Moguls, Monsters and Madmen, page 10
“We’re not holding a Hadassah meeting. This is a party.”
Doreen proved skilled in keeping her wedding planner out of my sight until the day of the wedding. That’s when we learned that this genius had lost the guests’ place cards. After a panicked search, they were found, probably under her car’s spare tire.
I had insisted on inviting Garth, even though he’d become a pariah since his fraud indictment. Turned out he was obsessed about where he’d be sitting: I had to call a prominent friend to ask if Garth could sit with him. Garth didn’t bring a gift—classic Garth—and left early. Which was fine. A couple of years later when Garth remarried, I attended the affair, also at the Four Seasons Hotel. I didn’t bring a gift and left early.
Our wedding video was sixteen minutes long, just the highlights: walking down the aisle, the vows, the best of the speeches and some of the dancing. We also shot that lovely Jewish ritual where the bride’s father puts his hand over his daughter’s head, after the wedding contracts have been signed, and says a blessing. When I presented Doreen with the video, she asked for all the outtakes. I don’t know what she did with them, but she has them.
After sixteen years, Melissa and I still enjoy each other’s company. We laugh a lot and have fun travelling together. Melissa knows how to give me space. She knows my artistic nuances and my eccentricities. She just knows. She can sense by my voice if I’m stuck in a creative rut, and she’ll say hopefully, “When are you going out of town again?”
That’s her punchline because space for me also means space for her. I had seen how well that had worked for my parents. At the same time I miss Melissa when I travel. We speak over and over during the course of a day, and when I’m involved in something terrific, I want her to share it. Meeting celebrities, attending award ceremonies, going to great concerts used to be my selfish prerogative. Since I married Melissa, I don’t enjoy anything quite as much unless she’s present.
MY GREATEST PRODUCTION
On February 11, 2004, Melissa gave birth to our daughter, Sloan. Since it was by C-section, it was a scheduled event, which meant no labour—a big relief for me (and, I hope, for Melissa). It’s still the case that the more time I spend in hospitals, the more nauseated I become.
Dr. Jackie Thomas, at Mount Sinai Hospital, told me, “Okay, we’ll be doing this in an hour. What role do you want to play?”
I didn’t answer. I was staring at her surgical shoes, which were covered with blood, “Was it an autopsy, or a car accident?” I asked.
She said, “Don’t look down.” Then she calmly repeated, “What role are you planning to play?”
I knew Dr. Thomas was asking where, in the operating room, I wanted to stand. While some curious people might want to watch the birth, I knew where my place was. “At Melissa’s head,” I said. I knew I would be safe there, with a sheet in place to screen off all that southern exposure. To this day, I don’t really know what a C-section is. I have zero interest in Googling to find out.
At some point near the end, as our daughter was being delivered, Dr. Thomas asked from the other side, “Do you want to cut the umbilical cord?”
I replied, “Get her out, clean her up, hand her over. I’ve already played my role.”
Dr. Thomas laughed.
When the nurses did “hand over” Sloan, wrapped in a pink blanket, she had a head of blonde peach fuzz, which grew in later as red. It was a great moment when I carried her out to show Melissa’s parents, and later to my mother, who arrived from Montreal the next day.
So far, my relationship with Sloan is like my relationship with my wife. She understands me, even the fact that it’s necessary for me to travel. Both she and Melissa know that it’s quality time that matters, not quantity. I am not an accountant who comes home for dinner and reads to her before she goes to sleep. I don’t help her with her math. Fortunately.
Sloan often makes Melissa and me laugh, and not always intentionally. When she was five years old, her teacher called to tell us, “When I asked my class today to name the four seasons, your daughter put her hand up and said, ‘There’s one in New York and there’s one in Toronto.’”
Recently, I hung up a piece of art I’d bought in London. When Sloan came home from school, she visited me in my home office. “Did you see that painting someone hung in our house?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t I have a role to play?”
“What are you talking about?”
