The Winner Stands Alone (6 page)

Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, and there is nothing new under the sun, as Solomon said
more than three thousand years ago.

The producer starts knocking on the doors of various studios. Hes known in the industry
already, and so some of those doors open, but his proposal is not always accepted. In that
case, he doesnt even bother to ring up the author and invite him to lunch again, he just
writes him a letter saying that, despite his enthusiasm for the project, the movie
industry isnt yet ready for that kind of story and hes returning the contract (which he,
of course, did not sign).

If the proposal is accepted, the producer then goes to the lowest and least well-paid
person in the hierarchy: the screenwriter, the person who will spend days, weeks, and
months writing and rewriting the original idea or the screen adaptation. The scripts are
sent to the pro- ducer (but never to the author), who, out of habit, automatically re- jects the first draft, knowing that the screenwriter can always do better. More weeks and
months of coffee and insomnia for the bright young talent (or old hackthere are no halfway
houses) who rewrites each scene, which are then rejected or reshaped by the producer. (And
the screenwriter thinks: If he can write so damn well, why doesnt he write the whole
thing? Then he remembers his salary and goes qui- etly back to his computer.)

Finally, the script is almost ready. At this point, the producer draws up a list of
demands: the removal of any political references that might upset a more conservative
audience; more kissing, because women like that kind of thing; a story with a beginning, a
middle, and an end, and a hero who moves everyone to tears with his self-sacrifice and
devotion; and one character who loses a loved one at the start of the film and finds him
or her again at the end. In fact, most film scripts can be summed up very briefly as: Man
loves woman. Man loses woman. Man gets woman back. Ninety percent of all films are
variations on that same theme.

Films that break this rule have to be very violent to make up for it, or have loads of
crowd-pleasing special effects. And since this tried and tested formula is a surefire
winner, why take any unnecessary risks?

Armed with what he considers
to be a well-written story, whom does the producer seek out next? The studio who financed
the project. The studio, however, has a long line of films to place in the
ever-diminishing number of cinemas around the world. They ask him to wait a little or to
find an independent distributor, first making sure that the producer signs another
gigantic contract (which even takes into account exclusive rights outside of Planet
Earth), taking full responsibility for all money spent.

And thats where people like me come in! The independent dis- tributor can walk down the
street without being recognized, although at media-fests like this everyone knows who he
is. Hes the person who didnt come up with the idea, didnt work on the script, and didnt
invest a cent.

Javits is the intermediarythe distributor!

He receives the producer in a tiny office (the big plane, the house with the swimming
pool, the invitations to parties all over the world are purely for his enjoymentthe
producer doesnt even merit a min- eral water). He takes the DVD home with him. He watches
the first five minutes. If he likes it, he watches to the end, but this only happens with
one out of every hundred new films hes given. Then he spends ten cents on a phone call and
tells the producer to come back on a cer- tain date and at a certain time.

Well sign, he says, as if he were doing the producer a big favor. Ill distribute the film.

The producer tries to negotiate. He wants to know how many cinemas in how many countries
and under what conditions. These, however, are pointless questions because he knows what
the distribu- tor will say: That depends on the reactions we get at the prelaunch
screenings. The product is shown to selected audiences from all social classes, people
specially chosen by market research companies. The results are analyzed by professionals.
If the results are positive, another ten cents gets spent on a phone call, and, the
following day, Javits hands the producer three copies of yet another vast contract. The
producer asks to be given time for his lawyer to read it. Javits says he has nothing
against him doing that, but he needs to finalize that seasons program now and cant
guarantee that by the time the producer gets back to him he wont have selected another
film.

The producer reads only the clause that tells him how much hes going to earn. Hes pleased
with what he sees and so he signs. He doesnt want to miss this opportunity.

Years have passed since he sat down with the writer to discuss making a film of his book
and hes quite forgotten that he is now in exactly the same situation.

Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, and there is nothing new under the sun, as Solomon said
more than three thousand years ago.

