Five Minutes of Fame

         I enjoyed fame.  Loved it.  It was only five minutes, OK, maybe five days, but it was a great high, even though it was a only a little fame.  

There were posters for my new book, Silverstone all over London and I'd been interviewed on TV and radio. Now the BigTime, International Bestselling Author was flying to New York from London's Heathrow Airport.   In a hectic, I’m-gonna-miss-my-plane-rush, I skidded to a stop.  The Heathrow Airport bookstore had a big display of Silverstone, with Formula One, Indy, wow, and Phoenix. All my books were up there with the top best sellers.  I snapped a couple of pics and ran for my plane.  

 By the time I landed, fame was over.

          Never mind.  The good parts of the books still feel good.  Here’s a short scene from Silverstone (aka Spin). A couple of real superstars who suffer from way too much fame, Forrest and Virgin have been doing a PR shoot at La Tour D'Argent,in Paris. Forrest bolts for his hotel, exhausted, grieving for his friend.  Virgin follows him into the taxi.

      The paparazzi ducked under the barriers and she had to push her way through the photographers holding their cameras high, lights popping.  And it was one of those shots, the one of her pushing through the crowd to get to me that the PR folks sold to the British Papers.  That was the shot that Panaguian said was pure genius.  She caught my arm and whispered in my ear.  "You are a real prick," she said.

    I told the driver the Crillon. Virgin rolled down the window. 

inside the Crillon

     "Don't get the wrong idea," she said, leaning out the window and waving to the crowd, the camera lights flashing like fireworks.  "I am not running after you like some little puppy."  She rolled the window up and sat back.  "I flashed on going to the show at Catafalque.  Where some stinko little snapshooter is going to catch me and this Coquille in a shot together and I am going to look like dead parrot next to her."

    "You look fine," I said.  In the semi darkness of the back of the taxi she looked fresh, beautiful, all eyes and mouth.

Virgin Lookalike

    "So how do you think I am going to look next to a 19 year old kid?  Sometimes these days I get so tired," she said rubbing her eyes. 

    Virgin sat back in the taxi seat, sulking as we crossed the river.  "You ever use any of that stuff?"  she said, looking out the window at a tourist boat, lit with candles gliding under the bridge.

    "What stuff?"

    "That Formula One stuff, dummy.  The stuff we're supposed to be pushing."

    "It's a trick," I said.  "I think they make it out of floorwax."

    "I got a bottle,"  she said, turning her head at the last minute.  "You want to see if it works?"

         

Pheromone Dreams and the bedpost test: Forrest Evers touts a sexual attractor

                        From the opening of Silverstone (aka Spin)

Panaguian look alike

                       Panaguian, Chantal's Director of Marketing, leaned towards me and spread his hands on his glass desk, pink buffed nails, long narrow fingers and heavy, glossy black hair shading his pale skin.  His face had a sheen of aftershave and gave off a scent of animals and flowers.  "What I want," he said with a French accent, "is to make you the most sexually attractive man in the world." 

 He smiled a carpet dealer's reassurance at me while his eyes roamed the room.  He was dressed with the heavy expense of the modern French executive; tousled razor cut, jeans, a casual  jacket over a black silk shirt.  Behind him, on glass shelves, lit from underneath so that they glowed with light, were the crystal bottles of the fabulously expensive perfumes that made Parfums Chantal rich.  FIX, (`Just This Once,' the advertising said).  LUXU (`Purely Primitive').  CALM (`Before the Storm').  CLIMAX (`The End.  And the Beginning.') and of course the classic CHANTAL (`The Essence of Success').  Small monuments to the power of marketing and packaging.  Bottled dreams.  Icons of wealth and desire. 

    . 

               "Do you know what pheromones are, how they work?  Never mind.  Just take it on board that this sexual attractor is a very important new product for us."

              Obviously it was important.  They had flown me from London on their corporate jet, given me a suite at the George V.  The least I could do, I thought, was hear him out.  Paying attention, is getting harder these days.  The world burns and men in suits still talk of marketing.  He was still talking.

               "So we don't want it macho.  What it has to be is new, contemporary, a kind of high-tech secret weapon," -- his voice lowered to the level of a secret briefing -- "unnoticeable, unavoidable, and absolutely irresistible to women.'

              "Is it?" I said. 

   

             "Is it what?"

 

              "Absolutely irresistible."

             "Legally what we can say is that it is `attractive.  It is definitely attractive." No doubt you've already guessed what it is."

                 I shrugged. 

                He held his hands up in surrender to the power of the idea. "We are going to call it, `FORMULA ONE.'