“That piece of art—it’s horrible, and I wasn’t consulted. I don’t like it.”
Sloan Avrich, age five
from the personal collection, Michael Cooper
“Sloan, you don’t have to like it.”
“Well, you have to move it to the basement. It’s an embarrassment.”
“Why is that?”
“I have friends who come here.”
“Since when did you become an art collector?”
She grew indignant. “I just want you to know that when you’re dead, I’m going to sell it.”
In point of fact, my daughter, the critic, hasn’t liked any art that Melissa and I have purchased, so maybe she has some insight that still escapes us. My mother used to call me a macher, meaning “the little expert.” So I guess she got it from me.
Chapter Ten
CHARITY BEGINS WITH A ROLODEX
My work in showbiz marketing and film production has given me access to celebrities. Because of this access, organizations in Canada and the United States that can use a bit of star power ask me to produce their fundraising events. I have always made it a practice to honour a celebrity, to treat him or her as if this were a Hollywood premiere; to make sure the ballroom looked as fabulous as for the Golden Globes, to have great music and to do a press junket. My aim is to catapult a nondescript, well-intentioned gala into a prominent place in the host city’s social calendar.
From 2004 to 2012, I was involved with Best Buddies, an organization started by the Kennedy Shriver family with a mandate to create friendships for people with intellectual disabilities by pairing them with high school and university students. Typically, their annual fundraiser would consist of a film showing and dinner, and attract only marginal local coverage. I changed things up by putting my Rolodex to work and timing the event to coincide with the Toronto International Film Festival, so we could bring in the stars.
Sometimes our honourees were personal friends. Sometimes I approached them through their agents, in which case I stressed that this was a major charitable occasion at which their client would receive a beautifully designed Lifetime Achievement Award. With this reinvention, Best Buddies galas attracted national coverage and almost doubled their fundraising, to a high of over $1.5 million the year my friend James Earl Jones was honoured.
Every year the event produced memorable moments. These were some of them.
“IT’S FORTUNATE YOU’RE GOOD-LOOKING, YOUNG MAN”
Lauren Bacall, whom I had met at one of Garth Drabinsky’s opulent Broadway openings, was my most delightfully outspoken honouree. When I asked her to accept a Lifetime Achievement Award, her response was a vigorous, “Why the hell not? I love Toronto.”
During the seventy-two hours we spent together, I was prepared for bouts of her infamous temper. Bacall, according to one agent, had fired a chauffeur for not parking close enough to the curb.
When I picked her up at Pearson Airport in a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, she expressed her disdain at such pretension. Then she told me she wanted to go to a Danier factory outlet that, according to the newspaper ad clutched in her hand, offered great deals in leather. I called the owner of the outlet to ask, “Do you want to meet Lauren Bacall? I’m going to be taking her to your outlet.”
I had expected enthusiasm. Instead, he said, “Oh no, she’s going to want everything for free.”
Sure enough, Bacall picked out a half-dozen items. For free.
I’d planned a gourmet lunch in Bacall’s King Edward Hotel suite, but she wanted a hot dog from a stand she had patronized on other visits. She insisted that I buy a hot dog for myself. I told her, “Ms. Bacall, my grandfather was a butcher, and he made me promise never to eat one of those things.”
“Kid, you’ll be eating these dogs with Bacall in her suite. It doesn’t get any better than that.”
Before the gala, a well-known entertainment TV host interviewed Bacall. He asked, “What was it like to stand with Bogart, saying goodbye in that famous airport scene in Casablanca?”
It was Ingrid Bergman, not Bacall, who stood on that tarmac. “It’s fortunate you’re good-looking, young man,” Bacall told the reporter, “because there’s not much going on inside that head.”
In the evening, when I escorted Bacall to the gala, she was greeted by a standing ovation from the awestruck guests. On discovering the same reporter would be the evening’s host, she did not mince words: “Not that fucking idiot!”