Javits watches the tent filling
up with guests and again asks himself what hes doing there. He controls more than five
hundred cinemas in the United States and has an exclusive contract with another five thousand
around the world, where exhibitors are obliged to buy everything he offers them, even if
the films dont always work out. They know that one box-office success more than makes up
for the other five that fail to pull in the crowds. They rely on Javits, the independent
megadistributor, the hero who managed to break the monopoly of the big studios and become
a legend in the film world.

No one has ever asked how he did this, but since he continues to give them one big success
for every five failures (the average in the big studios is one blockbuster for every nine
flops), it really doesnt matter.

Javits, however, knows how he became so successful, which is why he never goes anywhere
without his two friends, who are, at that moment, busily answering calls, arranging
meetings and accept- ing invitations. They both have reasonably normal physiques, not like
the burly bouncers on the door, but theyre worth a whole army. They trained in Israel and
have served in Uganda, Argentina, and Panama. One fields phone calls and the other is
constantly looking around, memorizing each person, each movement, each gesture. They
alter- nate these tasks because, like simultaneous translators and air control- lers, they
need to rest every fifteen minutes.

What is he doing at this lunch? He could have stayed at the hotel, trying to get some
sleep. Hes tired of being fawned over and praised, and of having to smile every minute and
tell someone that its really not worth their while giving him their card because hell only
lose it. When they insist, he asks them gently to speak to one of his secretaries (duly
housed at another luxury hotel on the Boulevard de la Croisette, where they are not
allowed to sleep, but must answer the phone that rings nonstop or reply to the e-mails
flooding in from cinemas all over the world, along with the promises of increased penis
size or multiple orgasms that manage to elude all the spam filters). Depending on how he
nods his head, one of his two assistants will either give the person the secretarys
address or phone number, or say that unfortunately theyre fresh out of cards.

Yes, what is he doing at this lunch? He would be sleeping now in Los Angeles, however late he might have got home from a party. Javits knows the answer,
but he doesnt want to accept it: hes afraid of being alone. He envies the man who arrived
earlier and sat drinking his fruit juice, staring off into the distance, apparently
relaxed and unconcerned about trying to look busy or important. He decides to invite him
to join him for a drink, but notices hes no longer there.

Just then, he feels something prick him in the back. Mosquitoes! Thats what I hate about
beach parties. When he goes to scratch the bite, he finds a small needle. It must be some stupid prank. He looks behind him and, about two yards away, separated from him by
various other guests, a black guy with dread- locks is laughing loudly, while a group of
women gaze at him with mingled respect and desire.

Hes too tired to react to this provocation. Best let the guy play the fool if thats the
only way he can impress other people.

Idiot.

His two companions react to the sudden change in posture of the man they are paid to
protect at the rate of $435 a day. One of them raises his hand to his right shoulder,
where he keeps an automatic pistol in a holster that is entirely invisible beneath his
jacket. The other man gets discreetly to his feet (they are at a party, after all) and
places him- self between the black man and his boss.

It was nothing, says Javits. Just a prank. He shows them the needle. These two idiots are
prepared for attacks with firearms and knives, for acts of physical aggression or attempts on their bosss life. Theyre always the first
to enter his hotel room, ready to shoot if necessary. They can sense when someones
carrying a weapon (a common enough occurrence now in many cities of the world), and they
dont take their eyes off that person until theyre sure hes harmless. When Javits gets into
an elevator, he stands sandwiched between them, their two bodies forming a kind of wall.
He has never seen them take out their guns because, if they did so, they would use them.
They usually resolve any problem with a look or a few quiet words.

Problems? He has never had any problems since he acquired his two friends, as if their mere presence were enough to drive away evil spirits and evil
intentions.

That man, one of the first people to arrive, who sat down alone at that table over there,
says one of them. He was armed, wasnt he?

