6/30/2025
Newsletter #778
The Crack of Dawn
Soon after the completion of my first film, Thou Shalt Not Kill…Except, our overseas sales agent, Irvin Shapiro, sent our film to the MIFED film market in Milan, Italy. MIFED stands for something in Italian. My mother and father had both invested money in the movie and had received executive producer credits. When my dad saw the movie’s poster, with his and mom’s names on it, he put it up on his office wall. I felt honored. Then, out of the clear blue, dad decided that he, my mother and I, were all going to MIFED. My dad believed that since he and my mom were credited producers, both on the film and on the poster, this trip to Italy was a legitimate tax write-off.
Irvin Shapiro, our exceptionally wise and exceptionally old, overseas sales agent, had no intention of personally going to Milan. His people would take the movies that he represented, one of which was mine, and attempt to make overseas distribution deals. When I asked Irvin about going to Milan, he told me flatly that I shouldn’t go—MIFED was strictly for industry people and wasn’t any fun. He suggested that I instead wait for Cannes, which besides being a film market, also included a big, fancy film festival. In Irvin’s 88-year-old opinion—and as one of the founders of the Cannes film market and film festival—Cannes was way more fun.
I relayed this information back to my parents. Don’t go? Nobody told my dad what to do, not even Irvin Shapiro. Dad was a maverick; he went his own way. Fuck good advice from a wise source. Dad said we were going to MIFED, so we were going to MIFED.
Off to Milan we went, my mother, my father and me. This was my first time overseas and I was really excited. Plus, I was showing my movie. When we got to Milan, I was immediately impressed with everything. Milan is an ancient and enormous city. It’s the economic capital of Italy, and a global center for business, fashion and finance. Milan is also incredibly beautiful. It boasts some of the most fabulous Renaissance churches and buildings to be found anywhere in Europe. And no matter where you go, the food is terrific.
We stayed at a swanky modern hotel called Hotel Domodossola. It was located on Via Domodossola. MIFED took place at Porto Domodossola.
MIFED, meanwhile, was complete and utter chaos. The Porto Domodossola was a big, squat, six-story building that was entirely devoted to the film market. Two floors of the building each had twenty little ten-seat screening rooms. Each of the screening rooms showed every movie once, then moved on to another movie. Therefore, for a week, forty different movies were screening simultaneously from 9:00 AM until 9:00 PM. It was a shitstorm of movies from everywhere in the western world. Hundreds of people from everywhere were selling films, buying films, and negotiating deals. Everybody yelled at everybody else all the time. People everywhere gave out flyers that mostly went straight onto the floor. People wandered in and out of the little screening rooms all day long, and into the night. Everybody sat down, watched for a couple of minutes, then left. Nobody watched more than two or three minutes. It was painfully disheartening.
The big films screening that year were Turtle Diary (1985-British) with Glenda Jackson and Ben Kingsley, Macaroni (1985-Italian) with Jack Lemmon and Marcello Mastroianni, and Transylvania 6-5000 (1985-American) with young Jeff Goldblum. None of them classics, though Turtle Diary was all right. There were also hundreds of other movies that never received any distribution, immediately disappearing off the face of God’s green earth.
My film screened twice in this insane situation. Thankfully, my film is only 85-minutes long, so the torture passed relatively fast. However, as I watched the people constantly walking in and out of my film, I was reminded of the wise words of Irvin Shapiro telling me to not go to MIFED. To wait and go to Cannes, where it was much more fun. But no, dad had to have his way and go to MIFED.
I loved Milan. It’s a spectacular city. Being one of the fashion capitols of the world, damn near all of the Milanese were dressed beautifully. 12-year-old boys, 20-year-old girls, 40-year-old men, 60-year-old women; everybody looked terrific. I was self-conscious and slightly ashamed of my tawdry, unimaginative, blue jeans and t-shirts. Everywhere I went I felt underdressed.
In any case, there was no good reason for my mother, father and I to go to MIFED. It accomplished nothing. Overseas deals were made for my film, but I didn’t see them happen. I really didn’t need to be there, and certainly not my mother and father.
The upshot of this tale is that my dear old dad wrote off the entire trip as a business expense. Promptly, the Internal Revenue Service audited him. He was informed that since he had never before paid taxes as a movie producer—only as a builder and real estate developer—he could not now claim deductions as a movie producer. Not only did he have to refund the deductions, but he also had to pay a fine.
My dad was so goddammed mad that he took my movie poster down from his office wall. The next time I came by his office, I saw the framed poster on the floor, stuck in a corner. I said, “You don’t want that anymore?” He said, “Get that Goddammed thing out of here.” I took it home and put it in the garage with all of my other movie posters.
In retrospect, since dad would have been audited in any case, we should have listened to Irvin and gone to Cannes.
Since my dad was unaware of his impending audit while we were in Milan, he was in a good mood and drunk much of the time.
Enjoyed this story ! And ...Surprised there was no mention of a debacle between your dad and the short fused Italians.