The last straw ... Gigolos director Richard Bracewell braces himself to head home from Hollywood
In his final report from Hollywood, Punk Cinema's Jon Morrison wonders where their stars have gone, passes some time inventing new movie genres and prepares to bid a fondish farewell to Tinseltown
Exhibiting true star quality, Sacha and Trevor (the Gigolos) have gone to Vegas. They've travelled the only way stars should - across the desert by Cadillac.
We haven't heard from them yet, so they've either won or lost spectacularly. People play big stakes out here.
Hollywood's just woken up to the fact we're leaving in a day's time. Suddenly the phone's ringing non-stop. Twenty-four hours left to close the deal.
The premiere seems a lifetime ago. A lifetime of meetings with anyone who's anyone. Not with agents trying to make 3% on B-movie creature-features, but execs from major studios looking for new talent, new ideas. We even met a Goldwyn today. That's Hollywood royalty. For some, it's still a family business.
We've achieved so much. Hollywood now knows Punk Cinema. We've created the all-important "heat" with great reviews. We're pitching the right people at major studios. It takes time, but we're moving forward. Best of all, no one - with one notorious exception, of whom we shall not speak - has anything but praise for the film.
Our final meeting was on the Paramount Lot, the only studio still in Hollywood proper. Remember the famous scene in the Godfather where Robert Duvall makes a studio exec "an offer he can't refuse"? Paramount is the home of the Godfather films. As we walked in under the famous Paramount Arches, we realised just how far we've come. Then, like excited kids, we ran round the back and walked through again for fun!
Legendary Paramount doorman James Dukes didn't mind. He told us he loves his job because he "meets the world". He couldn't recall if he'd met any moviemakers from Norwich before.
As we were going to meet a Paramount exec at the time, we couldn't help but feel a Godfather resonance. She didn't say whether she had a favourite horse. But then again, she didn't turn us down flat either.
We discovered early on that every film must have a label. And there's always room for more genres - The Gigolos has been variously described as a "scriptovised" film and a "serio-comedy". Does that make a serious film about a psychopath a "serio-killer" movie?
We invented new genres over breakfast: The Omen is a "preacher-feature". Cyrano de Bergerac would have to be a "feature-feature" (on account of the nose). And a biopic about the rise and fall of an 80s pop group would be a "bananarama-drama". A niche market perhaps.
Before leaving for Vegas, Sacha and Trevor met their heroes - Clement and La Frenais. They loved the idea for our next movie, Billion Dollar Break. It's a caper comedy where the world's richest man kidnaps the world's most ordinary man and takes him on the mother of all stag weekends across Europe. They also gave us a couple of tips… Not bad for a start-up from Norwich!
The highlight of our trip? Telling Andy Garcia that he was the only good thing about the Godfather 3. He laughed. What a great guy!
The lows? The traffic on the Santa Monica Freeway. Eating burgers for two weeks. Even Kobe burgers get monotonous. The fact you can't get a decent pint. The Roosevelt has nothing on The Mason's Arms on a sunny day.
Best of all, though, was seeing The Gigolos listed on the huge LED display at the ArcLight Theater, watching the audience file in and hearing a full cinema applaud at the end. How do you quantify that?
How will the industry? Watch this space. To plagiarise a quote: this is just the end of the beginning.