The other man murmurs something like Possibly, but the man had left the party some time
ago. And he had been watched the whole time because they couldnt tell what exactly he was
looking at from behind his dark glasses.

They relax. One of them starts answering the phone again, the other fixes his gaze on the
Jamaican, who looks fearlessly back. Theres something strange about that man, but one
false move on his part and hell be wearing false teeth from now on. It would all be done
as dis- creetly as possible, on the beach, far from prying eyes, and by only one of them,
while the other stood waiting, finger on the trigger. Some- times, though, such
provocative acts are a ruse to get the bodyguard away from the intended victim. Theyre
used to such tricks.

Fine... No, its not fine. Call an ambulance. I cant move my hand.

What luck! The last thing she was expecting that morning was to meet the man who wouldshe was surechange her life. But there he is, as slop- pily dressed as ever,
sitting with two friends, because powerful people dont need to show how powerful they are,
they dont even need body- guards.

Maureen has a theory that the people at Cannes can be divided into two categories:

(a) the tanned, who spend the whole day in the sun (they are al- ready winners) and have
the necessary badge to gain entry to certain restricted areas of the Festival. They arrive
back at their hotels to find several invitations awaiting them, most of which will be
thrown in the bin.

(b)the pale, who scurry from one gloomy office to the next, watching auditions, and either
seeing some really good films that will be lost in the welter of other things on offer, or
having to put up with some real horrors that might just win a place in the sun (among the
tanned) because the makers know the right people.

Javits Wild, of course, sports an enviable tan.

The Festival that takes over
this small city in the south of France for twelve days, putting up prices, allowing only
authorized cars to drive through the streets, and filling the airport with private jets
and the beaches with models, isnt just a red carpet surrounded by pho- tographers, a
carpet along which the big stars walk on their way into the Palais des Congres. Cannes
isnt about fashion, its about cinema!

What strikes you most is the luxury and the glamour, but the real heart of the Festival is
the film industrys huge parallel market: buyers and sellers from all over the world who
come together to do deals on films that have already been made or to talk investments and
ideas. On an average day, four hundred movies are shown, most of them in apartments hired
for the duration, with people perched uncomfortably on beds, complaining about the heat
and demanding that their every whim be met, from bottles of mineral water up, and leaving
the people showing the film with their nerves in tatters and frozen smiles on their faces,
for its essential to agree to everything, to grant every wish, be- cause what matters is
having the chance to show something that has probably been years in the making.

However, while these forty-eight hundred new productions are fighting tooth and nail for a
chance to leave that hotel room and get shown in a proper cinema, the world of dreams is
setting off in a differ- ent direction: the new technologies are gaining ground, people
dont leave their houses so much anymore because they dont feel safe, or because they have
too much work, or because of all those cable TV stations where you can usually choose from
about five hundred films a day and pay almost nothing.

Worse still, the Internet has made anyone and everyone a filmmaker. Specialist portals
show films of babies walking, men and women being decapitated in wars, or women who
exhibit their bodies merely for the pleasure of knowing that the person watching them will
be enjoying their own moment of solitary pleasure, films of people freezing in Grand
Central Station, of traffic accidents, sports clips, and fashion shows, films made with hidden video cameras intent on embarrassing the poor innocents who
walk past them.

Of course, people do still go out, but they prefer to spend their money on restaurant
meals and designer clothes because they can get everything else on their high-definition
TV screens or on their com- puters.

The days when everyone knew who had won the Palme dOr are long gone. Now, if you ask who
won last year, even people who were actually there at the Festival wont be able to
remember. Some Roma- nian, wasnt it? says one. Im not sure, but I think it was a German
film, says another. Theyll sneak off to consult the catalogue and dis- cover that it was
an Italian, whose films, it turns out, are only shown at art cinemas.

After a period of intense competition with video rentals, cinemas started to prosper
again, but now they seem to be entering another period of decline, having to compete with
Internet rentals, with pirat- ing and those DVDs of old films that are given away free
with news- papers. This makes distribution an even more savage affair. If one of the big
studios considers a new release to be a particularly large in- vestment, theyll try to
ensure that its being shown in the maximum number of cinemas at the same time, leaving
little space for any new film venturing onto the market.

