Johnny Cigarini (26 page)

*

Laos was the perfect antidote: peaceful and calm and untouched for centuries, apart from a hideous amount of illegal American bombing during the Vietnam War. Flying across the country is a depressing experience. Seen from the sky, the ground is pockmarked with craters, where the Americans tried to destroy the Viet Cong supply routes. It is estimated that Laos received one B52 bombload every eight minutes, twenty-four hours a day, for ten years between 1964 and 1973. I read it was the equivalent of thirty tons of bombs for every man, woman and child in Laos. US bombers dropped more ordnance on Laos during this period than was dropped in the entire Second World War. Appalling behaviour. It is now very peaceful, and the people are so gentle and friendly that my heart went out to them for the suffering and pain the older people must have endured during the bombing. I went to the capital, Vientiane, a nice town with French influences in its architecture, and also in the café life. My favourite town was Luang Praband, a sleepy little town on the banks of the Mekong River.

Vietnam was beautiful and it rained the whole time I was there. Experiencing Asia in the rain is something everyone should do, because when it rains, it pours, and when it pours, it can do it for days, and another world emerges. It is a very different world to ours. Not better or worse, just different – the sounds, the smells, the thoughts people have. I got depressed in Hue, which was the scene of the Tet Offensive of '68. Hue was actually in South Vietnam, just south of the border with the North, but it had been infiltrated by the Viet Cong and was therefore bombed by the Americans in the Battle of Hue. The whole city was practically razed to the ground. I went to visit the Forbidden City and it had truly been lost; there was only a perimeter wall remaining. After being in India with all the wonderful temples, it was very sad to see this. Very sad indeed.

I went to Cambodia and visited the fabulous Angkor Wat temples, seat of the Khmer Empire, dating from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries. I was practically the only tourist there due to the civil war and Cambodia was still on the Foreign Office list of places not to visit, but I ignored their advice. The Angkor Wat temple complex is the largest religious monument in the world and dates from the twelfth century, and it takes at least three or four days to look around it. I particularly liked the Prasat Bayon, about thirty tall towers with large faces carved on the four sides of each one. The main Angkor Wat temple itself is staggering. The apsaras and other bas-relief carvings are still in mint condition. My favourite temple was Ta Prohm, which has been left almost untouched since the temples were discovered in the middle of the nineteenth century. Thick roots of fig, banyan and kapok trees grow in and around the temples. It was like a real version of an Indiana Jones movie. That day, my guide and I were the only people there. I felt like the French explorer who discovered them. I needed a guide because these temples were dangerous. If one strayed away from the paths, there was danger of landmines.

I went to Thailand and stayed with Jamie Morgan in Bangkok. He was one of Siobhan Barron's Malibu gang. At that time, he was living full time in Bangkok in a cheaper hotel. So I stayed there with him, but it was something of a junkie hangout. One night, a young American lad, presumably tripping on acid, rushed down the third-floor corridor, shedding his clothes in a trail on the floor, and tried to dive into the pool from the upstairs window. The pool was a long way away and he went straight down. He hit a porch, which broke his fall, and that saved his life. It's a story we've all heard too many times. I think acid helps you realise how free you are, but because of the amount of suppressed freedom there is in the modern mind, people who trip can experience a massive unbalancing, so they often think they are so free they can fly.

Jamie and I also went to Phuket for Christmas. Jamie is a fashion photographer, and friends with supermodel Helena Christensen, who was staying in the Amanpuri with her boyfriend Michael Hutchence – the lead singer from the great Australian band INXS. Jamie and I were staying in the Pansea next door, but we spent every day at Michael's villa at the Amanpuri. We all stayed together the whole week, and went into Patong town to see the sleazy bars and lady-boy pick-up joints. Michael was a really nice guy and Helena was just gorgeous. She was always wearing open-fronted Versace silk dresses, which left nothing to the imagination. Naomi Campbell was also there and hanging out with us. She was staying in the Amanpuri with her boyfriend Nellee Hooper, a great record producer of Massive Attack, Björk and Madonna. It was all a bit different to slumming it through India and Laos, but it was still part of my travels. Celebrities are still people, after all.

