Short Funny Stories from Author Ben Bryant
- Posted on 10th October 2017
- in Entertainment, entertainment books, film production book
- by Ben
My film production book, Circumstances Beyond My Control, is full of funny stories about the adventures I had as a line producer and first assistant director. Here are a couple of amusing tales extracted – and rewritten a bit – from the book which are not about film production. These two are about our European vacation in the mid 1980s.
Having spent several days in the old part of Firenze, we had no idea what a large and sprawling modern city it was. We found this out as we drove into it on our way back from Assisi. I also learned that, amazingly, Italian cops don’t speak English. Surely all of New York’s Finest speak Italian. … Oh, they don’t? After several futile attempts at getting directions to the car rental place from unilingual Italians I pulled up to a traffic light next to a Mercedes – ironically a German car. Here’s a tip for unilingual travelers; Rich people speak English. The Italian German car driver even led us to the correct bridge and we made it back to the hotel before dark.
Elizabeth in Florence: The evening light was extraordinary.
Onward to another city known for light: Paris.
We went to the Eiffel Tower and when I reached for my wallet to buy the tickets it was not in my pocket. Retracing our steps we came to a place where I had sat on a fence to reload one of my cameras. It occurred to me that it may have fallen out there so we went into the building (a government office of some kind) to see if the wallet had been found. A man who was fluent in English opined that I’d had my pocket picked. He insisted on driving us to a police station where I could make a report. I tried to decline (since I thought it was a waste of time) but he was adamant so off we went.
Inside the station was a counter behind which sat a row of plainclothes cops (flics) and we were ushered to one of them and sat down. He spoke no English so we ended up attempting to communicate in Spanish. Mine is not too good but it’s way better than my nonexistent French. Not only that but the guy looked just like Herbert Lom – we felt like we were in a Blake Edwards movie. It went downhill from there and after a futile and frustrating twenty minutes as we got up to leave, the cop sitting next to our guy said, in perfect English, “Enjoy the rest of your time in Paris.” He thought he was funny. We did not.
At least American Express lived up to its advertising. A new card was delivered to our hotel that afternoon. And there’s a PS to the story. About six weeks after we got home an envelope arrived with a U. S. Department of State return address. Inside was my wallet and all its contents except the $150 cash. Nothing else; no note, nothing but the wallet.
If you’re looking for some funny and interesting stories about film production you’ll find a book full of them when you click here and get Circumstances Beyond My Control.
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