And the few adventurous souls who decide to take the riskdespite all the arguments
againstdiscover too late that it isnt enough to have a quality product. The cost of
getting a film into cinemas in the large capitals of the world is prohibitive, what with
full-page advertisements in newspapers and magazines, receptions, press officers,
promotion junkets, ever more expensive teams of people, sophisticated filming equipment,
and increasingly scarce labor. And the most difficult prob- lem of all: finding someone
who will distribute the film.

And yet every year it goes on, the trudging from place to place, the appointments, the
Superclass who are interested in everything except whats being shown on the screen, the
companies prepared to pay a tenth of what is reasonable just to give some filmmaker the
honor of having his or her work shown on television, the requests that the film be reworked so as not to offend families, the demands for the film to be recut, the
promises (not always kept) that if the script is changed completely to focus on one
particular theme, a contract will be issued next year.

People listen and accept because they have no option. The Super- class rules the world;
their arguments are subtle, their voices soft, their smiles discreet, but their decisions
are final. They know. They accept or reject. They have the power. And power doesnt
negotiate with anyone, only with itself. However, all is not lost. In the world of fiction
and in the real world, there is always a hero.

And Maureen is staring proudly
at one such hero now! The great meeting that is finally going to take place in two days
time after nearly three years of work, dreams, phone calls, trips to Los An- geles,
presents, favors asked of friends in her Bank of Favors, and the influence of an
ex-boyfriend of hers, who had studied with her at film school, then decided it was much
safer to work for an important film magazine than risk losing both his head and his money.

Ill talk to Javits, the ex-boyfriend had said. But he doesnt need anyone, not even the
journalists who can promote or destroy his products. Hes above all that. We once tried
getting together an article trying to find out how it is that he has all these cinema
owners eating out of his hand, but no one he works with was prepared to say any- thing.
Ill talk to him, but I cant put any pressure on him.

He did talk to him and got him to watch The Secrets of the Cellar. The following day, she
received a phone call, saying that Javits would meet her in Cannes.

At the time, Maureen didnt even dare to say that she was just ten minutes by taxi from his
office; instead they arranged to meet in this far-off French city. She bought a plane
ticket to Paris, caught a train that took all day to reach Cannes, showed her voucher to
the bad-tempered manager of a cheap hotel, installed herself in her single room where she
had to climb over her luggage to reach the bathroom, and (again thanks to her
ex-boyfriend) wangled invitations to a few second-rate eventsa promotion for a new brand of vodka or the launch of a new line in T-shirtsbut it
was far too late to apply for the pass that would allow her into the Palais des Festivals
et des Congres.

She has overspent her budget, traveled for more than twenty hours, but she will at least
get her ten minutes. And shes sure that shell emerge with a contract and a future before
her. Yes, the movie indus- try is in crisis, but so what? Movies (however few) are still
making money, arent they? Big cities are plastered with posters advertising new movies.
And what are celebrity magazines full of? Gossip about movie stars! Maureen knowsor,
rather, believesthat the death of cinema has been declared many times before, and yet
still it survives. Cinema was dead when television arrived. Cinema was dead when video
rentals arrived. Cinema was dead when the Internet began al- lowing access to pirate
sites. But cinema is still alive and well in the streets of this small Mediterranean town,
which, of course, owes its fame to the Festival.

Now its simply a case of making the most of this manna from heaven. And of accepting
everything, absolutely everything. Javits Wild is here. He has seen her film. The subject
of the film is spot-on: sexual exploitation, voluntary or forced, was getting a lot of
media at- tention after a series of cases that had hit the headlines worldwide. It is just
the right moment for The Secrets of the Cellar to appear on the posters put up by the
distribution chain he controlled.

