A few nights ago, I was invited to have a drink at the ubercool multi mark boutique, Colette, to toast the photographs of Jim Krantz. His huge photos of the Marlboro man for the cigarette ads tend to blur the line between commercial and artistic photography. Krantz also collaborated with designer Adam Kimmel for Kimmel's Winter Men's Collection '09. When I spoke with Jim over a glass of champagne, I told him about my own personal history with the Marlboro Man sign on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. It was 1992, and I was working as an assistant editor on the remake of BODY SNATCHERS for Warner Bros. The director was guerrilla bad boy movie director, Abel Ferrara. At the time of editing BODY SNATCHERS, Abel was also re cutting his last film, BAD LIEUTENANT starring Harvey Keitel for the Cannes Festival. One of my many jobs was driving daily to the Chateau Marmont and knocking on Harvey Keital's door to give him his VHS cassette of freshly cut scenes. Harvey just arrived back from New Zealand where he had just finished a little film called, THE PIANO. I would show him his re cut scenes for BAD LIEUTENANT and he would say, ' but where is my close up? Ask Abel where my fucking close up is'. At night I would knock on Abel's door who was also residing at the Chateau Marmont to drop off the new re cut scenes. He would have his whole NYC posse hanging out in his room so I would end up having a glass of Pinot Grigio with Christopher 'Ron' Walken, Harvey, and other character actors like the late Victor Argo. At one point, Abel would ask me to run across Sunset Blvd. to fetch him two shots of vodka. So, me, stupid assistant,was trying to navigate the Sunset Blvd traffic ( in heels) so I could cross Sunset with shots of vodka in my hand without getting run over by a car( think Helmut Newton). While running across the street at night, there was always the Marlboro Man sign looking down on me. I was sad when the city of West Hollywood took the sign down. Something to do with smoking being bad for one's health!
Labels: Abel Ferrara, Chateau Marmont, Harvey Keitel, Jim Krantz
No comments:
Post a Comment