The Karma of THE ARTIST

By Mike Takeuchi

"Sometimes life is wonderful. Today is one of those days." Michel Hazanavicius on Sunday.

On Saturday afternoon in Santa Monica, Michel Hazanavicius was in a hurry. He was in the middle of a whirlwind weekend and had just collected the first of four awards for him that day and start of nine speeches he had to make to accept the awards for the film he directed, THE ARTIST. In the terms of any filmmaker, it was a great weekend for the black-and-white, predominantly silent film which garnered four Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday, and five more at the Academy Awards at what host Billy Crystal jokingly called "The Bankrupt Theatre" on Sunday.

But at this particular moment, the French director had only achieved one thus far-the Independent Spirit Award for Best Director, and was in a hurry to get back to his seat to join his friends possibly to see what penis joke irreverently funny host Seth Rogen would make next. On his way, we nearly literally ran smack-dab into each other. He stopped, looked and realized that the Rubenesque Asian-American in front of him was someone somewhat familiar to him. Seemingly struggling for a moment to remember, I let him off the hook.

"Hey Michel, congratulations, plenty more of good things to come," I said.

Looking relieved that he didn't have to remember the name of someone he only had a scant recollection of (if at all), smiled brightly.

"Thank you, thank you very much," he genuinely expressed in his heavy French accent before disappearing into the backstage area of the tent.

With that, he was gone-onward and upward.

The first time I met Michel was in Santa Barbara at the Riviera Theatre. THE ARTIST was not yet known outside of my boss Roger Durling, the executive director of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and a select few who saw it in Cannes, Telluride and Toronto. An agent friend of mine told me that it was going to be a hit.

I thought “Silent, black-and-white movie, Riiiiight!"

It turned out that he was right. An hour before he arrived, I watched the first part of this unique film just mesmerized. While the style was an homage to Billy Wilder, I got the same feeling I did when I watched Frank Capra films. These guys have something here.

Michel's arrival cut my viewing pleasure short, but I wasn't complaining as I looked forward to meeting him and his lovely wife Berenice Bejo (Alas, Ms. Bejo was ill and could not make it that evening but I was able to meet her later at SBIFF. All I can say about her is "Wow!").

As I walked him down the outer corridor of the Riviera as the credits of his film rolled, I didn't say anything to him other than give him some brief stage instructions on what to do. He peeked inside the still packed theatre and looked back at me.

“Wow, this is incredible!” he said.

In hindsight, I wish I said something incredibly wise and prescient like “Your life will never be the same again.” But instead I told him to enjoy himself, because the people he would be joining loved the film.

“Thank you very much,” he said.

When he went out to sit in his director’s chair, I was thinking who would have thought that it would be this successful?

Two months later, when he, Berenice, and Oscar Best Actor winner Jean Dujardin came for the Festival, they were nothing but gracious and full of class. While the highlight for me was getting a wink and a nod from Berenice, I will always remember the constant display of gratitude from Michel as he expressed his thanks several times during his stay with us. The more time spent together, the more I couldn’t help but root for them come Oscar Night not just for their niceness, but for the way they genuinely seemed to enjoy being around each other and just the joy each individual from the film possessed.

To a lot of people, I likened their run a lot to the people from my other recent favorite, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE. While I mentioned in my previous post that there were parallels between the two, the most telling was that like THE ARTIST group, the trio of director Danny Boyle, writer Simon Beaufoy, and producer Christian Colson seemed to have such good karma going for them, one couldn’t but help get swept up in or at least very interested with this group.

And here it was happening, or did happen with a sense of deja’ vu all over again.