Javits Wild, the rebel with a cause, the man who was revolution- izing the way films
reached the wider public. Only the actor Robert Redford had tried something similar with
his Sundance Film Festival for independent filmmakers, but nevertheless, after decades of
effort, Redford still hadnt managed to break through the barrier into a world that
mobilized hundreds of millions of dollars in the United States, Europe, and India. Javits,
though, was a winner.

Javits Wild, the savior of filmmakers, the great legend, the ally of minority interests,
the friend of artists, the new patron, who obviously used some very intelligent system
(she had no idea what it was, but she knew it worked) to reach cinemas all around the
world.

Javits Wild has arranged a ten-minute meeting with her in two days time. This can mean only one thing, that he has accepted her project and that
everything else is merely a matter of detail.

I will accept everything, absolutely everything, she repeats.

Obviously, in those ten minutes, Maureen wont have a chance to say a word about what she
has been through in the seven years (yes, a quarter of her life) that have gone into
making her film. There will be no point in telling him that she went to film school,
directed a few com- mercials, made two short films that were warmly received in various
small-town cinemas or in alternative bars in New York. That in order to raise the million
dollars needed for a professional production, she had mortgaged the house she inherited
from her parents. That this was her one chance because she didnt have another house to
mortgage.

She had watched as her fellow students, after much struggling, opted for the comfortable
world of commercialsof which there were more and moreor some safe but obscure job in one
of the many com- panies that made TV series. After the warm reception given to her short
films, she began to dream of higher things and then there was no stopping her.

She was convinced she had a mission: to make the world a better place for future
generations, by getting together with like-minded people, to show that art isnt just a way
of entertaining or amusing a lost society; by exposing world leaders as the flawed people
they are; by saving the children who were now dying of hunger somewhere in Africa; by
speaking out about environmental problems; by putting an end to social injustice.

This was, of course, an ambitious project, but she was sure she would achieve it if only
through sheer doggedness. To do this she needed to purify her soul, and so she turned to
the four forces that had always guided her: love, death, power, and time. We must love
because we are loved by God. We must be conscious of death if we are to have a proper
understanding of life. We must struggle in order to grow, but without falling into the
trap of the power we gain through that struggle, because we know that such power is
worthless. Finally, we must accept that our eternal soul is, at this moment, caught in the
web of time with all its opportunities and its limitations.

Caught in the web of time she might be, but she could still work on what gave her pleasure
and filled her with enthusiasm. And through her films, she could make her contribution to
a world that seemed to be disintegrating around her and could try to change reality and
trans- form human beings.

When her father died, after
complainingallhislifethathe had never had the chance to do what he had always dreamed of
doing, she realized something very important: transformations always occur during moments
of crisis.

She didnt want to end her life as he had. She wouldnt like to have to tell her daughter:
There was something I wanted to do and there was even a point when I could have done it,
but I just didnt have the courage to take the risk. When she received her inheritance, she
knew then that it had been given to her for one reason only: to allow her to fulfill her
destiny.

She accepted the challenge. Unlike other adolescent girls who always dreamed of being
famous actresses, her dream had been to tell stories that subsequent generations could
see, smile at, and dream about. Her great example was Citizen Kane. That first film by a
radio producer who wanted to make an exposŽ of a powerful American press magnate became a
classic not just because of its story, but be- cause it dealt in a creative and innovative
manner with the ethical and technical problems of the day. All it took was one film to
gain eternal fame.

His first film.

It was possible to get it right the first time. Even though its director, Orson Welles,
never made anything as good again. Even though he had disappeared from the scene (that
does happen) and was now only studied in courses about cinema, someone was sure to
rediscover his genius sooner or later. Citizen Kane wasnt his only legacy; he had proved
to everyone that if your first step was good enough, you would never lack for invitations
thereafter. And she would take up those invi- tations. She had promised herself that she
would never forget the dif- ficulties she had been through and that her life would contribute to dignifying human life.