
"What's the plot, Jeff?" I
asked, casually, as if I had known him all my life.
"It's a big secret," he
replied.
"Oh, come on," my date
insisted.
"Well, they tempt me to go
back to an island where there are more dinosaurs."
"What sort of dinosaurs?"
"Stegosaurs--the fat ones with ripples on their back."
The Medavoys' house is beautiful, with large,
airy rooms and white walls covered with modern art. On virtually every surface
are photographs of the Medavoys with famous people. Mike in the Oval Office
with Bill Clinton. Mike with Ronald Reagan. Mike with Richard Nixon, with
Nelson Mandela, with Al Gore, with Barbra Streisand, with Henry Kissinger. The
only notable absentee was his former wife.
In the drawing room, we ran
into another tall actor, James Cromwell, who recently appeared in The People
vs. Larry Flynt . When he heard I was a writer, Cromwell told me that he had
just finished writing a novel.
"What's it about?" I
asked.
"Contact," he replied.
"Pardon."
"Contact ... the shadow ...
what separates us from our destiny."
" 'Contact.' You mean 'alien
contact'?"
He nodded.
"The spaceship in the New
Mexico desert and all that? You think we have been contacted by life from other
planets?"
He nodded again and
said:
"Yes.
Regularly. Ever since 1947. You just have to look on the Internet. There are 10
or 20 sightings a month."
Iwent outside for a drink. The stone-flagged veranda was
roughly the size of a baseball diamond, and it seemed to overlook the whole of
Los Angeles, which was a mosaic of orange and white lights. At the bar, I found
myself next to two nondescript youths who were chugging down a couple of
beers.
"You're really popular in
Europe, man," one said to the other.
"Yeah, the English and French
really like me."
"Japan, too."
"Yeah, Japan too. I'm a big
star in Japan. I've won lots of awards and shit over there. It's really
weird."
My eavesdropping was
interrupted by a loud cry from inside the house. When I got there, I found
myself next to the hostess.
"What happened?" she
asked.
"Somebody ran down the stairs
on their hands," came the answer from the crowd.
"My God,
somebody ran down the stairs on their hands in my house," she shrieked, clearly
delighted.
The party was now in full swing. Belatedly, I
realized that a lot of people in the house were foreigners. My date explained
that this is always the case at awards parties these days. She said the
Hollywood studios have largely given up producing serious movies, so they have
to rely on Europeans and antipodeans to make films that won't embarrass the
industry when the Oscars come around. Unfortunately, many members of the
academy have never heard of a lot of these foreign movies, so there is an event
every January called the Golden Globe Awards to tell them what films to watch
before they vote.
Scott Hicks, the director of
Shine , is one of the beneficiaries of this shift. Having just got off a
16-hour flight from Adelaide, the longhaired Aussie seemed somewhat bemused by
all the fuss. "I'm trying to figure out what it is about Shine that
appeals to people so much," he told me. "I really don't know." I asked Hicks
whether he was planning to move to Hollywood, but he said he was wary of
repeating the experiences of other young foreign directors who have tried it,
such as Neil Jordan and Mike Figgis. "They tend to have a huge cock-up and
leave," Hicks said. For now, he added, he was "determined to enjoy the
moment."
So were Alan Parker, the
director of Evita , and Mike Leigh, the director of Secrets and
Lies . When I ran across the two Brits, they were knocking back the white
wine and discussing that most English of subjects: the class system. Parker and
Leigh are both self-made men and supporters of the British Labor Party, but
Parker has worked primarily in Hollywood for almost two decades, whereas Leigh
stayed in London to make his low-budget films. Although they admire each
other's work, this was clearly a point of some tension between them.
"Mike Leigh knows sod-all
about the working class," Parker said to me, apropos of nothing.
Fortunately, Leigh didn't
hear that slur. I asked him how much money it took to produce Secrets and
Lies .
"Three
million quid," he said proudly.
By this stage, the belle of the ball had finally arrived:
Courtney Love, who stars in The People vs Larry Flynt . At least, I think
it was Courtney Love. To be honest, she didn't look anything like the grunge
singer I remembered from MTV. She was thinner, some of her facial features
appeared to have changed shape, her blond hair was curled, and she was wearing
a beautiful white maxi with a flowered pattern on it. I vaguely recalled
something about her appearing in Vogue recently, but this was less a
fashion makeover and more a transmogrification.
I was too frightened to
approach Courtney, but Mike Leigh wasn't. He walked around in a circle,
inspecting her as if she were a prize steed.
"What's this?" he asked,
pointing to a dramatic red-and-black tattoo that covered most of her right
shoulder.
"Oh, it's from my death-rock
phase," she replied.
The rest
of the evening is something of a blur to me. At some point, my date appeared
and said it was time to go. It was almost midnight, which is considered late in
Los Angeles. On the way out, we passed Mike Medavoy. He was sitting on the
staircase with Irina on one side of him and Julia Ormond, the beautiful British
actress, on the other. Way to go, Mike.
