Menahem Golan, sometime in the 80's

Right off the bat I must admit that I am biased. I admire this man. Menahem Golan is approaching his 80th year and showing no sign of stopping. His latest film came out in Israel’s theaters in July, he is trying to get a large international production off the ground, has just directed a stage show, and has various other projects floating around. The man is a purist; his dedication and love for film is undeniable and scarce in today’s generation of filmmakers. Jerry Lewis coined the term, “The Total Filmmaker”; Golan fits the bill.

Golan is a pillar of the Israeli film industry; take him out of the equation and its history will collapse. From the 1960’s to the 1980’s, he and his cousin, Yoram Globus, were involved in the creation of every genre and trend in the industry as well as responsible for most of the Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations garnered by Israeli films.

In 1979, Golan and Globus bought The Cannon Group and for the next 10 years they produced a slew of action films, dance musicals, teen comedies, etc. By1986 they were producing more films per year then all the Hollywood studios put together. Golan often said he would feel like a criminal making one $30 million dollar film rather than 30 films for $1 million each. The quality of their product was far from consistent but often extremely popular. But they overextended themselves by taking over theater chain after theater chain in Europe, and eventually Thorn EMI in England. At the end of 1986 their financial problems were piling up and by the end of the decade they were going bankrupt.

Cannon’s importance and relevance to the American film industry has been downplayed. Their ultimate demise allowed for them to be forgotten. Their Hollywood misadventures are legendary, and it is easy to be critical since many people claim to have been hurt by Cannon. Producing films is no reason to mistreat anyone, but in reality that is the case with an endless line of film producers in a town that was built on backstabbing. While criticism is legitimate, their achievements should be looked upon as well. Shelly Winters, who worked with Golan many times, once compared the cousins to the old Hollywood moguls: “They’re like the old-style bastards. We hated them, but they loved films. They created great stars and great films.”

Cannon reached groundbreaking agreements with the Hollywood unions that made it possible for the independents to grow. They were amongst the first to utilize the home-video market and they created stars and genres that have an impact on Hollywood to this day (clearly the successful STEP-UP series is the evolution of BREAKIN’).

In the decade that preceded Miramax, before independent cinema was “hip”, before it became a genre rather then a reality, Golan pushed Cannon to take chances on many directors who had a hard time getting the major studios to produce their movies. A partial list includes John Cassavetes, Robert Altman, Andrei Konchalovski, Franco Zeffirelli, Jean Luc Godard, Lina Wertmüller, Norman Mailer and Fons Rademakers – whose Cannon-produced THE ASSAULT (1986) won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. Roger Ebert said in 1987: “No other production organization in the world today has taken more chances with serious, marginal films than Cannon.”

In his diary from the 1986 Cannes Film Festival, “Two Weeks in the Midday Sun”, Ebert writes that for him, Golan was the hero of the festival. On May 7th, 1986, Variety printed this joke from Cannes:

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LEMON POPSICLE @ 30

'I was 17 and she was only 16. We laid on the beach and listened to Elvis. The moon was full. It happened in the summer of '58'. LEMON POPSICLE (Israel)

“If you wore pointy shoes, grease in your hair, walking on your way to a party with an Elvis record in your hand – you felt like a king.” reminisced Boaz Davidson. He grew up in 1950’s Tel-Aviv, where teenagers formed street gangs, hung out at the local ice-cream parlor and were first introduced to sexuality. All in the key of the latest Elvis record, even if it took it a year to get there from the U.S. “Every Friday we would meet and dance, and dream of Dodge cars, of Chevrolets…” He told an Israeli reporter*, “the American dream is far and wonderful when you come back home and there’s dad reading a newspaper, eating yogurt, listening to news on the radio and everything seems so small and poor.”

Davidson began his career as a film director with the 1971 musical, SHABLUL, and had his first big hit a year later in AZIT, THE PARATROOPER DOG. Throughout the decade he became the most successful film director in Israel. In 1978, Davidson partnered with producers Menahem Golan & Yoram Globus to make a film based on his teenage experience. None of them imagined that the result, a nostalgic, coming-of-age tale set in 1950’s Tel-Aviv, would become an international blockbuster and spawn seven sequels and an American remake.

