Fisher Honored, Montez Sings at Film Fest

Purple: Well, now that we’ve got the answer to this year’s burning question out of the way (What color was Friends of Film founder Bob Sharka’s blazer on opening night?), it’s a delight to report that even as a scaled-down event, the seventh annual Pacific Palisades Film Festival still attracted some 200 guests to the gala screening and Friends of Film (FOF) benefit on each of its two nights last week. Cozy and intimate, the festival paid fine tribute to actress Frances Fisher on Thursday at the home of Nora and Harvey Lerer on Corona del Mar, from which attendees had an unobstructed ocean view from the Santa Monica Pier to Malibu. Miranda Bailey’s humorous 50-minute documentary ‘Greenlit,’ about a film crew straining to keep an environmentally friendly set, screened. As guests drank tequila sunrises against the Palisades sunset, the cocktail party on the Lerers’ expansive tiki torch-lined pool patio got under way. Fisher, this year’s FOF?Lifetime Achievement Award honoree, greeted fans and friends, including Grammy-winning songwriter Diane Warren, and ‘Risky Business’ actress Janet Caroll. Fisher told the Palisadian-Post that she was happy to be back in the Huntington Palisades, where she once lived. ‘I miss the neighborhood, the air, the view,’ she said. Pointing up the street, Fisher added, ‘I used to walk my dog in that dog park all the time!’ Warren”whose hits include Cher’s ‘If I Could Turn Back Time’ and Toni Braxton’s ‘Unbreak My Heart”’ has created tunes that have received six Academy Award nominations and seven Grammy Award nominations, including a win for Celine Dion’s hit ‘Because You Loved Me.’ She told the Post, ‘We’ve gotten to be good friends. She’s really cool. A real warm, good person.’ Warren loved Fisher best as Ruth Dewitt Bukater, Kate Winslet’s overbearing mother, in ”Titanic.’ ‘She was a big part of that movie,’ she said. Producer Barbara Ligeti (‘Hugo Pool’) was ’22 when I met Frances at the Actors Studio. I saw this young girl act and I said, ‘I think I’ll become a producer!” Concord recording artist Jimmy Demers spoke highly of Fisher, with whom he traveled to Paris and was one of the few people at Versailles to witness Barbra Streisand receive her Legion of Honors from President Nicolas Sarkozy and the French government. Demers is also a friend of Francesca, Fisher’s 15-year-old daughter with her former paramour Clint Eastwood. Actress Carroll, in town from New York for the memorial service of actress Zelda Rubenstein (‘Poltergeist’), who shared anecdotes from the set of ‘Risky Business,’ Tom Cruise’s 1983 career-launching hit. Wait a minute! What was the mayor pro tem of El Segundo doing there? Had the Post accidentally gotten onto the 405 South and overshot the party? Not exactly. Bill Fisher is Frances’ younger brother and an El Segundo council member. He arrived with his wife, Laurie Fisher, and recalled the peripatetic upbringing he and his sister had experienced, as their father built oil refineries around the world. ‘I was born in France and she was born in England,’ Bill Fisher said. At an early age, he saw the seeds of Frances’ craft. ‘We play acted a lot when we were kids. At 18, she got a job as a secretary at an oil firm, but that didn’t last long,’ as she soon fled the job to pursue acting at the Barter Theater in Abingdon, Virginia. By her early 20s, she was playing on the ABC soap opera ‘The Edge of Night’ (1976’81). ‘Looking back on it now, 30 years ago, that was amazing!’ Bill Fisher remarked, before talking up the merits of his beloved El Segundo. ‘We’re the most business-friendly community in California! We’ve got the most Fortune 500 companies.’ (Not to mention the Purple Orchid, a tiki bar where Sharka’s blazer would fit right in!) The gregarious Cathy Chazan could not say enough about Fisher. From 1995, when Fisher did the Fox program ‘Strange Luck,’ and through the years in the wake of the mammoth success of 1998’s ‘Titanic’ (which, until James Cameron’s other behemoth,’ 2009’s ‘Avatar,’ was the highest-grossing film of all time), Chazan worked as Fisher’s publicist. ‘It was one of the most exciting times,’ she said, adding that despite Kenneth Turan’s negative review in the Los Angeles Times of the big-budget film, the epic love story went on to gross $1.8 billion worldwide. The afterglow of the film’s release ‘went on for two years,’ she said. ‘Frances and I met people who had seen it 27 times! It touched a chord!’ ‘She is one of the greatest pleasures,’ Chazan continued, ‘as genuine off-camera as on. The whole time I worked with her, she lived in the Palisades. We did many interviews here!’ Apparently going through his Prince phase (in previous years, he wore carnation-pink and powder-blue blazers), Sharka proved a colorful character as the evening’s master of ceremonies, repeating his comic mantra” ‘Are you kiddin’ me?”’in his Boston accent. Reflecting on the previous FOF Lifetime Achievement Award winners”Robert Guillaume, Seymour Cassel and Stacy Keach”Sharka paid special tribute to comic actor Dom DeLuise, who passed away last year. ‘We miss him terribly,’ he said of the late Palisadian. A montage reminded the packed audience at the outdoor screening area of the diversity of Fisher’s work”from one of Henry Jaglom’s earliest efforts, 1983’s ‘Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?,’ to the Christopher Guest comedy ‘Waiting for Guffman’ (1996), her work opposite Oscar winners Ben Kingsley and Jamie Foxx in ‘House of Sand and Fog’ (2003) and ‘The Kingdom’ (2007), respectively, as Patty Hearst, Lucille Ball and Audrey Hepburn’s mother in various biographical movies; and in ‘True Crime’ (1999) and the Academy Award-winning Best Picture, ‘Unforgiven (1992), both starring and directed by her ex, Eastwood. Two of Fisher’s acting mentors spoke fondly about the actress, as did Taylor, who attended with her son, horror film director Gabriel Bologna (‘The Black Waters of Echoes Pond’). Taylor spoke of Fisher’s commitment to the Screen Actors Guild, where she’s very involved. ‘She brings to SAG the spontaneity and enthusiasm and power of her acting. I would follow her wherever she goes,’ she said. Then Fisher took the podium to accept her award. ‘I raised my daughter here,’ Fisher said. ‘The Palisades is my hometown.’ As accomplished an actress as she is, Fisher admitted, ‘I feel like I’m still waiting for my big break.’ Following a chorus of ‘We love you, Frances!,’ Sharka jumped in: ‘One more time”Frances Fisher! Are you kiddin’ me?’ Truly a ‘titanic’ evening. Mint green: That was Sharka’s coat color on Saturday, a more intimate affair held at the beautiful Toyopa home of Paul and Irene Gigg, who had met Sharka through a Corpus Christi Church fundraiser. ‘We were about to cancel the festival this year, but we went out to the community and found ourselves some angels,’ Sharka told about 50 attendees before the backyard screening. ‘Don’t be fooled by this house! We’re a struggling nonprofit!’ The evening’s film, the music documentary ‘The Chris Montez Story’ by local filmmakers Burt Kearns and Brett Hudson (last year’s Pali Film Fest opener ‘The Seventh Python’) centered on whatever happened to the young Latino singer/songwriter best-known for the international hit ‘Let’s Dance’ and ‘Call Me’ (crafted under the aegis of A & M Records’ Herb Alpert, who was inspired by the shuffling jazz of the Ramsey Trio’s ‘The In Crowd’). Kearns got the idea to track down Montez on film after the song popped up on K-Earth while he was driving past Chautauqua and Sunset. Musician Hudson had performed with Montez decades before. Co-producer Joachim Blunck said, ‘There’s a lot happening on the fly. Chris’s life was changing as we were filming it.’ (After a long-dormant career, Montez had begun performing live shows again over the past two years). ‘Chris Montez Story’ was prefaced by Joshua Bell’s ‘A .45 at 50th,’ based on an incident involving a college-age James Cromwell (‘Babe’) in which the actor had let his Manhattan home become the site of a Black Panther meeting while his parents were visiting Europe. The short film”which included Cromwell sharing the anecdote intertwined with a re-enactment starring his son, John Cromwell”put the crowd in a good mood for ‘Chris Montez Story.’ ‘Chris Montez Story,’ which chronicled how its subject went from a teen musician from Hawthorne performing with his buddies (who became the Beach Boys) to touring Europe at age 19 in 1963 with his opening act, a band called The Beatles who, by tour’s end, had exploded in popularity. The film credits Montez for inspiring the Beatles’ collar-less-suit look. Post-screening, Montez, with buddy Sid Jacobs, performed his biggest hits in the Giggs’ living room. ‘I’ve never done a house party before,’ Montez told the Post afterwards. ‘It was kind of cool.’ He added that Kearns and Hudson’s film did him justice. ‘It’s expressing what I’ve been through in life. It has a good message, especially for Latino musicians.’ Jacobs, who soloed on a medley of tunes from ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ is a teacher at the Musicians Institute in Hollywood. He’s known Montez for 12 years. ‘It’s an engaging documentary,’ he said. ‘What you see in the film is him.’ Returning to Pali Film Fest this year: Chris Lombardi catered, tantalizing guests with cups of couscous and chicken curry, pizza squares, and steak-and-potato skewers with blue cheese sauce; and the ever-affable Whitney Bain proved himself a popular bartender on both evenings. Oh, and next year, Bob”how about canary yellow?