Lunch in Paris (34 page)

T
hat’s not going to work.

Yes it is.

No. It’s not. They are not just going to
give
me an appointment.

Why not?

Because.

This was a circular conversation Gwendal and I had been having for weeks. He didn’t believe that if we wrote a great letter,
he could get five minutes with almost anyone.

“It’s not out of the kindness of their hearts,” I said. “You could be useful. Europe is like a giant black hole to these people,
a mystery. You are giving them as much information as they’re giving you.”

These discussions end, as often as not, with a fake boxing match in our kitchen. As the forces of optimism and pessimism collide,
Gwendal and I, in the style of a Three Stooges self-help seminar, duck our heads, jog back and forth, and pretend to punch
each other. I’m Rocky, wearing the U.S. of A. silk shorts, doing battle for the American dream.

“Pow!” I shout, putting up my dukes for a mean left jab. “Right in the kisser.”

W
E WERE TRYING
to get out more, meet some new people, people with ideas. Still thinking like an American, I encouraged Gwendal to get involved
with the alumni association of his engineering school. Hearing that he worked in the world of cinema, and not designing parts
for cars, they invited him to speak at an event on “changing direction in your career.” He put on a suit and tie and talked
about the importance of networking, speaking English, and reaching out to European partners. He was met with a lot of blank
stares. During the Q and A one young woman raised her hand: “How can I work less and earn more?”

The evening did yield one interesting encounter. Gwendal got back in touch with Michaël. Even when they were students, Michaël
had been something of a character. He paid someone else to do his six-month graduate internship while he started a film business,
traveled around the world writing articles, chaperoning vital organs, and doing God knows what for the French intelligence
services. He had just returned from a trip to the mountains of Bhutan. We were digging into a
tagine
of lamb and pears at L’Homme Bleu, our favorite Moroccan restaurant, as he explained his newest idea.

“I want to start a chain of restaurants to give McDonald’s a run for their money. It will be called Papillote. Each combination
of ingredients will be steamed in its own package, cooked to order.”

I love this guy.
En papillote
is the French term for cooking in sealed foil or parchment. Since we now have an oven, this has become my favorite method
for cooking fish and veggies. The fish makes its own sauce, and the package releases a fragrant burst of steam when you slice
it open. I tried to imagine a whole trout, covered with chopped tomatoes, fresh garden peas, and coriander—maybe a sprinkle
of
lardons
for extra flavor—doing battle with a Filet-O-Fish. Clearly there were at least two people
in France willing to think big and sound a little crazy. Gwendal and I both left feeling a little better.

Unfortunately, not all Gwendal’s friends were so encouraging. The next week we saw Nadine and Jean-Paul, friends from Orléans.
While I made some tea, Gwendal talked them through the consulting company—the funding, the frustration, the new contacts in
Los Angeles. They looked bemused. He was planning more in the next six months than they imagined for a lifetime.

“You get back to us when you’re finished conquering the world,” said Jean-Paul. “We’ll have a drink.”

It was the last time we ever saw them.

G
WENDAL’S PARENTS WATCHED
his progress with caution. Nicole did her silent best to cover the panic about him being without a fixed salary. As a family
who always worried about money, they had a residual fear that any risk would leave Gwendal to dissolve, like a character in
a Paul Auster novel, from respectable citizen to lunatic street wanderer.

Curiously, for Yanig, Gwendal’s new business turned out to be the best medicine. As the weather turned chilly, he wasn’t getting
out of the house much anymore. We bought a paperback edition of
The Count of Monte Cristo
to help pass the time, but it was Gwendal’s story that was the greatest adventure that fall. He called his father every morning
on the way to work to report his latest exploits. Suddenly the man whose own fears had cut off so many of Gwendal’s hopes
became his biggest fan. He watched his son slay opponents and pull off feats of derring-do. Setting up a business in France
had more twists than Dumas, more petty villains than Dickens. There was a new cloak and dagger every day.

Gwendal’s grandparents were less enthusiastic. It’s not that the French don’t believe in social mobility, but it is supposed
to happen incrementally, across generations. Jumping several rungs on the ladder at once is considered arrogant and opportunistic.
It’s just plain impolite—and people were as shocked as they were wary.