LEMON POPSICLE (original title, ESKIMO LIMON) follows the misadventures and sexual capers of 3 high-school friends: Yiftach Katzur as the sensitive, film version of Davidson – Benzi, Jonathan Segal as the gigolo – Momo, and Zachi Noy as the heavy-set, Yudale.

Benzi falls in love with Nili, the new girl in school but she is in love with Momo, who snubs her when he finds out she is carrying his baby. In a moment of despair, Nili turns to Benzi to finance her abortion. Finally, he gets the girl. When all is said and done, Benzi finds Nili at a party, back in Momo’s arms. He walks out brokenhearted to the sound of Bobby Vinton crooning “Mr. Lonely”. The End.

“I felt like a criminal who goes back to the scene of the crime, we even used some of the real locations.” Davidson said about directing such intimate autobiographic moments. Despite the film’s comedic nature and provocative sexual content, melancholy and nostalgia dominate from the heartbreaking opening song, “Greenfields” by The Brothers Four to the unusual downbeat ending.

The Teenager has been a dominant character in the American film industry ever since the baby boom of the 1950s when Teensploitaiton bloomed (ie the BEACH PARTY franchise, ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK and other Sam Arkoff and Sam Katzmann shenanigans). In Israel however, characters used to represent various faces of the Zionist on the backdrop of the country’s political landscape and social hierarchy. LEMON POPSICLE was the first to break from that mold and offer a hedonistic point-of-view of Israel’s youth. It encountered accusations of pornography from various sources that didn’t like its glorification of the intruding American culture and indulgence in sexuality. That cultural clash between Israeli and American cultures creates an interesting time capsule. Rock ‘n’ Roll music gives the tone in the streets but the old generation rules the home.

Film historian, Shmulik Duvdevani, observes: “It documents the influence of popular American culture at the time, such as Elvis, etc. And on the other hand, in 1978 the Americanization of Israel was at a prime: hamburger joints push over the falafel stands, ‘American Ice Cream’ pushes the local products, the first mall was opened in 1978 – There was an attempt to copy American culture with brands and such. So LEMON POPSICLE has English opening titles and it’s no problem to dub it and because of that it’s a film that represents the Americanization Israel was going through in the 70’s as well.”

LEMON POPSICLE became an immediate hit, breaking every record set before it in Israel. 1,300,000 viewers flooded the theaters. At the time this meant 1 out of every 3 people in the country.

And then it screened at the MIFED International Film Market in Italy. Yoram Globus recalls, “It was the first time I attended MIFED. I’m screening my film and after 30 minutes people start walking out. In Israel it’s the biggest hit and here people are walking out??? I then realized they all ran to stand in line to buy the film for distribution – They were all afraid of someone else buying it first”.

EIS AM STIEL: THE POPSICLE IN GERMANY & BEYOND

From the program of the 1978 Berlin Film Festival

Jeanine Meerapfel, a filmmaker and member of the 1978 Berlinale selection committee: “I remember seeing it and having a lot of fun but thinking we can’t show it in the Berlinale – it’s too popular! I said that a film like that coming from Israel has to be shown because it was unexpected, you expect drama from Israel and here comes a light, well done comedy.”

Not only was LP the first Israeli film to be screened at the Berlinale competition in 5 years but the screening was a huge success and viewers voted it the 4th most popular in the festival. German producer, Sam Waynberg (REPULSION, CUL DE SAC), bought the distribution rights for Germany and signed the 3 lead actors to his company, thus insuring his involvement in future sequels. When it opened theatrically as EIS AM STIEL, it surpassed the success of the competing GREASE and SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER. A Golden Globe nomination followed and in 1979 and, when released in Japan, it became one of the most profitable films in theaters.

LEMON POPSICLE was also commercially distributed in Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Hungary, Greece, Brazil, Korea, Thailand and more. It was not as successful in Italy, where the sex-comedy was a popular genre; it also failed to catch on in France, where it was titled JUKE BOX. In 1980, after the success of LA BOUM, starring Sophie Marceau, Golan and Globus re-titled the sequel to LP as LA BOUM AMERICAINE, but still to no success.

On the cover of 'Films and Filming', September 1978

In England the hype was exciting – A double spread pictorial in “Films and Filming” and an article about Zachi Noy in The Daily Express: WATCH OUT TRAVOLTA, A BIG, BIG, BIG ISRAELI STAR IN BORN. Noy’s response: “If Travolta is doing half as well as I am, then he is having a ball.”