I was not immune to her barbs. When we ran her tribute reel, she sat beside me, questioning my edits and occasionally offering praise of her own performance.
Most importantly, when Lauren Bacall stepped up to the microphone, she was everything anyone could hope for. She demonstrated a genuine admiration for the charity, and after hugging one of the intellectually challenged adults on stage, exclaimed, “Now I have a buddy for life!” She was a pro. She got it. Some of our other guest stars did not.
Offstage, Bacall continued to be her tart, unpredictable self. When a man shyly said to her, “I met you at George V Hotel in Paris in 1972,” she responded with a throaty, “Yes, yes, I do remember.” Then, as he walked away, she muttered, sotto voce, “What an asshole.”
My favourite Bacall line was uttered after the entire staff of the King Edward Hotel lined up to bid her farewell. When I asked her if she would like to say something to them, she glanced disapprovingly around the hotel lobby, then snapped, “Decorate!”
ENCHANTED BY CHANTAL
In 2007, we honoured Burt Reynolds, who was memorable in all the wrong ways. Though he was no longer the No. 1 box-office star as he’d been in the ’70s and ’80s, he had supported young actors in his native Florida, qualifying him for a Lifetime Achievement Award.
He was suffering from bronchitis when he arrived and he made it obvious that he didn’t want to be there. He had also fallen into that awful Hollywood trap: he had undergone so much plastic surgery that his face was stiff.
Reynolds cancelled a long lineup of interviews, making it instantly clear that he planned to step onto the stage, do his job, grab his trophy, then get the hell out. Ah, but that was before he discovered his dinner mate, Chantal Kreviazuk, the beautiful Canadian singer we had hired for the evening. Reynolds was so smitten by Chantal that he wouldn’t talk to anyone else. When she began to sing, he stood up as if mesmerized, and started crying. The audience stared at him in complete bafflement.
Afterwards, Reynolds told Chantal he loved her. She kept protesting, “But I’m married.”
Director Norman Jewison, who was our go-to guy for these events, presented Reynolds with his award. As expected, Reynolds gave a short dismissive speech. He had exhausted all his passion on Chantal.
MR. ANN-MARGRET NEEDS A SUIT
In 2009, I invited Swedish singer-actor Ann-Margret to be an honouree. I did this through her agent, Alan Margulies, whom I knew. She was famous as a ’60s whip-cracking “sex kitten,” but in reality, Ann-Margret was shy. She lived a quiet, private life with Roger Smith, her husband of forty-two years, who was probably best known for the TV series 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye and Mister Roberts. Smith was no longer the debonair leading man he had once been, however, having contracted a neuromuscular disease that caused him to retire from acting to become his wife’s manager and producer.
It took a great deal of persuasion to get Ann-Margret to accept our invitation. The clincher was the prospect of receiving her award from Norman Jewison, who had directed her in The Cincinnati Kid with Steve McQueen. Despite her initial hesitation, however, when still-glamorous Ann-Margret did get to Toronto with Roger Smith, she proved to be a trooper, doing all the press interviews with warmth and charm.
I showed her the banquet room at the Four Seasons Hotel, where we had put up massive, black-and-white blowups of film stills from her career: Pocketful of Miracles, Bye Bye Birdie, Viva Las Vegas, Kitten with a Whip, Bus Riley’s Back in Town, Carnal Knowledge, The Cincinnati Kid, The Who’s Tommy. She was excited, but there was something else on her mind. She said, “Roger needs a suit.”
“What?”
“He didn’t bring one.”
I took Roger Smith to a menswear store on Bloor Street, Harry Rosen, hoping he had mediocre taste. Of course, he didn’t. He picked out a $3,800 Canali suit.
Although the charity founder was annoyed with the bill for the suit, all was forgiven when Ann-Margret made a wonderful speech. She is a true star.
