Cannes’s erstwhile hostelry had soul aplenty

By RON HOLLOWAY

It was a place of legends, some say of miracles. Certainly, a haunted hotel of memories for all who recall with an aching heart and maybe a tear on the cheek what the old Festival International du Film was really like.

I’m talking about the old Hotel Suisse.
(more…)

by Roger Watkins

My problem is I can’t resist a start up. When I retired from Variety in 1995, I linked up with a couple of journo pals and, together, we gave birth to three trade newsletters. One survived‚ DVD-intelligence‚ that covered the aborning optical disc phenomenon almost immediately prior to it breaking out into the leviathan we know today. We were very lucky. The startup newsletter morphed into a startup web site, www.dvd-intelligence.com, which looked at the DVD industry through European eyes, rather than from a U.S. perspective. With the benefit of good timing, the web site took off and we locked in some 50 advertisers in the first year. But it also spawned another startup – the DVD Annual Review & Primer. Like the web, it was heavily ad supported. With an online presence and an in-print presence, the next startup took us into conference territory to give us face-to-face visibility with industry leaders. We started the “Film-to-DVD Seminar” at the National Film Theatre and, fortunately, it was a sellout even though leading UK trade paper Screen International had a similarly themed powwow just two days later at a London hotel. For our seminar, we published another first – the Filmmakers Guide to DVD, which explained to producers some of the practicalities, opportunities and pitfalls associated with releasing product on DVD. Again, we seem to hit the right button with this startup and we are under some pressure to turn this publication into a quarterly. We are hesitating because we are in the process of opening up on another front with a publication call the Media-Tech Buyers Handbook. This one will be out in the Spring and will be a preview publication linked to a Las Vegas trade fair for companies that make and sell the machines that stamp out those shiny silver DVDs. Sexy? No. Lucrative? We are quietly confident. Frantic and ongoing that this activity is, it pales into insignificance when compared to the energy Pat and I spend on six grandchildren Katy, 13; James, 12; Susanne ,11; Matthew, 10; Thomas, 7 and David, 3 who visit us at every opportunity, often all together. I should explain that we live by the sea, on the North Kent coast (near Whitstable, which is famous for oysters) in a village that time has passed by. The local shops still close for lunch, there is just one pub near the beach but otherwise there is nothing but swimming, surfing, fishing, sailing, horse riding, tennis, bowls, golf, walking, bird-watching and masses of green areas for soccer, cricket and other sports. The kids love it, hence their frequent visits. But when the tribe and their parents, and often friends, descend, we find ourselves sleeping and feeding 13 or 14 people, including my 95 year old mother (who famously said when she arrived here seven years ago, that if the East wind didn’t kill her right away, she would live to 100!) The peace and rhythm of living by the sea in a remote and commercially unspoiled spot provides the perfect antidote to my electronic workload. If stress levels rocket, who needs a scotch? I just go for a stroll on the cliffs and plan for the next time the kids get here! And chances are I will start thinking about another start up.

By ROGER WATKINS

In journalism, the opportunities to screw up are legion enough. But when you are young, keen, bubbling over with self-belief and working for Variety amid hype and hoopla, additional tripwires abound.

My first booboo, I recall, happened in about 1962, some six months or so after joining Variety’s London office as a reporter. My beat included a faded and feeble music industry much given to emulation of the US scene and peopled with artists whose names were more powerful than their voices.

There was Billy Fury, Marty Wilde, Duffy Power, Tommy Steel and a dozen other acts bearing macho monikers. Such beefcake labelling seemed to be the requirement of publicists and songpluggers who figured their jobs would be made easier if people could actually remember the names of the talent they were touting.

Sadly, I bought into this notion that superhero-style surnames actually mattered. So when the telephone rang one day and Brian Epstein (who?) was calling from Liverpool (where?) to ask for some advice, I felt ready to give it.

Epstein wanted to know if I, as Variety’s London music correspondent, had any ideas on how he could break in the U.S. an act he was managing. He was looking for a recording contract for a four-man group who sung close harmony in rock ‘n roll style.

“What are they called?” I asked.

“The Silver Beetles,” Epstein replied.

Pointing out that the most popular British singer of the time was called Cliff Richard, and he like all the other charting artists of the day was a solo act, I knowingly advised: “You gotta change that! They will never make it with a name like Beetles!”

If I had known they spelled it Beatles, I doubt I would have approved – being 23 years old and oh-so-showbizwise!

by ROGER WATKINS

The day I joined the London office of Variety, in July 1961, I brought to the job about five years experience of covering the entertainment business. It had been garnered via three domestic pubs – Picturegoer, a consumer magazine, The Stage, a legit and vaude sheet, and the oh-so-niftily titled Kinomatograph Weekly, one of three trade papers supported at the time by the local film industry.

At each of the journals that I worked for previously I had covered a different beat and, since I was tyro reporter, in each case I found the same thing – getting an interview with the top guys in the trade was “impossible.”

But when I called up some industry leader as a new Variety man, suddenly not only did I get through but the conversation usually began with:

“You’re from Variety? Abel Green is a friend of mine.”

It happened time and again. No matter if I was talking to a film guy, a legit maven or a music exec, it seemed everyone in a top job not only knew who Abel Green was but felt they had a positive relationship with him.

No matter that Abel almost never came to London – which he didn’t particularly care for, preferring instead the more stimulating culture of Paris – the level of awareness that Abel edited Variety, and was a man good to know, was extraordinarily high throughout the upper echelons of the trade.

Abel, of course, had for years conducted a personal pr campaign. Knowing it would pay off for the paper, he used to send out 50-60 notes a week to all and sundry, often with little freebies attached – the stuff he received but didn’t want – a campaign that built up a near-global bank of goodwill.

People felt that they owed him something, that in some way they needed to respond to his thoughtfulness and cheerful courtesy. Hence, when this neophyte Variety man called up for a story, those trade luminaries that fell within Abel’s extensive circle of “friends” would be happy to take a call from me.

Tapping into Abel’s goodwill bank meant I had much to thank him for during my early days on the old sheet and while I had met the man just once – and then only extremely briefly on a private visit to the Gotham office – I found myself chatting about Abel with most of the key people in British show biz. These top types were keen to discuss his inventive prose, the legendary “Bible of Show Biz” story and other myths.

Years later, and indeed after Abel’s death in 1973, when I had been upped to assist Bob Hawkins, the European Manager of the paper, which meant I handled ad sales as well as editorial chores, I found out that Abel’s legacy of goodwill penetrated deep into the most inaccessible reaches of the trade.

I was in Munich and visiting one of the companies that belonged to Leo Kirch, the secretive baron of the German television industry. Kirch never gave interviews, had no press department and generally conspired to keep out of the limelight. His employees wouldn’t talk, especially about their boss, and advertising was out of the question.

A salesman’s main attribute, of course, has to be unalloyed optimism backed up with real enthusiasm for what he’s selling. So, being duly hopeful and keen, I pitched the Kirch company for a page ad in the MIP-TV special issue. The lower-echelon execs listened politely, thanked me for my visit, said they would get back to me but not to hold my breath. Kirch never advertised!

At my hotel that evening the phone rang. It was one of the guys from Kirch’s company who said they wanted to book FOUR pages of ads for the MIP issue.

“Four?” I responded incredulously, “What happened to change your mind?”

“We told Mr Kirch about your visit,” the man said, “and he asked if we were talking about the American publication Variety. We said: “Yes. So he decided to take four pages.”

“Did he give a reason? After all, as you said, he doesn’t advertise.”

“Yes . . . he said: Abel Green was a friend of mine.”