              "What a good name," I said without enthusiasm.  "But it doesn't have anything to do with me.  And I don't have anything to do with Formula One any more.  I don't drive."

                  His face relaxed into the patient smile of a man who has a fully funded corporate retirement plan.  "You are dangerous, Evers.  Controversial, still mildly famous.  You'd be surprised at your recognition profile in the Far East as well as across the US and Europe.  And, thank God, you are single.    And you look, excuse me but it is a phrase that came out of the research, like a walking crag.

             “We need to show that it works.  We don't want someone so handsome like a Pitt or a Cruise he doesn't need it. Please don't make that face.  With a little retouching we can make you quite handsome enough.  But really you are perfect, Evers.  Absolutely perfect.  You have a certain street cred.  A little down on your luck, there is a touch of scandal hanging around you isn't there?”

           "So you want me to walk around wearing this stuff."

           "Do what you like.  Naturally as a company we would prefer you would wear Formula One every day, but that would be your personal choice.  I think you might find your life more interesting.  Personally" he said, waving the thought away, "I don't give a fart whether you wear it or not.

     

         "We have scheduled a global roll out with a sequential 19 country launch timed to feature you in each of the 19 countries on 5 continents during the week of the host country's Grand Prix.  Start in Bahrain in March, finish in Brazil in November.  The month prior to the week of the Bahrain Grand Prix, we will shoot two sixty second commercials  for cinema and TV.  We will also do newspaper and magazine advertising in 48 countries, but the majority of our media mix is allocated to PR.  So we will be asking you to do your share of the PR.  With some of the most desirable women in the world I might add.  You'll love it, believe me.  And them.”

            Evers is marketed as  "involved" with a different beautiful and preferably famous woman in every country.  It's grueling work and as Evers later points out, there’s an ethical dilemma attached to wearing a sexual attractor.  How do you know if a woman is attracted to you or the chemical?  If you spray it on the bedpost, would she prefer the bedpost?”  To be continued.

Hollywood calls again. You Pick Up The Phone. The Second Great Law of Hollywood Part 2

A month later the phone rings again.  This time from the Chelsea home of  Bigtime Financial Titan.

"Hello Bob?  Bigtime Financial Titan here.  Very good to talk to you, Bob.  Forgive me if I get straight to the point.  May I call you Bob?  Thank you Bob.  Bob, I just came back from the Grand Prix at Silverstone and, Bob, I was very impressed, Bob.  And Bob, I asked around for the best writer in Formula One and I was given your name.  Well I've read your book, Bob, and I just have one question for you.  How'd you like to make a movie of your book, Bob?

    "Depends, Bigtime" you say because you have learned hold back on the leap in until you know if it is a flaming pit or a black hole.

    "Call me Big.  Why don't you come down to my little place in Chelsea tomorrow, say at eleven Bob and we'll discuss it.  Is that all right Bob?  It won't take too long because I have a meeting with Rupert at two.  I do a lot of business with Mr. Murdoch.  See you at eleven then, Bob."

    You walk in his front door into a large open and airy room.  Tall palms rise from porcelain pots up to the two story high skylight and eight heads sitting around a conference table all turn to face you and they all say, "it's going to be a great movie, Bob"  There’s a famous ex-Formula One racing driver, a former Formula One team owner, a couple of assistant producers, a very glamorous lady who watches you like a hawk.  After small talk about big movies, a matched pair of limousines pull up to his front door and drive our party of ten sixty yards to lunch at a chic restaurant on The Kings Road.  We sit down at a round table.  Our host does not sit down but leans over the table, his hands on the back of my chair like a benevolent father.  And he says, "sorry I can't join you for lunch.  I've got a meeting with Murdoch. But after my meeting with Rupert I am going to draw up a company with you all on the board of directors to make this movie. Have a good lunch."

And you never ever see or hear from him again.

Which is the second great Law of Hollywood.  The first Law is from the great screenwriter William Goldman (who wrote Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Harper, All The President's Men, etc. etc.)  It goes:  Nobody ever knows anything.
 
The second great Law of Hollywood, if you haven't heard it before, comes from me and it goes: No answer means no.  And nobody ever knows why.

So six months later the phone rings again and a producer from New York has the money together, the director is hot to do it, wants you to write the screenplay and he wants to go straight into production as soon as he talks to your agent. Is that OK with you?

"Sure," you say.  "Yes, absolutely."

He never calls your agent. And you never ever hear from him again and you never know why.


