The Governor’s Party

 

 

NEWS RELEASE:

GOVERNOR’S OFFICE FOR MOTION PICTURE AND TELEVISION DEVELOPMENT IN NEW YORK, CREATED TO ATTRACT FILMMAKERS TO THE STATE, HOSTS LUNCHEON TO CALL ATTENTION TO RECORD AMOUNT OF FILMMAKING CURRENTLY IN NEW YORK.

There were twelve photographers; there was Sylvester Stallone, wearing an ill-fitting double-vented suit; there was the former Miss India, one of the stars of Star Trek—The Motion Picture, in which she appears completely bald; there was Billy Dee Williams, with his hair lying flat on his head, as if it had just been pressed; there was a man named Martin Poll, a producer, who has a wife named Gladys; there was a man who could have been a fishing-equipment salesman, because he looked so much like a smart old trout; there was an editor from Us; there was the woman who writes the “Newsmakers” page for Newsweek, and she had a lot of nice things to say about a stunning blond protégée of Mickey Rooney and a lot of not too nice things to say about the people she worked for, who weren’t going for a picture layout with a mention of the stunning blond protégée of Mickey Rooney; there was a man who said, “Isn’t Martin bold? He’s producing in Italian and shooting in New York”; there was a woman who had just won an emerging-artist grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for her photographs of people at parties; there were quite a few bowls filled with ground raw red meat; there was a woman who had known for twelve years a man who has written a book on De Quincey and a book on Lenny Bruce; there was a man who said quite matter-of-factly that he had been a member of the United States Army Special Forces; there was a woman who left her handbag under a table and then, when someone moved the table, couldn’t find her handbag; there was a woman who said, “See Being There. It is an American movie with an arty European feel to it”; there was a woman who didn’t want her picture taken with Sylvester Stallone—the only woman who didn’t—and who wondered out loud just what Sylvester Stallone, the former Miss India, and Billy Dee Williams were saying to each other for the full forty-five minutes that they stood around in front of the twelve photographers having their picture taken; then there was Earl Wilson, speaking to Sylvester Stallone, and all the time jotting down in a small brown notebook things Sylvester Stallone told him. A couple of days later, in his column, Earl Wilson wrote:

Sly Stallone was wearing a very dark beard. He looked like a great blackberry pie with a face in the middle. Slickly neat in a grey suit, he moved about quickly, authoritatively, at Maxwell’s Plum. The Governor’s Office for Motion Picture Development was giving a party for Martin Poll’s new film Attack, with Sly as a decoy cop.

“Welcome back to New York,” I said … . “Thank you, I’m looking for a new home, I may move back—if they’ll have me. I’ll be here 13 weeks. We’ll see how it feels.”

I was keeping some pretty female journalists from gasping over him. He was busy but polite.

—February 18, 1980