When we got back to LA, I arranged for Michael Hutchence to have his birthday dinner in the Foundation Room at the House of Blues. There were other members of INXS present. Johnny Depp was also there with his then girlfriend Kate Moss. I chatted to them. They both seemed nice, unassuming people.

Michael died a few years later, of strangulation. By then, he was going out with Paula Yates – former wife of Bob Geldof and mother of his children. Paula had one child from Michael and she sadly became a junkie after his death, and would later die from an overdose. The coroner ruled Michael's death was suicide, but I believe he was stoned, and he was fooling around with autoeroticism. I think a lot of people knew that was the case, but for some reason, it was more convenient for the media to demonise Michael this way and just say he was mentally unstable. In reality, he was a great man, a creative soul and a gent. Ironic, then, how he described the English press: “So nosy… and the English seem to love that eavesdropping.”

I knew Paula from the Roebuck pub on the King's Road from '76, when she was a young girl. I met her again when the film
Four Weddings and a Funeral
had a launch party in the House of Blues Foundation Room. The public relations king Matthew Freud was with Paula. His connection to the House of Blues was Isaac Tigrett. I believe the Hard Rock Café had been Matthew's first ever client when he set up his PR consultancy. I had known Matthew for years, because he'd sometimes visit Stocks House late at night when he was a young man. There had just recently been a big spread on Paula and Michael Hutchence in the
News of the World
because they had just started dating, and had been caught by the paparazzi at a country motel. There were photographs of Michael fighting with the paparazzi. I was talking to Matthew and Paula, and I said to them, “You know, you could never buy the first five pages of the
News of the World
, that's fantastic publicity”. Paula pointed to Matthew and said, “Yes, and Matthew wrote all of it.” He is a brilliant PR man, and the whole incident was a publicity stunt. He is now married to Rupert Murdoch's daughter. And that was Matthew Freud.

*

These days, I still have big travel plans. There are still so many countries I'd like to visit, cultures I would like to learn about, quiet towns I want to walk through. Some people say the grass is always greener, but that thing inside me that has kept me quite restless has kept me adventurous – I thank God that I have that. It's helped me travel and yearn for even more adventures. John Steinbeck said that: “A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.” I guess I feel that way about my life sometimes: the great journey of life. I think it was the thing he was talking about. Sometimes I got lost on the road, sometimes I was lost in my head, but I kept going, somewhere, and I always ended up in the right place eventually. I guess that's the key – to just keep going. “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.”

In LA, I always see my old friend Mary Lindes. I first met her when I was doing a shoot with Twiggy, her closest friend. Mary accompanied Twigs to the shoot. A short while later, I went to a party at her flat in Chelsea, where she lived with her husband Hal Lindes. Hal was a guitarist in Dire Straits. Mary had been previously married to superstar Peter Frampton. I know Twiggy through her marriage to my friend, actor Leigh Lawson. Both of them are super duper and they'd often visit me at Ridge Farmhouse. I went to Twiggy's fiftieth in the private room at San Lorenzo in Beauchamp Place, Knightsbridge. I remember talking with Jeremy Irons and Bob Hoskins. Actually, Bob chatted to me. I was sitting next to his wife and he seemed to think I wasn't talking to her enough, so he asked me to change places with a lady. Same old complaint!

