Chris Trowell - From Alcatraz to Hollywood
An interview with Chris Day.
Chris how come that you went to Neuquén province which lies in the Northern end of Patagonia in the West of Argentina? And then went on to build one of the biggest night clubs they ever had, and you spoke poor Spanish? How did that happen and why did you do it?
It was worse than that, my partner was Irish and he hardly spoke English! (laughter)
How it all happened? We had a restaurant in Chile called Lanson’s and he was a client working for an Irish company called Keenan’s that made massive machines for feeding cows. He was a regular client and one weekend - (I used to change and sit at the tables once I’d finished cooking) - he came up and said to me ‘I’ve just been to Argentina to a town called Neuquén, there are three of four discotheques that are absolutely rubbish but they are all full. You need to come across as you’ve worked so many clubs. I agreed and went over for a weekend, he was absolutely right, all the discotheques were packed out, all rubbish. So, to cut a long story short, I sold the restaurant at a great loss, but prior to selling the restaurant we went back to Argentina where I found buildings that used to be a DIY builder’s merchants which consisted of two - in Spanish ‘Galpons’ - warehouses connected together also a great big parking space surrounded by walls. We could park forty, fifty cars inside. So, we looked at it and I drew it up, saying we can do this, knock the two warehouses into one, build different dance floor levels, metal arms high up with glass floor cages for the club dancing team to use and because it was walled in, we decided to call it ALCATRAZ and put towers on it and, of course, searchlights.,
It just looked like Alcatraz. A massive neon Sign over it, in purple.
Pat, the Irishman, rented the site. There was no contract between us, he spat on his hand, shook my hand and said ‘I am an Irishman this is better than any contract’ I lived to regret that, I shall come to that in a second. Off we went. Gabby stayed in Chile because she was pregnant. We drove across, rented a place and we managed to get hold of about forty Argentinians to do the building work. I did all the drawings and managed the builders. We were very lucky because Pat’s new wife - a Chilean - had a cousin who was a welder. We took him in from Chile with us and created all the cells and everything in metal. There was a lot of metalwork. It ended up a fabulous discotheque. We spent so much that we couldn’t afford to buy a laser system. So, I flew to Buenos Aires to make a contract with a Company who used to come down and operate the laser show for us every weekend but keeping the equipment there. It all went remarkably well except for my partner, Pat Connor’s wife, she was a real bitch who hated Gabriella, my wife. Always arguing and constantly trying to push me out. The club held 1500 – 1600. We only traded weekends, Friday and Saturday nights from Midnight until 8 or 9 in the morning, that’s how they partied.
I ended up with five days free of doing nothing from Sunday until Friday so I sat down and actually wrote a film - and, that’s a long, long story, - the club did remarkably well on the two nights but my partner was grabbing all of the money. At the end of the trading each morning we’d sit in the office over a great big table with all of the money piled up, a massive pile. He would pass me the equivalent of $50 and expect us to last for a week!
This was way before credit cards then? Which year was this, Chris?
Oh yeah, before credit cards. We started in the summer of ’97 and it took us eleven weeks to build it as we rushed to get it open for Christmas. in ’97. Which was fine, but by the time it reached June of ’98 we were living on virtually nothing as he was grabbing all the money to pay for all the post dated cheques he had written. I was very worried because he had used the system in South America where you pay everything with cheques. But you can post date the cheques. Everybody works that way. God knows how many cheques he had written and for how much!
May I stop you there, why did you let that happen? Why couldn’t you force the issue?
Because he had the bank account in his name. He was very cute; I didn’t understand it at the time. When we started off, I was so busy building because I can build you know, I was running the forty lads, and everything seemed right, but behind the scenes without me realising it, his wife was pushing him to get me out.
That’s terrible.
During this time, I was bored out of my brains, so I used that time, I wrote a film which was a true story about a friend of mine whom I had worked with at one point, who took the Hang Seng Bank for over a million pounds and got away with it. So, on the back of that I included all the scams I had seen throughout the world. I came up with a title, ‘The Juggler.’ 5 or 6 people read it in Argentina and all thought it was brilliant. The club was going well but he was grabbing all the money, Gabby and I were struggling.
We had put a lot of money and time into it. Gabby had the baby and she went back to Chile to stay with her mother. I’m stuck there not very happy, but I’ve got a film script which is wonderful. I phoned Gabby up to explain what I was about to do and contact her brother who was living in Los Angeles. Phoned my parents up and asked them to lend me some money. Why? they asked, I said ‘Well, I am going to Hollywood to sell a film’. My father, a retired tax inspector who was so used to this kind of fantasy, said ‘Oh no, what are you up to now? Oh, not again”. Anyway, I am diversifying …
No, we can come back to this, how was Alcatraz funded?