LEMON POPSICLE filled a gap in German cinema by offering mainstream entertainment for teenagers in an art-house industry. Germany did have youth-oriented cinema in the past, inspired by the American Teensploitation movies of the 1950’s, they produced successful Rock-n-Roll musicals starring local musical teen-sensations such as Peter Kraus & Cornelia Froboess (WHEN CONNY AND PETER DO IT TOGETHER, EVERYBODY LOVES PETER).

Dr. Lothar Mikos, a professor at the Konrad Wolf Academy of Film & Television (HFF/B) in Potsdam: “Since then there was no teenage cinema in Germany. The German film industry collapsed more or less because of TV in the late 50′s and beginning of the 60′s. Other German directors proposed a new German cinema during 60’s-70’s, which was financed by government institutions. LEMON POPSICLE was popular since the new German cinema of the 60′s did intellectual films for young adults and no film dealing with emotion and sex and also comedy.”

Ironically, while many Germans who grew up in the 70’s and 80’s got their first peak of sexuality by watching a LEMON POPSICLE movie, many who grew up in Israel got theirs by watching the naughtier, German, SCHOOLGIRL REPORT series.
Dr. Andreas Raucher: “The SCHOOLGIRL series tried to be sold as documentaries, but later everybody knew it’s a bad excuse for a porn movie. LEMON POPSICLE was regarded as a teen sex comedy.”

Zachi Noy became the face on POPSICLE and a big star in Germany and Austria. His comedic talents and versatile use of his heavyset body proved a winning combination. Under the management of Sam Waynberg, he capitalized on his new status by appearing in a string of German comedies in theaters and on tv: POPCORN UND HIMBEEREIS (1978), ARABIAN NIGHTS (1980) and DIE UNGLAUBLICHEN ABENTEUER DES GURU JAKOB (1983) amongst others.

Demand called for it and in 1979, a sequel, GOING STEADY, was produced. The original crew was back and the sequel was very much in tone with its predecessor, almost a direct extension. GOING STEADY was a guaranteed international hit.

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'In LEMON POPSICLE they fooled around, now they are... GOING STEADY' - Israel

CANNON-BURY TALE
“Hollywood Thou art {Jenny} Craven”

Once upon a time in a make-believe land that time forgot (try 1980’s Hollywood)
there existed a film company that brazenly dreamt without guilt or shame of riches and fame as the seventh major studio in a self conscious tinsel town that was only just aware of six. This ambitious company had already reinvented itself once without the butterfly effect.

The company’s new moguls now made it their top priority to make the pilgrimage every year amidst much media fanfare to the French Rivera, lusting openly for the highly sought after prize – The PALM d’OR – awarded at the legendary Cannes film festival. (think of it as a modern equivalent of a literary pilgrimage to Canterbury, in a far less lofty, yet seemingly enlightened ritual of show business – the naming of the best in Cinema by your peers or the media).

These men spared no expense in throwing the company money around at the festival; they took out lavish ads for films being made or about to be made. (Even films that they were “thinking about” making in the near future were given ads and poster art). The parties at the Carleton Hotel for Stallone, Faye Dunaway or Sharon Stone were legendary, even by Cannes standards of dolce vita. At the end of the day it is still the money that talks, and the boys seemed to have plenty of that to go around, so for the moment the go go boys were the golden boys, with the Mediterranean sun as their spotlight and a Hollywood complex for a stage.

This force of nature, known throughout the then-current entertainment industry as THE CANNON FILM GROUP, was being obsessively ruled by a pair of cheerfully schizoid moguls – Menahem Golan and Yorum Globus – nicknamed the “the Go Go boys”. They were cousins who came into this wildly cinematic version of Chaucer from Israel with both their curly heads high in the clouds dreaming of those hundred-million-dollar three- picture deals and, of course, THE MOVIES

These go go boys lived and breathed movies in much the same obsessive manner that the self-styled moguls of old Hollywood did, and that made them charming to the locals and, more importantly, to the press. I had already become very aware of THE CANNON FILM GROUP and their shenanigans, thanks to my friend Martine Beswicke. Martine had been cast as the infamous “Happy Hooker” when Cannon picked up the franchise with their latest installment, THE HAPPY HOOKER GOES HOLLYWOOD. Martine signed on for an R rated film and quickly found herself in what amounted to a soft-core sex film. As soon as she would leave the set the producers would bring in girls from the porn industry to do simulated sex scenes that would certainly give the film an X certificate and compromise Martine’s reputation, which at the time was that of one of the James Bond girls, as well as her fame as a Hammer Horror Queen. She had to stand her ground with these sleaze merchants and make them honor their original agreement.

