Filmmaker Marina Zenovich deconstructed Sundance in her feature documentary Independent’s Day and exposed some of the more outlandish aspects of the indie film world as a segment producer for John Pierson’s "Split Screen". Her new documentary, Who Is Bernard Tapie?, tackles an iconic Frenchman whose extreme life has been the subject of more than eight books and countless profiles in Europe though he’s only known in the U.S., if at all, as the star of a single Claude Lelouch film. Confidante of late French president Francois Mitterand and onetime member of French and European parliaments, Tapie started out as a singer, reinvented himself as a hugely successful venture capitalist in the ’80s and briefly hosted a talk show, "Ambitions," on French TV. He holds a record for sailing across the Atlantic and owned a Marseilles soccer team until his conviction for fixing a match sent him to prison. After serving an eight-month sentence, he recorded a song ("C’est Beau La Vie") with French rap star Doc Gyneco in which he joked about the experience, and he subsequently published a bestselling autobiography that he wrote in jail.

Zenovich knew none of this when she went to the Los Angeles DGA one night in April ’97 to see Lelouch’s Hommes, Femmes: Mode d’Emploi. Before the lights went down, the director got up to dedicate the screening to "my friend Bernard Tapie, who is in jail tonight." By chance Zenovich was headed to Cannes the following month for Next Wave, the finishing fund for low-budget features for which she was then a scout, and started asking locals what they knew about Tapie. "To my surprise their eyes lit up and everyone had an opinion — he was notorious and they loved him, or they hated him," she says. "I knew there was a film there."

Cut to that September’s IFFM. Zenovich was screening a rough cut of Independent’s Day to solicit completion financing and negotiating with Pierson regarding her role on "Split Screen". She was also enthusing about Tapie as a feature subject to Pretty Pictures’ James Velaise, her Paris-based foreign sales agent for Independent’s Day, and he agreed to co-produce the new film. Independent’s Day was finished in November, and Zenovich went to Paris to start shooting Tapie with a borrowed digital camera. Although Tapie speaks no English and Zenovich’s French is remedial, she persevered, returning five times more, wrapping up a final French shoot in early June.

"I pitch it as ‘goofy American girl sees French guy in movie and goes to France to find him, but soon learns he is more than she thought and discovers intriguing differences between the French and the Americans while coming to terms with her fascination with this powerful, seductive character,’" says a breathless Zenovich. Who Is Bernard Tapie? should be finished early this fall; the film is in English and French with English subtitles. An early trailer screened at the ’98 IFFM; all rights are available and Pretty Pictures is handling foreign sales.

Contact: Marina Zenovich, Graceful Pictures, 8731 Shoreham Drive, #3, West Hollywood, CA 90069. Tel: (213) 427-8580, Fax: (323) 782-8014, e-mail: gracefulz@aol.com. t

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