Courting the Cash at Cannes

Cassian Elwes and Rena Ronson, who head the independent film finance packaging division of the William Morris Agency, have two operating speeds: turbo and light-speed. Turbo means that a meeting lasts 20 minutes, while light-speed suggests that business can be transacted in less than five.

There is also the momentary glad-handing that accompanies numerous canters up and down the Croisette, between the Morris suites at the Palais Miramar hotel and the marina, where a number of European investors are ensconced in yachts that reportedly rent for more than $25,000 a week.

“The big difference is we walk in Cannes and we drive in Los Angeles,” Ronson, a petite figure in her late 30s, says as she rushes out of a meeting at the Majestic hotel, her third in an hour.

The 54th Cannes Film Festival will conclude Sunday after a ceremony honoring a clutch of new films. But the festival’s raison d’etre is to serve as the world’s premier film bazaar, where peddlers of the latest Iranian cinema verite brush shoulders with famous American producers such as Harvey Weinstein.

This is an odd time in the global film business. American studios, battered by rising costs and shrinking profits, are unusually skittish. To minimize risk, they are increasingly co-financing films with foreign companies or pre-selling distribution rights abroad.

Conversely, European media conglomerates, hungry for product, are snapping up U.S. film rights at exorbitant prices. They are also slowly moving into production. It’s an arrangement that allows American producers autonomy over their product and the Europeans access to studio-quality films. Some Europeans are even starting funds to produce their own English-language films.

To make any of this work, you need stars--big, American-size celebrities. As Elwes is fond of saying, “Movie stars are the currency,” and so William Morris, one of Hollywood’s leading talent agencies, is a gatekeeper to the stars.

Navigating the packed Croisette--the beachfront promenade that is the festival’s main thoroughfare--with Elwes and Ronson is a brief tutorial in international film financing, an inside view on the spiky dance between buyers and sellers that puts American movies in theaters from Duesseldorf to Delhi. Elwes and Ronson take a cut of every deal they do, often a negotiable percentage of the film’s budget. In this year’s production frenzy leading up to the Writers Guild agreement, they put together 11 films, with budgets ranging from $3.5 million to $30 million. They have also begun to earn fees by setting up producers with European backers, in a sense acting as gatekeepers to the money.

Unlike the Sundance Film Festival each winter in Utah, which resonates with the broken hopes of struggling filmmakers, Cannes smells of money--lots of it--of deals to be made and luxurious meals and hotels, all on the company expense account.

The pair pass the Carlton hotel, which first achieved international fame as the setting of Alfred Hitchcock’s “To Catch a Thief.” Its cream-colored beauty is almost completely obscured by film billboards and banners.

Elwes, a small, redheaded 42-year-old Briton in a faded black Diesel T-shirt and jeans, points out his handiwork. He waves to Billy Bob Thornton, who’s in the middle of a photo shoot on the veranda. Elwes and Ronson arranged financing for Thornton’s “Behind the Sun.” From windows of the hotel’s third floor hang banners of Thornton, Ving Rhames and Wesley Snipes, all in films for which the William Morris duo helped secure the financing.

Scanning the billboards on the front lawn, Elwes and Ronson tick off Morris clients in every film advertised, from “Moulin Rouge” to “Planet of the Apes.” When he comes to the last one, however--”Lara Croft Tomb Raider,” featuring Angelina Jolie--he can’t come up with a single William Morris connection.

“I don’t think we have anyone involved with that,” Elwes says, sighing. “That would have been a clean sweep.”

When in Cannes, Elwes gives up on real sleep for the duration of the festival, which began May 9. “I usually sleep for about four hours. I feel that Cannes is one long day with a few small naps,” he says.

Elwes has been coming to Cannes for more than 20 years, first as a child, with his stepfather, Elliott Kastner, the producer of more than 70 films including “Harper” and “The Long Goodbye.”

This is the 14th Cannes festival for Ronson, who brought along her parents and her 2-year-old daughter, Anabella. They are all staying in an apartment off the Croisette.

Part of Ronson and Elwes’ agenda here is to find financial backers for American director Gus Van Sant’s next movie, “Jerry,” which will star Matt Damon. No one has seen the script, so the project has to be sold based on Van Sant’s and Damon’s names. Within two days of arriving in Cannes, Elwes and Ronson have lined up a United Kingdom distribution deal with Channel Four, the British commercial TV network, and are able to choose from a plethora of other distributors eager to buy in.

On this day, in a 45-minute span, they attend a distributors luncheon held by Intermedia, a European production entity; take an introductory meeting with Palm Pictures, an independent American distribution company; and stop by the office suites of the Overseas Filmgroup, a U.S. company that arranges foreign sales of movies, to see the trailer of “34 Conversations About One Thing,” a film that they helped put together.

Their next meeting is in the William Morris suite at the Miramar. The appointment is with billionaire Norman Waitt Jr., a boyish, blond 46-year-old in a T-shirt and jeans. Waitt founded Gateway computers with his brother, Tom, but bailed out 10 years ago and has just begun dabbling in films with the formation of his company, Gold Circle Entertainment. His first trip to Cannes was last year, “but we didn’t have any movies yet,” he explains. “Now we have 10 films.” He’s contributed $50 million to their budgets.

For Elwes and Ronson, the affable billionaire is like a gunslinger who rode in out of the blue, cash in hand. He’s provided equity financing for three of their films--”Double Whammy,” a comedy starring Elizabeth Hurley and Dennis Leary that played at Sundance, the upcoming “Poolhall Junkies,” a cue ball drama starring Christopher Walken, and the Thornton picture.