The film did little or nothing for Martine’s career or the reputation of the CANNON GROUP who already had most of the Hollywood insiders’ tongues wagging about this renegade film company that had just made 23 films in one year, some of them not that bad considering the lack of taste or discrimination the company was becoming known for.

They produced critical favorites like RUNAWAY TRAIN and BARFLY, as well as the Cassevetes “art” film LOVE STREAMS. This open-check-book approach also attracted directors like Roman Polanski, John Huston, and even the iconic darling of the French new wave, Godard, to their banner, allowing a truly eclectic series of films to be made that would never have seen the light of day in today’s film market.

Of course now, in the light of the new century, when THE CANNON FILM GROUP legacy is avidly discussed by film buffs that were not even born when the catalogue was new, thanks in part to their films being available on home video and DVD, it is usually the action flicks that are synonymous with the company’s reputation. After all they brought Charles Bronson’s DEATH WISH franchise out of moth balls, and gave Sly Stallone the world’s first arm wrestling father and son bonding flick, OVER THE TOP, the title of which sums up Sly’s star performance in the production as well. Stallone was at the time paid an outrageous salary for this turkey, which also signaled to most Hollywood insiders the starting point of the long downward slide of the CANNON GROUP into bankruptcy by the end of the decade.

They created new action stars like Michael Dudikoff, Chuck Norris and the “muscles from Brussels” himself, the decidedly short but altogether hunky Jean Claude Van Damme (who, as the legend goes, was discovered by Menahem Golan one afternoon when the then out-of-work actor, who was moonlighting as a pizza delivery boy, brought a pizza up to the executive office and then waited for Golan to leave his office whereupon Jean Claude risked all to deliver more than a pizza – he placed a karate kick right over the mogul’s head without touching so much as a hair. This bit of showmanship so impressed Golan that he placed Jean Claude under contract and the rest, as they say, is history). The offices of THE CANNON FILM GROUP were never boring; you could always count on at least one screaming match between talent and their producers before lunch. All the staff basically hated the people they had to work for, making for a colorful environment to say the least. I will never forget walking off the elevator on the floor where the executive offices were located, only to see two Israeli guards, both armed with machine guns, standing on either side of the door leading into their offices. This was one reason I was glad not to have ever had to work within the building itself. The good news being no incident was ever reported during the time the company was there.

Now my working connection to this infamous company arrived in the guise of the British screenwriter Michael Armstrong, who lived with me during this timeline, introducing me in turn to a producer he worked with at CANNON named Jenny Craven. These two eccentric personalities both arrived in Hollywood from the UK. My further recollections of Mike can be found in the ‘Marked by the Devil’ chapter in this collection. Every one of the personalities I would meet during this period came to remind me of the equally colorful characters one would encounter in the slightly more classical world of Chaucer’s CANTERBURY TALES. Jenny would be the “Wife of Bath” who, instead of being an authority on marriage, would concentrate on her prowess of as a film producer instead.

Jenny Craven can best be described as a comfortably neurotic woman with a terrific sense of survival that was constantly being undermined by being let down by those upon whom she had come to depend both personally and professionally. I would fall into both these categories in about 12 month’s time, but I am getting slightly ahead of myself

Both Jenny and Michael had enjoyed a working relationship with CANNON FILMS in the UK, Mike as a screenwriter on HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS [1981] and Jenny as one of the producers of Mike’s film as well as the1985 Agatha Christie adaptation ORDEAL BY INNOCENCE. It is a known fact that once you begin to work in this industry behind the camera it is almost impossible to give up the notion that this is where you belong, and your mind cannot cope with anything less. Sadly, both Jenny and especially Mike had to suffer their time in the thankless purgatory of development Hell until friends and family of the suffering duo finally broke through the “I am just one deal away from major mega success” -induced coma to the reality of just getting on with your life and leaving Hollywood forever.