I put so much of it in and likewise Pat put in the remainder, a lot of money. A big club, absolutely fabulous. He put in more than I did, but I didn’t realise he was investing with post-dated cheques….
Oh no, oh dear.
Yes, which you can do this, because that is the system over there in South America. I flew out to Hollywood, telling him I was going for a few weeks and I would be back. I’m in Los Angeles for about three weeks, when Gabby phoned me and explained emphatically to get on a flight. She said ‘I have just had a phone call from friends in Neuquén who said that Alcatraz is closed, and he has disappeared. So, because of the investment I flew straight back, arrived in Chile and drove to Argentina. I went to see our friends and sure enough what he had done was very cute. He had managed to get 180.000 which was a lot of money still out on postdated cheques (the equivalent in pounds Sterling) also because Alcatraz was behind walls, he sold everything in the club and he stripped all of the cells of metal, all of the sound and lighting - Everything! All the furniture too - the lot. And he vanished. The only plus part for me was that the bank account was in his name so they couldn’t touch me. They put Interpol onto him, although I don’t think they ever caught him. He ended up, I believe in Australia. I lost absolutely everything. Plus, we had a Ford Bronco that I had shipped over there, which caught fire. So, I’m stuck in Argentina with no money, no car, my wife back in Chile with a new baby and that was it. Alcatraz gone. I left with a small suitcase and a plane ticket bought by her mother, penniless and back to Chile. But it was the birth of the film.
I had a meeting in Hollywood but to get to it from where I was staying would mean busses and trains taking over two hours and I was fast running out of money. I arranged this meeting through a contact in Chile who introduced me to their friend in Hollywood who worked as an actor, apparently with massive connections. He arranged a meeting at an infamous place called ‘Jerry’s Famous Delhi’. I arrived early and sat outside with a cigarette and a coke. The guy turned up and I introduced myself and we had a brief chat. He talked about everything under the sun for twenty minutes or so and I felt like…but I sent you the script!? This is why you are meeting me, what do you think?
Eventually, I challenged him ‘What do you think of The Juggler’? He opened his briefcase, slid a book over to me and said what you need to do is watch “The Grifters” twice, watch “The Sting” twice when you’ve done that read this book back to front, ‘Linda Seager, how to make a good script. Great’ then you will know what to do with your re-write.
I looked at him puzzled ‘Rewrite?’
He said ‘Well yeah”
I said again ‘Rewrite? - You’ve lost me, this is the first thing I’ve written’
He replied, ‘God, you are going to have to rewrite, rewrite until you get it absolutely perfect.
He said, I will tell you a story. “Back to the Future” took around eleven years to sell it. It was turned down by everybody. But it was rewritten about sixty odd times. That’s what you’ve got to do. And was he SO right… Thank God he paid for the drinks and sandwich. Funds were really tight!
We came back eventually back to England and ended up on the Isle of Man, me working as a Head Chef (I did Catering when I left college) We ended up with a pub ‘The Anchor’ on a beautiful private beach. One day at lunchtime, I could overhear a group of women talking about a working with Julie Andrews on a film. At that point a lot of films were being made on the Isle of Man for tax reasons. This was around 2000. I said, ‘Excuse me but I couldn’t help but overhear you’re working on a film with Julie Andrews? I said I have got a film script would you read it?’ She agreed and I gave her a copy. She came back to me two weeks later ‘We love it, also Julie Andrews has read it’. I couldn’t believe it. She continued, ‘what we want to do is put it on to our Producers for Midsummer Films and see if they like it’. Again, cutting a long story short, it became an option with Midsummer films. I still have the two framed letters: The Option and The Offer. That was in year 2000. So, it was scheduled to be filmed in 2001 and they were offering me three-million-pound filming budget and twelve-million-pound deferred payments. Deferred payments you use to get key actors.
It’s happening - what a high. An absolute high. The only thing I wanted in life was to see it in a cinema and also have the money. And, then three weeks later we had 9/11. The whole of the film industry stopped and, then the British Government withdrew the tax allowances.
So, all of the money they were using at Midsummer Films was investments. It was coming from Footballers, who rather than pay their massive tax bills were investing into films. For a percentage. So that was it - collapsed! That’s when the film sat on the shelf for twenty years.