Gwendal’s grandfather reads the Communist newspaper. Refused mandatory work service in Germany in 1943, and
walked
back from a camp in Poland after the war. He spent his life in a factory, making fiberglass insulation. He rose from the
factory floor to foreman, grew his own vegetables, and built two homes with his own hands. As far as he was concerned, Gwendal’s
PhD already made him a bit of an alien—too much unnecessary book stuff, a bourgeois luxury. But at least it was harmless,
unsullied by the search for cash and power.

Once Gwendal entered the business world, everything changed. Money is an awkward subject in France—in Europe in general. Working
at a cinema archive is
culture;
turning a profit by transforming the entire industry is cold, calculating, and
arriviste
. By starting his own business Gwendal was committing two cardinal sins against French society: he was running after money
(never mind that there is an electric bill to pay), which challenges the aristocratic origins of the elite, and he was catapulting
himself to the head of something—potentially bossing other people around—which goes against the egalitarian ideals of the
French Revolution and anti-establishment rhetoric of the 1968 hippies. As if he didn’t have enough to do, Gwendal was fighting
a battle with history.

When Gwendal told his grandfather he’d started a company, he nodded knowingly. “So, you’re one of them now.
Management
.”

It’s the same response Nicole’s mother gave her when they finally stopped renting and built the house: “
Tu pètes plus haut de ton cul.
” You’re farting above your ass.

I
T WAS THE
middle of the night in Paris when Gwendal called my parents from the top of Mulholland Drive. “You’ll never guess where I
am,” he said. “I’m looking at the Hollywood sign.”

“He sounded elated,” my mother reported to me later that day. “Like a man with wings.”

It happened like this: a journalist in New York listened to Gwendal’s questions and, like everyone else, said, “That’s very
interesting. But the man you should really talk to about digital cinema is George Lucas.” Gwendal’s heart sank into his shoes.
Sure, I’ll just go and have a chat with George Lucas. About
Star Wars.
No problem.
“George is a bit aloof,” continued the journalist, “but his producer is a really great guy. Let me give him a call.” There
was no time to blink, never mind pass out. Gwendal was experiencing his first episode of what I call
paradigm vertigo
. For him, such professional generosity seemed upside down and backwards. In France, people often show their power by saying
no—by their ability to block things, to show that nothing happens without them. To close the store, if you like, whenever
they please. In the United States, people show their power by their ability to say yes—to get things done in a hurry. To keep
the store open an extra hour, just for you.

The journalist took out his cell phone, checked the time difference, and dialed. “Listen, I’ve got this guy in my office…
has a D-cinema project in Europe… got a model he wants to discuss. Coming to California. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”

From there the dominoes began to fall. Lucas got him a meeting with Fox, Fox got him a meeting with Disney. Disney got him
a meeting with Sony. And so on, all the way up Mulholland Drive to the Hollywood sign.

It was fascinating to watch Gwendal navigate between our two cultures. At times, he had a very fine needle to thread. He now
had a wealth of information on exactly what the studios
wanted to make digital cinema happen in Europe, but when he brought what he had learned back to his fellow Frenchmen, he had
trouble convincing them that he was legit. At the age of thirty-three, in France he was too young to be credible, an arrogant
upstart who should wait his turn. In the States, he was almost too old:
If you’re so smart, how come you’re just getting to the big leagues now?

The frustration reached peak levels during a meeting with the head of a major cinema chain in Paris. The man had been listening
for an hour, trying to digest the wealth of numbers Gwendal was throwing at him.

“How do you know all this?”

“I was just in LA last week.”

“Yes, but how do you know all this?”

The idea that he busted his ass, flew back and forth to LA, spoke English, wrote letters, took meetings, crunched numbers—none
of this made the slightest bit of sense to the people in front of him. The cinema industry, like many professions in France,
is filled with
fils de,
literally “sons of,” people who got where they are with family connections and family money. Gwendal knew what they were
thinking:
Who the hell
is
this kid? If he were really of interest, we would know him already.

The man shook his head and said it again, “But how do you know all this?”

“Because I asked.”

“But why do they talk to you?”

Because I asked.

Finally Gwendal just gave up and did it the French way. “You know, my wife is American. She’s actually Jack Warner’s granddaughter.”
(I’m not.)

“Ahhh, bien oui.” There was a huge exhalation and nods of comprehension around the table.

They simply couldn’t conceive of the fact that he’d gotten there any other way. Turns out, France has its own version of “fake
it till you make it.”