THE SHOW MUST GO ON!
Maximillien
continues: “I went home that night with a cold fever. I was afraid, furious,
chagrined, disappointed, but not totally defeated. I knew, there is no way in
the world, one can pull out a professional 10 year old stage actor from under
his sleeves, make him memorize 50 pages, appear on stage without rehearsal, at
one of the most prestigious theater of the world! The Kennedy Center for God’s
sake! All that in 24 hours?! It is IMPOSSIBLE! Nobody can do it. I knew it.
But, also knew that miracles happen…I remembered what Napoleon once wrote:
“There is no such word as “impossible” in my dictionary”. Of course, I
remembered what everybody in show biz says: “THE SHOW MUST GO ON!”. The very
next day, at 7:00 am, I began to work on a plan. Nobody knew for sure about
the tragedy except Mrs. Wagner, Peter Fannelli (What a Great
Guy! The best of the best lights and stage effect designers) and
Marty. At 7:30 am, Mrs. Wagner and Marty
showed up. Peter joined us in the library. We sat silently. We did not know
what to say to each other. All of a sudden, I froze in time and space….I
froze, because an unbelievable idea traveling at the speed of light hit me. I
stood up and exploded in laughter and I remember having said this: “I got it…I
got the kid…I got the KID! The show goes on.” It is 8:45 am. My secretaries
and script assistants, Cynthia Greaves, Valery Assenjo, Kitty
and Ticker just checked in. Boom! I called them at once, asked Marty
to tell them what happened…I gave them a few minutes to breath and calm down
and VOILA, the crazy idea of mine exploded in the air. I asked everybody in
the room to grab a phone and start calling every single drama, acting,
performing coach and instructor at any and all local studios, academies,
training centers, high schools, nurseries, you name it…call all of them, call
all the directors and drama teachers to find out if any of them have a 10 year
old kid who can act. We jammed the phone lines. We called every single school
in town. We phoned every single drama teacher in high schools, in colleges and
wherever it was possible to find them, but, NO LUCK! It is getting late. It is
almost 5: 00 pm. In less than 50 hours, the show must open. The kid’s role is
major.
The
whole story rotates around him. He is the co-star of the play. All of a sudden
at exactly 5:15 pm, Valery ran toward me shouting: “Max, I got a kid”,
followed by Cynthia, with tears in her eyes, she hardly could say
“Monsieur Maximillien, Good News, Merci Dieu, we have somebody but he is too
small”. …and a third call came to Kitty…YAP! Another kid was available! I got
on the phone and spoke to the three high school drama teachers who are still
on the line waiting…and begged them to come over right away after I have
briefly explained what had happened to us. They were delighted because, this
was a rare opportunity for them and for any of their students to appear on a
major theater, especially at the Kennedy Center. Up to this moment, nobody in
my office…nobody in the room knew what I was doing. Marty said to me:
“So, it’s okay, you found three kids, they will audition and you chose one,
and then what?” Forty-five minutes later, the three kids showed up with their
teachers. I asked each of the teachers to wait with the kid they brought along
in a separate room. I asked Cynthia to get me a copy of the script, called
Valery and Marty to walk with me in the corridors leading to the
rooms where the kids were seated with their drama teachers. Upon arriving at
the door of the first room, I asked Cynthia to hand me over the script.
I took the script, ripped the very first 15 pages of the script which
corresponded to the role the kid was supposed to play in Act One…I gave it to
the first kid and told him: “start memorizing those pages! Don’t ask
questions”! I continued to room two…ripped another 15 pages and gave them to
the kid in room two and told him the same thing: “start memorizing those
pages”! I reached the last room and ripped the last remaining 20 pages and
gave them to the kid in room 3. Each kid had to memorize only 15 pages! Yes,
sir. Just 15 pages! I told every body in the room about my plan…I knew a kid
could memorize 15 pages in 40 hours. And they did. We worked all night long on
training those three kids, rehearsing and rehearsing...with Peter
Fannelli’s genius, we were able to change the lighting design, gels,
filters to avoid any intense and very exposed light spots on 3 DIFFERENT KIDS
PLAYING THE SAME ROLE… We called our make-up artists to rush to my office to
see what kind of make up those three kids needed to look alike on stage, or at
least, not to look “very” different…not look like 3 different kids! I called
the costumes assistant designer to arrange, alter or fix the suits and outfits
of the three kids…Thank’s God, we were lucky, all of them had the same height
and weight, almost…but, one of the three was noticeably shorter than the
others! It took people and some of my associates and one lady who accompanied
me to a show on Broadway fifteen years to know what I did to that kid to make
him look taller! The very next day, three of them returned to my office for a
final conference. They looked good. I felt better. The same day at 7:30 the
curtains lifted up. The Show began! The show rolled…Three different kids
performed the same role…the same part, as if they were one. And nobody noticed
it…nobody knew about it except those who were in my office, and the kids
themselves- of course! I think???? I learned it the hard way. Few things in
life I dislike. Few things I rebel against. Betrayal, Threats, Ultimatum and
Black mail are on the top of my list…
Some
fifteen years later, I went to New York to see a Broadway musical. And
something hit me. I looked once again at the names of the stars of the show in
the program stage bill, laughed, turned to my lady
companion and said:”
You see this big star…this tall guy on stage… I knew him once upon a time
when he was much, much shorter…until I stuffed his shoes with Cynthia’s bra
padding and French toast to make him look taller…almost as tall as the two
other kids.” She had no clues what I was talking about.
