| Saturday, March 1, 2008 1:10AM | | | | A Night in Sofia | Posted By: James Reston
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Tonight I spent the evening witha jolly group of exuberant Israeli film makers on the slopes of Mount Vitosha which, snow-covered, rises 6000 feet above the capital of Bulgaria. The venue was a typrical Bulgarian restaurant with lots of double-time um-pa-pa music, plenty of heel-slapping dancing around the tables, and performers in short embroidered jackets and frilly skirts. And lots of booze. I'm again in a Christian country.
The interesting part was why these film makers have come to this out-of-the-way place. Cinema is suddenly a major industry here, started only 8 years ago from scratch. Now it has launched its first major Hollywood movie, Black Dalia with Brian di Palma, and there's talk of projects with Robert di Niro and Al Pacino. I have a producer friend back home, Ron Maxwell (Gods and Generals) who will shoot an epic about Joan of Arc here. At a 300 acre spread the industry has built sets of several blocks of New York City streets and several blocks of Baghdad including a market. They're betting that like the aftermath of Vietnam, once the Iraq War is over, a wave of interesting movies, depicting both sides of the conflict, will start, movies that go beyond the depiction of brave American soldiers under duress.
Amid the dancing and the clouds of cigar smoke, globilization has come to Bulgaria. Come here instead of Rumania or Morooco, if you want to make a film about the mean streats of New York or Baghdad, they say. It will cost you about a fifth of what it costs to shoot in America. When they heard that I was working with Ron Howard on his film, Frost/Nixon, I got the royal treatment....but what Ron would get would be bigger. I can only imagine. | | | |
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