Remembering when he was on top

Peter Hoffman sits on the 130-foot, canoe-bottomed motor yacht South Paw, moored near the Palais de Festivals. A strong breeze ruffles his hair and in the distance thousands of people crowd the Croisette as the Hollywood executive ponders the Cannes Film Festival.

“I think the festival is less important,” Hoffman said. “There was a time when winning the Palme d’Or, best director, were important. But the French, for political reasons, in my judgment, choose a lot of movies that are not the best movies. They’re there for political reasons. And I think they’ve lost some of the glamour of what it means of what the whole thing started on, which is the festival itself and awarding excellence.”

It may be a distant memory now, but there was a time when Hoffman’s perch at Cannes was at the center of that grand publicity game: It was 1990, and Hoffman, as president of Carolco Pictures -- an independent film company that rose to considerable heights before an equally steep disintegration -- helped throw a soiree that some say still ranks as the single most extravagant and star-studded event in the festival’s history.

It was aboard one of the biggest boats afloat in the Mediterranean at the time, the Marie Alexander. Some of the celebrities on the guest list have seen their fortunes fade since, but at the time they were among the hottest stars around: Sly Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Clint Eastwood, Michael Douglas, Sharon Stone, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren and others. There were plenty of high-powered directors too. James Cameron, Adrian Lyne, Oliver Stone and on and on.

“We had a big party after at the Hotel du Cap. We had the Gypsy Kings come in” to perform, Hoffman recalled. It wasn’t just a party, but a celebration of Carolco’s red-hot slate of offerings. “We were releasing ‘Terminator 2,’ ‘Basic Instinct,’ ‘Total Recall’ had just been released. It was like the party of parties. No one will ever match that party in terms of star value.”

Stars still come to Cannes for a particular movie, he said, but “to have them all come for a company -- an independent company -- doesn’t happen anymore.”

Carolco would be forced into bankruptcy in the coming years thanks in part to clunkers such as “Cutthroat Island” and “Showgirls” and a headline-grabbing dispute with the IRS that embroiled Hoffman as well as company head Mario Kassar.

Today, Hoffman heads Seven Arts Entertainment, an independent film production and distribution company. He may not be the biggest deal-maker in Cannes, but he’s certainly a survivor in a business in which everyone rolls the dice. As such, he doesn’t hesitate to speak his mind, whether it’s about the state of the film festival, or Hollywood’s struggling box office.

The problem with today’s film business, he believes, is a glut of product and the increasing ability of foreign-made movies to, as they say, “travel.”

“The competition ... is much stronger than it used to be,” he said. As a result, he said, there is a growing financial threat to American film sellers. “I used to say that the only movies that ‘travel’ are American movies,” he said. “That has changed dramatically.” In Italy just a decade ago, a sizable chunk of the film slate was made up of U.S. films, he said. “Now, up to 80% of them are Asian. In France, all they do is distribute Asian pictures. Asian pictures look great in Germany.”

Looking back on nearly a quarter-century of visits, Hoffman said much has changed -- but much remains the same.

“There were a lot less people in the old days.... Starting in the early ‘90s and continuing up until the mid-90s when all the new money came in, it became just packed.... I don’t even like to walk down the Croisette. It takes you forever, you can’t get into restaurants.

“And then there were a whole bunch of young people coming for the parties. And then the parties became overwhelmed. I don’t even go to these parties anymore.... What’s the point? You go there, it’s dark, you can’t see anybody and you leave.”