A stiff wind is blowing off the English Channel and it’s making my eyes water. Glenn stands back with the big, black Mercedes and the chauffeur. There’s another black-tie dinner and it’s a long drive back to the resort. I need to get going. People have paid money to see me, to meet me, and to congratulate me on the achievement of the film. I walk back to the car, past the graves and the flags, past the boys from the United States who never came home. I hop in the back, shut the door, and drive away.
The dinner is held in an ornate seventeenth-century ballroom. There are beautiful women. There’s a lot of wine. But I’m quiet. Someone asks me if I have something on my mind. I say no, but I do. It’s a twenty-two-year-old marine from a town in northern Michigan.
* * *
About Last Night
is well received at both the Deauville and Venice film festivals. Sex, love, and commitment are story lines that travel well.
At one of the hotels on my press tour I stop by the magazine shop with my new pal Glenn.
“Rob, I noticed you looking at Princess Stephanie of Monaco on the cover of
Vogue
.”
“Yeah, I think she’s beautiful! It’s a great cover shot of her.”
“Have you ever met her?”
“No. Never.
Oxford Blues
was sort of based on her and we asked if she wanted to try acting. I’m actually hosting a charity event for the Princess Grace Foundation in a few months just to meet her,” I say. It’s true. The chance to finally meet Princess Stephanie is the only reason I agreed to host the event, to be held later in the year in Dallas, Texas.
“My company provides security for the Grimaldi royal family. Would you like me to introduce you?”
“Sure.”
“I will inquire then.”
Within a few days, Glenn has the go-ahead. Now we are back in Paris, and I say good-bye to the
About Last Night
gang.
“I’m going to stick around, have some fun,” I explain.
“Whaddya got, a hot date?” jokes Belushi.
“Maybe,” I say with a smile, and we hug.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” says Belushi.
I never told Jim that I had met his brother so many years ago and that when I did, his one piece of advice was “Stay out of the clubs.” Now I was about to begin a whirlwind romance that would end with me never wanting to see another club as long as I lived.
The doorman at my hotel is grim-faced when I return. “I’m sorry, monsieur. You cannot go outside, there has been another bomb.”
I try to sneak a peek but can see nothing; in the distance, sirens howl. This is the third blast in the last week and Paris is becoming increasingly and rightfully paranoid. It is at the point where it would surprise no one if the Eiffel Tower were blown up.
I look across the lobby and see Irwin and Margo Winkler, parents of a friend of mine. Irwin produced
Rocky
and many other great movies. They invite me to see a “very rough cut” of Irwin’s latest movie the next day. Figuring that during a siege there’s not much else to be done, I say yes.
The next afternoon I’m sitting down with the Winklers in a private screening room. I don’t know what movie this is or what it’s about. The lights go down. I’m about to have the greatest movie-watching experience of my life.
The print is indeed rough. There are no titles; in fact, it jumps awkwardly into the first scene. I can hear poor temp sound. Two men are driving a ’70s-era car. Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci. Cool! I loved them in
Raging Bull
. They banter. They are menacing and somehow funny at the same time. They pull the car over, go to the back, and open the trunk. There’s a man inside, bloody, begging for his life. They look at each other, pull a gun, and shoot him in the face. Freeze frame.
Goodfellas
, even without dissolves or color correction, and with missing scenes, blew my doors off. The seven-minute, uninterrupted tracking shot through the Copacabana alone was groundbreaking. (Years later, we would do similar elaborate tracking shots in
The West Wing
.) But when Scorsese threw down “Layla” on top of the sequence, when they find all the dead bodies, I knew I was seeing the future template of storytelling. And, indeed, now every TV show has to have a classic song punctuating a big scene in a dramatic, counterintuitive way.
The lights come up and even Irwin, I think, is stunned.
“Maybe this will work after all. Who knows?” he says, looking dazed.
Outside the screening room there is chaos. Cars are careening around and sirens once again fill the air. It’s another bombing and panic is building. Suddenly Glenn appears out of nowhere.
“Get in my car
now
! All of you,” he orders.
We pile into his Mercedes. He places a blue police siren on the roof and pulls the car up onto the sidewalk. Then he guns it.
No one speaks.
After a hair-raising ride, he drops us back at the hotel.
“You’ll be safe here. If you ever get into trouble in Paris, the George V is the safest hotel to be in.” I want to ask why and how he knows this, but I don’t. The Winklers gratefully say good-bye and make their way into the lobby.
“Oh, and I will come for you tomorrow to meet the princess. Call me at this number at noon,” he says, looking for a piece of paper to write on. He pulls a card from his wallet and scribbles the number.
“Don’t worry. It’s safe now,” he says as he drives off.
Walking away, I look at the card. On it is the cell number he’s written, but embossed on the card itself are three words in familiar, official font that make my breath catch: The White House.
Who the hell
is
this guy?
High noon finds me in the Mercedes headed for Trocadero, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower. Glenn is running through the protocol for meeting the princess. Being a true-blue American, I am feeling our hallmark mixture of romantic fascination and eye-rolling impatience.
“If it’s a formal setting, she is to be addressed as Her Serene Highness. If members of the palace are present, the protocol will be stricter. You will be presented to her, and then you may introduce yourself. At that time, she can respond.”
He pulls to the curb, without warning. “We must change cars now. Quickly,” he instructs, and we hustle to another waiting sedan. Now we reverse direction. Glenn casually eyes the rearview mirror.