I always have dinner in LA with my lovely friend Fiona, wife of composer and Police drummer Stewart Copeland, and with Liz Dalling and her ex-husband, now boyfriend again, Michael Dalling. Lizzie works too hard, with her very successful management agency Special Artists, handling stars like Pierce Brosnan. She took me to lunch with Pierce at his Malibu house. It's funny living in Malibu; you run into many famous Hollywood stars, just out doing their shopping. I used to see Pierce at the supermarket. Another time, I was in Blockbuster and they had a big display of
Saving Private Ryan
videos, which had just been released, and Tom Hanks was wandering through the store. I used to go to the Malibu Gym – where my trainer was Angie Best, former wife of footballer George Best – and Mike Myers was often in there. He would like to practise his English accent on me, as he was playing an Englishman in an upcoming film. The film turned out to be
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
. I often saw famous stars in restaurants in Malibu: Clint, Robert Redford, Warren Beatty and Demi Moore. Doctors' waiting rooms in Beverly Hills are also good places for star spotting. I've sat waiting with Lauren Bacall, Julie Andrews and Little Richard. I suppose it's a universal law, 'cause even they have sod all to say in those bloody places.

I had a previous connection with the Freud family. I produced many of the Pedigree Chum commercials starring Matthew's father Clement Freud, and a bloodhound called Henry. There was not just one Henry; the part was played by a number of different identical dogs, due to the difficulty of getting one dog to sit still all day in front of the camera. I remember going to the apartment of the dog trainers in North London. They lived in a small basement apartment with six huge bloodhounds, and the stench of dogs in the flat was something horrendous. Clement Freud was an anti-smoking pioneer. Years before the reports of passive smoking were released, and before the subsequent ban on smoking in offices, bars and restaurants, he insisted no one smoked in the film studios – an inconsiderate demand at the time as far as the crews were concerned. I also met Clement's daughter Emma Freud, now married to Richard Curtis. I met them at Paul Weiland's Italianate country house in Bradford-on-Avon. Paul and his wife Caroline have star-studded house parties in the country every weekend, and Rowan Atkinson regularly flies in in his own helicopter.

Ayrton Senna was a Brazilian racing car diver. He was a hero to millions and a three-times Formula 1 world champion. He was different from everyone else, and everyone knew it. I guess in life, sometimes people are just good, and everyone knew it about Senna. But only the good die young; I just never would have dreamt he was going to be one of them. Senna fought relentlessly to improve the safety of Formula 1, and during his fight he had to watch the tragic death of fellow driver Roland Ratzenberger – it happened just one day before his own.

Allan van Rijn directed many commercials for Marlboro cigarettes, featuring the Marlboro McLaren Formula 1 team and its driver Ayrton Senna. Over a period of years, Allan filmed him at Silverstone in England, at Jerez in Spain, and in the studio. One shoot took place live at the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola, and although I wasn't producing the spot, I went as a fan of motor racing. The complexity of the technology alone is staggering, and once you get your head around the skill necessary to drive one of these cars, then you are beginning to understand. Formula 1 racing is to me the most thrilling but terrifying experience, and it's because I know and understand what it is I am watching. The more you know about it, the more you understand its dangers; the more you understand its dangers, the more thrilling it becomes. Every square inch of design is at the cutting edge of our human ingenuity; the machinery leads the way in mechanics; the science behind rubber on concrete; the different aerodynamic forces, ‘wings', ground effect, pressure, double-wishbone suspension, disc brakes, springs and dampers; the oiling, the revs and the speed; the fact that the whole car, including engine, fluids and driver, only weighs 640kg, the minimum weight set by the regulations – then you begin to understand. But then you get into the race and the circuits, the politics, the money and the big big big big business, and the event becomes more than just a spectacle. It becomes something to marvel at. Anyone who steps into the cockpit has my attention, but anyone who can drive the things – they have my respect.

