SOCIAL CLIMES : Gorby, Arnie and Ted: Wheelin’ and Dealin’
Last week, the old Soviet Union’s last Communist leader offered to work free for Hollywood’s last action hero.
At the Environmental Media Assn.’s annual awards, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mikhail Gorbachev and Ted Turner were seated together.
During dinner, Schwarzenegger mentioned that he owns the rights (which once belonged to financially troubled Carolco) to “Crusade,” a medieval epic in which, if it gets made, the bodybuilder/actor is expected to star.
As they dined on Patina’s chicken with wild rice, Turner said Schwarzenegger should make the movie for him since the CNN mogul is now also in the film business.
There was some banter across the table, when Gorbachev, who is a lawyer, joked that he would negotiate the deal.
Although he won’t be working over the deal points, Schwarzenegger said the former Soviet president “saw the film in a higher way. That it would show people the danger in crusades, in that kind of fanaticism, and not to do them again.”
The Royal Way: For those planning their social schedule around the visit by the Prince of Wales, the details of the royal trip to L.A. have been finalized.
On Oct. 31, the day he arrives, Prince Charles will attend an evening reception at the British consul general’s home. This is open only to guests of the consul and some organizers of the UK/LA festival.
Tuesday is the benefit premiere of TriStar’s “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,” with a dinner following at the Century Plaza. In accord with protocol, guests at the screening must be seated prior to the royal arrival. The audience will have free drinks and popcorn to munch on while they wait. As for popcorn for the prince, “I can assure you a minion will bring it to him if he wants it,” said an organizer.
At the hotel, the prince will attend a VIP reception while the Los Angeles ballroom is filling with guests. Again, he’ll enter the room when everyone is seated. Tickets are priced from $250 to $1,500.
Wednesday he’ll attend the performance of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s “Henry VI: The Battle for the Throne” at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. The New Yorker Magazine Editor Tina Brown is hosting a private cocktail reception in the theater during the first interval. It will be in the prince’s honor and he will attend. There’s also a post-show back-stage reception sponsored by Allied Domecq.
Thursday, the presumably exhausted prince will attend a black-tie dinner co-hosted by MCA’s Lew Wasserman and Arco’s Lod Cook. The 250 guests will dine beneath a tent on the back lawn of Aaron and Candy Spelling’s Holmby Hills mansion. Angela Lansbury will emcee. Tickets are $5,000 per couple with proceeds to be divided among half a dozen local charities.
Writing Reader: If it’s true everybody in Los Angeles is writing a screenplay, then the publishers of the new quarterly magazine Scenario should have no problem selling subscriptions.
Scenario bills itself as “the Magazine of Screenwriting Art” and is set to debut in December. As the press release says, “Scenario is being launched at a time when the role of the screenwriter and screenplay in the motion picture process is receiving a great deal of attention. . . .” (Hey, boys and girls, can you say $4 million for a four-page Joe Eszterhas treatment?)
Among its offerings, the new mag will feature complete, original screenplays (that’s original, as in before screenplays go through five writers and seven re-writes) of such films as “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and “Nashville.”
We’re hoping the magazine will also give advice to writers and struggling writers on how to cope with some big issues, such as how to get your agent to return your phone calls; how to react when a producer says, “I like it, but can you make the female lead a prostitute?” and how to develop as healthy an ego as Quentin Tarantino’s.