“Okay. We are a go.”
“Nice car,” I say, looking at a strange grouping of multiple cell phones (this in an era when they were huge and built into the dashboard).
“Why do you have so many phones?” I ask.
“They are for different purposes,” he answers mildly.
I wait for further explanations, but get none.
“You gave me a White House card yesterday—where did you get it?”
“Oh, sorry, I ran out of my own cards.”
Again I wait for more, but there’s nothing.
This time I press.
“So, you just happen to have official White House business cards? You have a siren that lets you drive on sidewalks and multiple secret phones in your cars? What exactly is the deal?”
Glenn drives for a couple of blocks as if forming an answer that will have the proper combination of authenticity and casual, friendly subterfuge. Finally he answers.
“I have many different areas in my life. I am in different countries; I help many kinds of people. I get to see many, many things. Things you would never imagine.”
“Do you work for the French government?” I ask.
“No.”
“Do you work for the White House?”
“No, but obviously they know me and I know them.”
Before I can continue to pry, we have pulled inside a grand apartment building on a gorgeous residential avenue.
“We are here.”
Glenn rings the doorbell on a beautiful mahogany entry and we wait. I don’t know what the official purpose of this meeting is, have no idea what she’s been told about me or why she’s agreed to meet me. I assume there will be a discussion about our cohosting the upcoming charity event. As footsteps come up behind the door, I have one last thought before it opens: I hope Glenn didn’t tell anyone I have a crush on this girl.
With the entire preamble about protocol, I expected a palace representative to greet us. But the door opens to reveal a surprisingly soft and vulnerable-looking version of the Princess Stephanie from the cover of
Vogue
. This in-the-flesh incarnation is also
much
prettier, with a delicate quality that is clearly lost in pictures. Her eyes are an intriguing mix of twinkling mischief and deep and profound sadness. They may be the bluest eyes I have ever seen. I know at once, I’m hooked.
“Hi, I’m Stephanie.” Her voice is scratchy and low, but with a crystal finish. “Come on in.”
We do. Stephanie is barefoot, wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. She leads us into a large living room where an exotic-looking Mauritian girl is watching TV and eating potato chips.
“This is my roommate. Would you like something to eat?” she says, gesturing to a platter of hors d’oeuvres.
Glenn takes this moment to excuse himself; clearly this is no formal meeting. It’s more like walking into a blue-blood heiress’s apartment and hanging with her and her pal.
The three of us sit and chat. No one brings up the charity, and in fact, no one talks of why we have gotten together at all. It’s as if she’s been expecting me to come, like a friend she hadn’t seen in a while.
I watch her as we talk. She’s funny (an absolute necessity for me) and she stretches like a cat. Her roommate doesn’t say much, which is just as well. Stephanie and I chat about nothing in particular; it’s easy and relaxed. I agree to go to a dinner with a group she is putting together.
By the time the entrées arrive, she is sitting on my lap. By dessert, neither of us is interested in anything other than getting the hell out of there and back to her apartment. Only later will I realize what a “closer” Her Serene Highness is, when I discover that between courses she excuses herself to call the butler at the apartment to pack up the current boyfriend’s clothes and remove them before we return from dinner. It really is a wonder what can be done with the proper foresight and staffing.
If I feel a little thrown by the velocity and heat from the first meeting, I don’t let it slow me down. The next morning, I check out of my hotel and move in.
I become so immersed in the princess’s hermetically sealed exotic lifestyle that I might as well be in the Witness Protection Program. In Paris, our days begin at noon at the earliest, then possibly we do some official business, running around the city exploring and shopping, then drinks back at the apartment, dinner at nine or ten at night with a group that is never less than eight, enough vodka and tonics to float the battleship
Bismarck
, then dancing at the nightclubs till four or five in the morning.
My dad, whenever he got frustrated by disinterest in the grunt work of daily life, used to always say, “You better become either a movie star or a prince.” Who knows, maybe I’ll go two for two.
“How did your family come to rule Monaco?” I ask Stephanie one day. It seems like something I should know.
“Hundreds of years ago, my family and some others knocked on the village gates dressed as monks. When they were let inside, they killed who they had to and took over. We’ve been there ever since,” she answers, sipping her vodka tonic.
After a few weeks I am getting restless in Paris. Although Stephanie is working on a recording career, there is a profound lack of work ethic in her circle. And while I can party and drink with the best of them, even I need a day off from time to time. Not an option with this group. So I begin waking up before Stephanie and working out with Glenn, who is a champion martial artist.
“Rob, if they were to rip my heart out, I would still walk; if they were to tear me open, I would keep coming. If they pull my insides out, I will still be crawling,” says Glenn one day, apropos of nothing.
“Is that what they teach you in martial arts?” I ask.
“No. It’s just who I am.”
“Okaaaay,” I say, not sure of his point. “Good to know.”
With consecutive hit films behind me, I’m getting antsy to go home and take care of business. (The life of idle leisure is proving to be more taxing than I thought it would be.) My agents are putting together my next movie, and with my new profile as a romantic leading man, it has a lot riding on it. I tell Stephanie, who understands. She will come to L.A. in the next few weeks for a meeting on a record deal. I begin to pack my things.
I come across a magazine under a stack in Stephanie’s closet. It’s French, from six months ago, and I’m on the cover.
“Look what I found!” I say to her. She blushes.
“I put it away when I finally met you. I kept it on my nightstand for months,” she says.
* * *