Funding Opens Doors

Guys like Waitt make Ronson and Elwes’ lives easier, and they make it possible for Waitt to become a movie producer. Although his company doesn’t develop films, Waitt’s approval is needed for the cast and director. Much of the meeting seems to be about the Waitt team trying to get in on more movie deals with William Morris. “Why aren’t we doing more business with you?” asks Paul Brooks, the president of Waitt’s company. “You like us more than anybody else, don’t you?”

Ronson and Elwes toss a few projects out at them, including a period piece by “Prince of Tides” screenwriter Becky Johnston. A Spanish company is interested in putting up 70% of the $20-million budget, Ronson says. Waitt says nothing, but his head of production asks to see the script.

“The idea is to have fun, make money and do productions we’re proud of,” Waitt says, explaining his business plan.

While a good chunk of any talent agent’s business calls for handholding celebrities, part of Ronson and Elwes’ job is soothing jittery buyers. As Brooks makes clear, Waitt doesn’t plan on being just another rich chump that Hollywood producers can hustle with bottom-of-the-barrel projects.

“The last thing we’d do is take advantage of you,” Ronson says. “We want to make more movies.”

After 15 minutes, that meeting is over, and Ronson and Elwes head downstairs to jump into a silver Mercedes driven by Jerome, a young French trainee in the Morris office. The car was lent to Elwes by Hollywood producer Elie Samaha.

As the producer of “Driven,” Samaha was lent six Mercedeses by the auto maker (one of the film’s sponsors), and in turn he’s lent one to Elwes. Jerome heads to the Majestic for an appointment with Senator Films, a German distribution company that has just begun investing in films. This meeting takes literally three minutes because Joe Drake, president of international sales, is tied up with other business. He does manage, however, to lean down and whisper to Elwes that he will put up financing for “The Family,” a film about the Manson family, starring Vincent Gallo and Paris Hilton.

It’s not quite a proverbial handshake on the deal, but just about.

“Nothing makes me happier,” Elwes says, “than when someone says, ‘Let’s do it,’ and you feel partially responsible.”

Ronson and Elwes stroll down the block to the marina, the locale of a lot of European frustration.

Ronson and Elwes are also trying to deal with fallout from last year’s big German shopping spree. Since then, German media company values have plummeted, much like Internet stocks in the U.S.

“Last year,” Elwes notes, “the boats looked like they were sinking, there were so many people on them. This year the foot traffic is a lot lighter.”

The pair are looking for the Helkon Media boat. Last year, Munich-based Helkon was one of the hottest players, with multiple pacts with U.S. producers, all part of its ambition to become a pan-European distributor. Then, in November, its charismatic founder, Werner Koenig, died in an avalanche while scouting locations for an extreme skiing movie.

Elwes thinks that Koenig’s death contributed to the crash of media stocks on the German market. “People began to think that the business was much more about personalities than business,” he says.

Helkon has asked for the meeting because it is still looking for product.

Sitting on the deck of the lavish boat, Elwes regales Helkon’s head of international operations, Christian Halsey Solomon, with the story of a starlet and her drunken rock star boyfriend who consumed seven tequilas “and then did a straight dive over the coffee table and hit his head hard on the marble floor and passed out.”

Halsey Solomon, who has stayed up until 4:30 a.m., enjoys the account. He responds with a drier story: how the German media companies got snookered by the Kirch Group, the prime buyer of TV product for Germany. Kirch watched other companies overpay for American movies and then balked at buying any of the TV rights from them. Elwes theorizes that the strategy was to force the other entertainment companies to go bust, so that Kirch could scoop up the TV rights at fire sale prices.

Halsey Solomon groans that $2.9 billion of German money “went back to the states. It’s still floating there. In America they’ve learned to [expletive] the foreign investor. First it was the Japanese. Now it’s the Germans. Who’s going to be the next sucker?”

“The studios are looking at Germany to unload their risk. You made the smartest studio deal,” Elwes says, noting that Helkon did well when Koenig invested in the upcoming John McTiernan film “Rollerball.”

Off to Another Hotel

After some desultory talk about possible projects they can do together, Elwes and Ronson climb back into the Mercedes for the quick trip to Hotel du Cap.

A feeling of well-being seems to settle over the car. Even for those accustomed to luxury, the Du Cap exudes a graceful sensuality, from its white terrace, past the expansive grounds and tennis courts, down to the sea, where Barry Diller’s boat is moored.

To the left is a spacious multi-bedroom villa, where Elwes used to stay with his mother and stepfather. It costs $10,000 a night. Now he makes do with a more ordinary suite, which starts at $1,000 a night.

The evening meeting is with this year’s rich German, Marcus Barmettler. While Halsey Solomon exuded a frazzled weariness, Barmettler, who resides in Switzerland, has the assurance of a well-tended banker.

Barmettler heads the Cannes delegation of a production company called Epsilon Mediagroup, which is backed by a consortium of European film buyers that includes the Kirch Group.

The difference between the two European financing meetings of the day is dramatic. As Elwes notes on the drive back to town for a cocktail party thrown by actress Debra Winger, “These guys have hundreds of millions of dollars. While Helkon used to have that, they now only have tens of millions.”

Leaning back against the leather of the Mercedes, he says, “The challenge for us is that there’s not just one buyer who’s going to pay for the whole thing,” explaining in a sense what he spends all day doing. “You have to string everything together, put partnerships together. There is a lot of money out there, but everybody has different tastes and needs. It’s just figuring out how the pieces fit. It’s a jigsaw puzzle that’s constantly changing.”

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