MAXIMILLIEN…THE BIG HEART…
Maximillien’s heart is bigger than the world we live in. He continues to donate so much and so generously to numerous charities, orphanages and organizations for neglected and hungry children, Christian missionaries in Africa, etc. Not only does he contribute to countless charitable and humanitarian causes, Maximillien is a man who gives financially, as well as a man who is not afraid to roll up his sleeves, get his hands dirty and give of his time, from his heart. If Maximillien earns a penny, Maximillien donates a penny. As the homeless line the walks of Wisconsin Avenue and M streets in Washington, D.C., with consideration and respect, Maximillien was known for personally preparing, cooking and serving 5 star cuisine to his less fortunate friends. On many occasions, at the end of the evening, he would gather those who had set up camp on the near by streets, shivering in the sleet or the snow under a card-board box, to invite them to cross over Key Bridge and spend a dignified night in the comfort of his own home. Twice, he was nearly arrested for automobile theft while driving his Silver Shadow Rolls Royce when a police patrol car signaled him to stop. He did. The police officer approached and asked Maximillien and his passengers (6 or 7 homeless, unshaven, hungry looking guys…) to step outside, one-at-the time. Obviously, the police officer suspected that the driver and the occupants could not possibly be the high profile, class owners of a Rolls Royce! The lot of them, including Max, looked homeless! The truth be told, they were “very” homeless. It goes with out saying that the police officer was absolutely sure that this gang of hoodlums stole the Rolls! Asked by the police officer to show identification, Maximillien - with a great smile – provided the pertinent documents, some of which were very impressive. You should have seen the look on the face of the officer when he enthusiastically exclaimed: “Man-o-man! Max?! Is that really you?! Hey buddy!!” And so it was off into the night the band of merry gypsies-bandidos went…
An
Art Rebel? No doubt, and a great one!
Once he wrote “People might think that De La Croix already made a fortune in the art business, so why should he work harder or become more involved in art? The truth is…I carry art in my heart wherever I go. Even, when I am gardening, I touch and feel the beauty and artistic raw shapes of the stones and rocks I work with, that I carry and I lay out around the flowers bed edges in my garden. In those rocks, I see and appreciate the divine art work and immaculate sculpture of nature. There is art wherever you look in the universe, if you care to look, to appreciate and to love. This is art for me. I rebelled against some of the most visible, powerful, arrogant and snobbish art establishments and a handful of powerful and fancy art dealers, glossy galleries owners and “artistically dangerous and harmful” museums curators, because I am fully aware of their deals and intrigues…and self serving “devotion-image” for the world of art! They made me know every trick, deal and wheel in the art business. If you are not one of them, you will never get a show, you will never sell, you will never be written up in their papers and you…………..will never make it! So many mediocre artists became world famous and so many wonderful talented artists are still unknown and starving to death because of them! I do not need those “chocolat-au-lait” art dealers and wheelers! I was lucky, strong and determined to make it big. I made it my own way, sometime alone, sometime with a little help and support from my friends, sometime with hard work, pain, hope and despair, determination , other time with sorrow and fear to fail, almost all the time but, I made it big without their help and they dislike me for it! Still, they call on me from time to time and try to strike a deal! I am for the small guy, the small talented artist, the underdog, this great talented unfortunate starving artist on the streets of New York, in the dark alleys of Washington, DC, behind forgotten walls and sleepy pubs in Dublin, in nostalgic narrow romantic streets in Montmartre, this most creative and helpless street artist around the side walk cafes in Paris looking at you every time you pass by him, by his easel, by the wooden old box of brushes and paints he left on the side walk near his apron, and he wonders why you don’t buy anything from him, because he knows he is good and his paintings are cheap!
Why
an artist should starve? Don’t tell me “ce sont les risques du métier”. Why
artists should have hard time making a living? Why art, acting, dancing,
performing, painting, even teaching art, why professions in the art in
general are not secure , financially stable? Because those big shots in high
places in the artistic ivory towers don’t care! No artist should starve.
Especially when one’s has talent, creativity and beauty in the soul, in the
way she or he feels, talks, dreams, laughs, cries, welcomes you at the door of
her or his house…and especially when she or he talks to the brushes, to the
tubes of paints she or he buys only when they are on sale, to the canvas dying
to be covered with strokes, curves, paints, sweat, tears and the smoke of her
or his “gitane” cigarettes. Yes, call me a rebel against those “grand
seigneurs”. I am not for the fancy arrogant art dealer in an Armani suit at
Georges Cinq or at a Manhattan “Petit-Four-Champagne-Art Gallery”. De La Croix
continues “ Have you visited lately some of our
great modern art museums?
If you have, you should know by
now just by looking at the mediocre quality of some of the art exhibited
there, that something tricky is happening behind doors, that deals are made,
and many interests not in the interest of the art have been served. Just go
and look around at those museums. It is alarming. I saw one large canvas
exhibited at one of our most prestigious modern art museums in America. This
canvas was enormous, almost 20 feet by 15 feet. It had a white background and
just one or two black strokes on it. Guess now, how much did they pay for that
painting? Over 2 million Dollars! And you do not want me to rebel against
them!? Another famous guy in New York just sold last year a 2 feet by 3 feet
canvas for over one million Dollars. He just grabbed a stick, dipped it in
red, orange and purple colors, drew a few circular lines on the canvas and
VOILA, the masterpiece is born. A week later, glowing articles appeared about
him in some of our leading newspapers. They hailed the new genius of the
modern art…the great abstract artist of the decade. The painting was sold
overnight for $1,300.000 ! I do not believe in drilling two three holes in a
house paint bucket and swing it over a canvas to make a painting! Some
“geniuses” did, and somebody….some big shots in the art community cashed on
it. Unfortunately, the so-called “ great artist” did not live long enough to
collect! They bought his art for approximately $2,000 and after his death,
they sold it for over $2 Millions!