Yet I was still having trouble thinking of myself as an actor. I was slogging through my day job as an administrative assistant at a rabbinical school, answering phones, making copies and praying for lunch-time, while those around me prayed for something holier. Nonetheless, I was waiting for my “big break,” so I stuffed an envelope with my Woody-est head shot and sent it off.
A week later I got a call from a woman who let me know that the director wanted me to come in and read for the role of Aaron Kaplan, a twentysomething, nebbishy Jewish man. The director’s apartment was in a decrepit building, right over a mannequin shop. When the door opened, a tall, white-haired man in his 70s, sporting a pair of shaggy orange pants and a white mustache, emerged. “Hello, hello, hello,” he said in a fantastic Italian accent. And with those three words, Gian-Luigi Polidoro came into my life.
Igi, as he was known, lived in a shabby, unspacious studio smelling of cigarette smoke. Dozens of actors’ head shots were pinned to the walls, hanging over piles of others that hadn’t made the cut. It was exactly how I’d pictured Hemingway and Picasso had lived their expat lives in Paris: bohemian and poor, artsy and happy. This was a good place to be a starving artist, which at 24 seemed altogether alluring.
Of course, it wasn’t how I’d pictured, say, Steven Spielberg’s pad. But Spielberg had enjoyed more success than Igi, a minor filmmaker in the era of Fellini. Igi won two awards at Cannes, but his biggest hit came in 1963 when he took home the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Shortly after that, he claimed, he was offered a gig to direct “What’s New, Pussycat?,” Woody Allen’s first screenplay. Full of braggadocio, Igi said he had spurned the offer because the script was “a piece of s––t.”
Two weeks and five auditions later, Igi offered me the role. I was thrilled. And, in addition to starring in the movie, he asked hopefully, would I be willing to drive the van? As it happened, he’d hired an entirely foreign crew with nary a valid driver’s license among them. Thus began six exhilarating weeks as lead actor/chauffeur on the set of “Hitler’s Strawberries.” On the first day of filming I backed the van into a car. Igi shrugged it off. His approach to filmmaking, much like his approach to life, was laissez-faire. He didn’t waste time worrying, didn’t expend energy considering everyone’s feelings. He smoked a pipe. He lived, I thought, as a real artist should.
In time we became friends. He solicited my advice on the movie and offered me advice on my career, women, longevity. He was funny and sharp, and when I was with him I began to think of myself as an adult and an actor, a turning point for me. I took comfort knowing that we two—artists both—were living in similarly dilapidated apartments, pursuing our crafts. Once, though, in a quiet moment, he glanced around his place, resigned, and told me: “If I’d taken the Woody Allen job, I wouldn’t be in this piece-of-s––t apartment right now.”
This was a revelation to me. I’d seen Igi as a wise old guy with unbridled energy and bravado, still gallivanting around the world late into his life, making films the only way he knew how. In truth, 40 years after his big success, he was still trying to recapture some of that old glory. He’d stayed true to his artistic principles, yes. But his lead actor was doubling as his driver.
About a year after the film wrapped, Igi died in a car crash outside Venice. Just like that, this man who’d so quickly become a fixture in my life was gone. The film went nowhere. I heard mumblings at the time about some dispute among his previous wives as to who owned the thing. As far as I know, I’ve got the only remaining copies of it, stored in my tiny, ovenless apartment.
Igi’s obituary in London’s The Independent said that “Polidoro had just finished ‘Hitler’s Strawberries,’ a vitriolic comedy about a Jewish boy who dresses as the Führer at his Orthodox wedding.” That Jewish boy was me. I’d become the coda to this man’s life. I’d played an integral role in his final act. My picture had been pulled from the pile and pinned to Igi’s wall, and I felt lucky for it. I still do.