Our access was incredible; I had passes to all the pits and track areas. You should have seen me; I was out-of-control excited. I was able to sit in the press stand with the photographers to watch the start, but I couldn't sit still – the whole thing was electric. During the race, I could wander around on the grass verge bordering the track, with the cars screaming past me feet away. I had access to all the pits, even Ferrari, and I met the man: the one and only Ayrton Senna. We bought him a remote controlled helicopter. It was his hobby, and he loved our gift. I was with Allan when we learnt of his death, and he was in tears. Ayrton, like for many people, was Allan's hero. I wanted to cry, but I couldn't. I'm not sure why. The world was shocked when he left us. I guess it hit home how quickly it can get taken from you. It was just as he once said of it: “because in a split second, it's gone.”

BFCS had a commercial to shoot with Ali, for Birds Eye hamburgers of all things. Michael Seresin was the director and I produced. Ali's voice was beginning to fail, so we had to get him into our office in North Wharf Road to see if the commercial was feasible, as he needed to talk to the camera. We decided it was doable and we celebrated with a nice photo of Ali with Michael Seresin and yours truly outside our studio. He later signed it, “To John, best wishes from Muhammad Ali”, and it is a great and proud possession of mine. We shipped an English film crew to Los Angeles, where we were to shoot in his house. Ali lived in a gated community of mansions in Hancock Park. It had been a very upmarket area in the 1930s Hollywood heyday, but was now bordering rough areas of Hollywood. Still, I could understand why anyone would want to live there: the houses are wonderful. We filmed in the house for three days and Ali's family were all there; he had a beautiful wife called Veronica and two young daughters, Hana and Laila. Laila herself would later become a female boxing champion. As the producer, I spent a lot of time with Ali and I enjoyed every minute. One thing that I'll never forget: he told me he couldn't forgive himself for accidentally taking a double dose of his thyroid medication on the day of his last big fight with Larry Holmes. It had made him tired and short of breath, and he lost the fight.

Ali was fun to be with during the shoot. In between filming set-ups, he would do magic tricks and boy did he love an audience – more, I think, than any of the actors I had worked with.

A couple of years later, he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.

When they returned my driving licence, I got another Mercedes; this time a 280 SE 3.5 Cabriolet – a little gift to myself, because I really needed a car! It was a very desirable and rare convertible. For the car geeks reading, there were only thirty-six imported into the UK in right-hand drive form.

It was 1983 and I was living in Notting Hill. One day, I pulled up outside the Prince of Wales pub on the Portland Road to find a matching car outside. “Buggery buggery shit,” I recall was my first reaction, considering its rarity, but then I thought it was meant to be. As I said about my introduction to Nigel Carroll, people with similar cars often talk to one another. I went into the pub, stood in the middle of it and cried out to anyone who would listen: “Whose is that Mercedes 280 SE 3.5 Cabriolet?” Someone replied, “It's my bloody Mercedes 280 SE 3.5 Cabriolet”, and that was my first meeting, and the start of a great friendship, with English actors Trevor Eve and his wife Sharon Maughan, who lived just over the road from the pub.

People always thought Trevor and I looked similar… and we have been mistaken for brothers on more than one occasion. I saw plenty of the Eves for the next few years, and again in LA in the nineties, when they would travel back and forth from London. Trevor even moved in with me at my Notting Hill penthouse on one occasion, when he had been a naughty boy and Sharon kicked him out of their family home. They had had their first child, Alice, in '82 before I met them. Alice is now a Hollywood star and has just finished the
Star Trek
movie. Jack followed and he's now an actor, producer and director, and I am very proud to be godfather to their third child, Gorgeous George. He has just left Bedales School and is going to be a rock star – there is no question about it. He already has fan clubs at girls' schools as far away as Cheltenham Ladies' College. I asked him recently if there was room in his band as a piano accordionist, but apparently there was not.

For a couple of years, I had a very illustrious neighbour at Ridge – the great British actor Michael Gambon. He is now infamous for having Gambon Corner named after him on the worldwide television phenomenon
Top Gear
. He was renting a cottage in the hamlet and he came with his girlfriend over to my house for lunch by the pool, and said I had created paradise. He is a very funny man and told me he had once tried to be gay, but had to give it up because it made his eyes water.