Nice, One of the noblest hotels in town, simultaneously the film festival takes place in nearby Cannes - that means much of "high snobiety" and aggravated security precautions. We try to remain unimpressed by that as good as possible and celebrate a party in the hotel together with the crew. I stay up till five o'clock in the morning and since everything takes a normal course I can go to bed calmly.
At nine o'clock dreaming is over as there's a madman raving at the corridor, hammering at a door like crazy and screaming "Come out, I'll kill you" over and over again. I drag myself and my morning hangover to the door. There's Andy Anderson, the coloured drummer, in front of a room door - a full bottle of Perrier in his right hand and in the left one a metal coffee pot, banging that one against the wooden door like mad. I try to calm him down - without any success.
Meanwhile someone called the police. Slowly Andy calms down, slips bottle and pot to the floor and all of a sudden he's nothing but the picture of misery. Suddenly the corridor is full of gapers. The cops of course are not interested in explanations, unceremoniously they take Andy with them.
What happened is as follows: Towards half past eight in the morning, Andy - in a very good mood - strolls around in the hotel, trying to find someone who would go to the beach with him. As a result he runs into the hotel-owned security men who immediately want to know who the hell he was and what he was doing there. Andy, the only black man in the hotel, shows his room key. Well, it could be stolen after all.
The nice men now want to have a look at his papers. Andy goes to his room, pulls his passport out of the suitcase and turns round at the two watchdogs. At this moment, completely out of the blue, one of them blows a juicy load of teargas into his face.
Andy goes mad. Temporarily blind he chases after the uniformed guys and plants himself in front of the door he expects the friendly men to be behind. But - it's the wrong door! In the aforementioned room the wife of a French film producer spends the night, to top it all she's related to the mayor of Nice. Which not necessarily simplifies things. Straightaway The Stranglers occur to me: They had to stay for 14 days in the jail of Nizza just because of flitting nude over the corridor!
Of course the madam immediately is on the phone to draw the upright mayor's attention to this vandalism. The hotel managers frown and say unmoved that Andy wouldn't get out of jail at least for the next 48 hours. But our next gig was waiting to be done the following day. The French tour promoter Jules Frutos tries to pull a few strings while I go on apology-tour. Eight hours of talking to the maid, hotel authorities and police till I won the general manager of the hotel over to my side: A bill for "emerged damages" is presented to me and make me promise to pick up Andy right at the prison cell and get him right into the bus. A reunion wouldn't be welcome.
We make the sign of the cross three times, pack our things and go by bus to Monte Carlo's casino. After this shock a little bit of diversion may be best. When Paul Thompson, being in a casino for the first time ever, bets 100 francs on the seven - and that one turns out to be the winning number - spirits are good again.
thanks to Sandrine
