Sunday, November 10
At 10am, the sky's a flawless blue and a buzzard hovers high above the Savannah
as it plies the inter-coastal waterway, departing from the Doubletree hotel.
The event is the not-to-be-missed president's brunch cruise. Shuttle diplomacy
for the get-on-the-bus film crowd gives way to more fluid social maneuvering
aboard the yacht.
On the shoreline, condos hobnob cheek to jowl with palm trees. On deck,
nautical attire - white, navy and gold braid - hobnobs with shorts and t-shirts.
Tans are compared and there's general relief at the prospect of more relaxed
encounters. Fort Lauderdale is compared favorably to Toronto. Only a small
festival, people say, makes such occasions possible. Or South Florida.
A photographer from Gamma Press, a French agency, watches me secure the
batteries in my Vivitar with a thick rubber band. He lets me look through
the 200 zoom lens on his Canon. In return, I identify a couple of photo
ops for him, Seymour Cassel, Giancarlo Esposito with wife and baby Shane,
and "Cold Fever's" Jim Stark.
Picking up a thread from yesterday, I ask Stark what the film's last line
means for him. ("Sometimes a journey can take you to a place that's
not on the map.")
"I worked for 15 years as a film producer," Stark says, "without
being the one who wrote the script or did the creative stuff. This film
was really my idea and I co-wrote the script, so for me it was an important
step in terms of getting more involved in the creative side of making movies.
The idea of this Japanese guy wandering around in Iceland was really my
idea, and it's nice a number of years later seeing people enjoying the finished
film. It gives me impetus to go make other ideas of mine into films. "
On the upper deck, Seymour Cassel is leaning over the rail, cigar in hand.
As the Savannah glides past a low white-columned mansion flanked with palm
trees, we talk for a while about his relationship to Florida and the start
of his acting career.
"I lived here in the mid to late forties, " Cassel says, "actually
in Indian Creek and in Fort Myers. My stepfather was in the Air Force. I
remember swimming in wild sulphur pools. Just at the end of the war the
Armed forces had control of all the hotels on the beach. Those beaches were
patrolled. So being a serviceman's kid I could use the pools. Then after
I got out of the Navy I enrolled in business administration at the University
of Miami and that lasted for two weeks. So I sold carpets here for a while.
"Then I got a job on a charley boat on Pompano Beach. Then I decided
to go back to Detroit for the summer. I remember going to somebody's boatyard
here going on a round-the-world cruise with a 105-foot schooner. They'd
advertised for seamen, and I signed up for September. But when I got to
Detroit I saw an ad in the paper, 'Apprentice Wanted, Willoway Playhouse,
acting lessons in exchange for apprentice work building sets'. I spent the
summer doing stock and I knew right away that's what I wanted, so I went
to New York and that was it. I was 20.
"When I was here in 1957," Cassel continues, "you could drive
from Miami to Lauderdale and see water all the way. When I came back in
the mid-seventies you couldn't see water at all."
As a board member of the Orlando Film Festival, Cassel frequently returns
to Florida. He's here today with the improvisational film "Cannes Man,"
shot at the 48th Cannes Film Festival, in which he plays a low-budget producer.
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