EASY RIDER
Both Peter Fonda and James Earl Jones, who were personal friends, also did a fabulous job. Jones’s charities included the children’s Make-A-Wish Foundation, while Peter was an active supporter of those with autism and the Special Olympics. His acceptance speech in the Regency Ballroom of the Four Seasons Hotel had many of our guests—including Peter himself—in tears.
“We should be embracing everybody because we all need a hug sometimes. I was in lots of boarding schools, and I got picked on because I was this skinny kid. I befriended this other skinny kid with polio, who also got picked on.”
That night, we auctioned off a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, which Peter had signed, for $35,000, along with signed photographs of Peter with their purchasers.
Whenever I take Sloan and Melissa to Los Angeles, we hang out with Peter and his wife Parky. Sloan and Peter have a special chemistry, like some kind of soul connection that’s interesting to watch.
STRAIGHT ARROW
In 2011, we honoured Kathleen Turner, a passionate spokesperson for women’s health, Planned Parenthood and the Red Cross. I was familiar with Turner’s husky voice from my youth, when she did commercials for Arrow shirts. My father and my uncle were so enamoured of her voice that they had tried unsuccessfully to have her do commercials for the women’s brand, Arrow Pour Elle, which they marketed. I had met her a couple times at New York parties, where I amused her with my Arrow story, and when I invited her to be an honouree, she replied, “Absolutely.” Afterwards, she came to me with a request. “I know this is stupid, and I’m sure you’ll say no, but my daughter is an aspiring singer. Would it be okay for her to perform at this gala?”
“Certainly.”
Though Turner was delighted by my response, the charity’s organizers were furious. “How do you know if she’s any good?”
“I don’t.”
In 1981, Turner had sizzled on the screen in Body Heat, and later on the Broadway stage in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Then, in the 1990s, she had become crippled with rheumatoid arthritis. The medication altered her looks and caused her to gain weight. That, in turn, led to a bout of alcoholism as she sought to deaden her physical and psychological pain.
I always sat in when our celebrities were interviewed by the press. I wanted to make sure the reporters understood why our stars were being honoured, to see they were treated properly and to protect our charity. One crass female reporter asked Turner, “When you remember how you looked in Body Heat, and you see yourself in the mirror now, how do you feel?”
Turner replied, “The same way you feel when you look at yourself in the mirror.”
That ended that interview. Afterwards, I asked Turner, “Do you want to cancel the rest?”
“Nah, that’s just one bad one.”
She was such a class act.
At the gala, we showed a compilation of scenes I had made from Turner’s movies: Romancing the Stone, Prizzi’s Honor, The Accidental Tourist, Peggy Sue Got Married. These tributes were always a labour of love. Kathleen Turner was a joy but I was still nervous about the performance of her daughter, Rachel Ann Weiss. The young woman was nervous too—so anxious, in fact, that I half-anticipated disaster. Rachel took her place at the microphone, and I held my breath. She announced, “This is for my mommy.” Then she blew the room away with an original composition. Rachel Ann Weiss has since released her first album, Dear Love, to positive reviews.
ALIEN INVASION
I had been introduced to Shirley MacLaine when she starred in Garth Drabinsky’s solo show Out There in 1994. To persuade her to be our 2008 honouree, I met her in Santa Monica’s charming Shutters Hotel. MacLaine was frank about her reasons for wanting to do the event: with TIFF going on at the same time, she felt it might give her the opportunity to green-light an obscure film she was having trouble getting produced. As she put it, “I’ve researched you, and you seem well-connected.”
I read the script, and it was one of those alien stories, with which I couldn’t help, but at least that possibility had brought her to Toronto.
It soon became clear that MacLaine preferred the company of men to women. I happen to like having women around me, but she regarded them as irrelevant. She was very demanding, and she took a special dislike to my assistant. She didn’t want to meet any of the people involved in the charity. She didn’t want to be told when to speak. MacLaine was not going to be one of our honourees who made a real connection to the charity and their developmentally challenged clients. She talked mostly about her career, and that was it.
MAGIC CARPET