(to be continued)

A short trip down the main straight at Brands Hatch

.
                  My Jackie Stewart article on Jalopnik claims that a writer can create the sensation of speed on the page by using the first person and an accumulation of detail.
                  Here’s an excerpt from my first book, Formula One, published when Mastadons still roamed the earth.  I could change the details to bring it up to date like raise the rpms from 11,500 to 18,000 but once you get started on that it’s a slippery slope; F1 cars don't have gauges any more, they have displays, and radios did away with lap boards years ago, etc. etc..  So, unvarnished from Formula One, a trip down the main straight at Brands Hatch in a 1990 Formula One car.

                It’s the sixth lap of the European Grand Prix at Brands Hatch.  I am on the outside of the turn at Clearways, my left wheels rabbiting on the thin strip of concrete at the edge of the track, 145 mph and accelerating hard.
                Cavelli’s Ferrari is two hundred yards away in first, crossing the start/finish line.  Aral is six feet away in second.  A blue puff out of his exhausts tells me he’s just changed from fourth to fifth.  The force of turning in wants to drag my helmet and my head off my shoulders. The little vibration in my left wheels stops as the left wheels come back onto the tarmac just before the concrete strip runs out.  My right foot is trying to push the accelerator through the floor.  The engine just ticks the electronic cut off at 11,500 rpm and I let up for fourteen thousandths of a second to snatch fifth and mash the accelerator to the floor, still six feet behind Aral.
                Aral is holding me up.  If I can get a tow from him, stay close enough behind him in the aerodynamic vacuum in his wake, I can get up the extra speed to pass him before Paddock Hill Bend at the end of the main straight.
                On the last lap I’d made a move to pass him on the outside, on the left at the start/finish line.  I didn’t have the speed to pass him but I wanted to set him up for this lap.
                Aral clips the inside of th track under the big yellow Shell sign and seven thousandths of a second later, I do the same. As I shift into sixth, I check my gauges (everything is just fine) and more or less at the same time (I shift my attention rather than my eyes) I look ahead to the pit wall on the right to see if there are any messages for me.
                  Not that I care at this point; things are going to be very busy shortly.  Aral’s crew is holding out a board telling him he’s in second, a second ahead of third.  I laugh because Aral has his mirrors full of me and knows I haven’t been as far back as a full second for two laps.  Just to drive the point home I move a little closer to his exhaust pipes, about two and a half feet, say, two to three thousandths of a second behind him.   My crew give me a thumbs up sign.  Over their heads, the big electronic board registers Cavelli’s speed across the start/finish line:196mph.
                We’re creeping up to almost the same speed , although with me tacked into his slipstream Aral has to haul both cars through the atmosphere, so we’ll probably only reach around 190.
                 Looking in my mirrors I could see a group of cars behind us back in Clearways.  But nobody right behind us. Plenty of room.
                At that speed there are two time zones.  Inside the cockpit it’s slow time.  Lift your foot off the accelerator as fast as you can to stomp on the brake and so much of the track slips by underneath while you lift off one pedal and onto the other, you have the feeling your foot is stuck in molasses.  So much landscape whizzes by while you check your mirrors.
                 While the time inside the cockpit slows down, the rest of the world has picked up speed.  It’s like those science fiction movies when the skyship accelerates into hyperspace and everything turns into a blurred tunnel except the one point on the horizon.
                The car is alive.  It’s in its element, nervous, hunting for another direction, for a new path of its own, away from human hands.  It needs a graceful, easy touch and all of your strength and will.  Ignore it for a microsecond and it will charge off in its own mad direction.  Treat it roughly and it will tear your head off.
                 Two and a half feet behind a Formula One car at 190 mph is not the ideal place to relax.  Blink once, for example, and you’ve driven thirty yards with your eyes shut.  And even with your eyes wide open the view is mostly the backside of Aral’s engine, suspension rods, exhaust pipes and big wide black racing tires.  All bouncing, jouncing, shaking, vibrating.
                   Strapped to the chassis, your body hums along at 11,500 rpm with the engine, and the car bounces and skitters from the uneven surface of the track and the boils of wind coming off the car in front.
                     And the air is bad, full of fumes, rubber dust and shrapnel from the grit and small stones vacuumed up by the car in front and tossed back at you by the tires and ducts from the undertray. Lots of incentive to look for a better neighborhood.
                    About thirty yards before the start/finish line I moved left like the lap before.  But Aral knew I wasn’t likely to try to pass on the left.  The main straight at Brands isn’t really straight but a gradually decreasing radius right-hand turn. Pass on the left on the straight, and unless you are going a lot faster than the car in front, you can easily run out of race track.  Still Aral moved to the left to block me and I made my move to the right.
                    No problem.  Except, of course, the road disappears.  After the start/finish line there’s a little rise, and just over the brow, where you can’t see, the track turns, bends right and dives downhill, a great roller coaster of a turn.  If you get it right.
                   Etc.