I remember I came to see you up in Southport around 2009 and you showed me your Juggler script then and I thought it was pretty amazing. And later told me you had to change the script twenty times already.
Rewrites Alan…forever rewriting! Now probably 100+
And, you’ve had a lot of help with this through your Danish connection, haven’t you?
My son kept saying you need to rewrite it. I said I haven’t got time.
I was at a Disc Jockey Reunion in Bournemouth when I overheard one of the jocks talking ‘I’ve stopped my sound studio, I’m now working a lot in film doing the sound’ his name was Rod Wilkins. I grabbed Rod afterwards for a quick word. Explaining that I have a script, ‘Will you read it?’ Such a quick response, ‘send it to me, probably won’t read it, but I have a guy who is a brilliant script writer in Denmark who will read it’. That was sent. He read it. He loved it.
The next phone call I had off Rod was asking if I minded sending it on to a very famous Danish actor called Magnus Bruun. I said no, not at all, send it to him. He sent it, sure enough two weeks later Magnus phoned out of the blue, I couldn’t believe it such a fabulous guy. He said, ‘I’ve read it, loved it BUT….it needs to be brought up to date’. The Juggler originally was about the old credit card scandal using the old credit card slide machine which wouldn’t work in this day and age. So, the re-writes began. I was sending it back and forward to Magnus in scenes and we re-wrote and tightened the film. We’ve worked together on it for the last fifteen months, going back and forwards. Now at the final stage called the polish. It’s absolutely there and reads like a dream.
Earlier this year I looked to see if Midsummer was still operating, found the phone number, phoned them up in London and asked for the owner Chris Milburn. They explained that Chris was still the owner but they are also trading under ‘Illustrious Media’ What’s it concerning?’ I told them the story; he said ‘I love it, send me the script’. The hardest thing being a script writer is getting the script in front of the right person to read it. They sent it out to (which I didn’t know) to professional readers. Weeks later I had an email thanking me for the script and explaining the brilliant report which was they attached. With a professional reader they do everything. Eight pages of notes, then they summarise everything and a final rating.
With script writing only 20% of films are ever completed. So, to actually complete a film script is a massive plus. Of the ones that are finished only 2% will ever get a ‘recommend’. A recommend is when a professional reader looks at it, reads it and thinks, “God, If I had the money, I’d do this myself”. Real head on the block stuff. I got the recommend. It’s like - impossible.
When did this happen?
Just a few months ago.
Incidentally, doing the rewrites I had been over to Denmark several times to visit Magnus in Copenhagen at great expense going through the script.
I went down to London for a meeting with ‘Illustrious’ who said we will take it straightaway as it is, but it will sit on a shelf for 12 - 18 months because we are so busy. We’ve got so many projects lined up. He explained ‘Don’t worry”. It’s very good. I asked, ‘What’s the best route?’ He answered ‘you need a director, once you’ve a director he will bring the Producers onboard. We have got great studio connections in Romania and the UK.’
The next point, he said, was ‘Do your final polish’ (which we’re doing now). When that’s finished, it’s called the Production Polish. If you can’t get a director, we will help and get one for you. I’ve spoken to them since, they’ve just finished last summer a film call ‘Protégé’ This is with Samuel Jackson, Max Keaton, and the Director is a man called Martin Campbell who is 78 but a great history. He did two James Bond films. Massive! I’ve gone back to Illustrious pushing my luck and said ‘Right, I want Martin Campbell’. He said ‘Remember our conversation in London? Regarding what?’ He went on to say’ I told you the budget would be about 25 million. If you get Martin Campbell, that’s what it will be. Because obviously he will go for key actors.’
Now, as a script writer, I could have approached NETFLIX, Scandinavia, because we have a connection through Magnus Bruun. The problem is that if you sell to NETFLIX they buy the concept, they buy the film and I’d get 80 thousand pounds or ninety. Maybe a hundred, but that’s it. They take it, lock, stock and barrel and that’s it, you get no more money. If you go the other route on normal production, which is shown in cinemas. I’d get close on 100.000, but the big plus is that I’d get a percentage. Probably 4%. Let’s say they make the film for 25 million pounds, and it does 35 million in the box office, then I’d get 4% of ten million which is really nice…Plus the purchase fee
A nice boost for your pension!
I just want to walk in that cinema, and see my name on the credits. This is surely the ultimate buzz and achievement to end my days when it comes!! Into the oven faster than a Kentucky fried chicken !! but with a BIG smile.
Chris I can’t wait to see your name in credits. Will you be Chris Day or Christopher Trowell?
Chris Trowell