Part 46
In an earlier blog, I briefly told the story of my adventure with the Persian and Oriental rug mogul who wanted to create a television series based around the idea of a conflict between two brothers, one of whom favored intrinsic wealth such as Persian rugs, rare paintings, bloodstock and gold, versus the other brother whose life revolved around stocks, shares and paper money.
I want to elaborate on one element of my research, which entailed a visit to Kentucky and the world of horse racing. This visit revealed an entire sub-culture of people whose lives revolve obsessively around horses.
Our sponsor, who at one time claimed to control the world market in Persian and Oriental rugs, was born in South Africa of French parentage. He and his staff made all the arrangements in advance of our visit, beginning with our stay in a fine old Kentucky mansion, just outside Lexington. It was owned by South Africans who had owned race horses back in Africa but who had moved to Kentucky to play an even bigger game. Our carpet mogul was part owner of the establishment, as far as we knew.
It was the week of the Kentucky Derby, arguably the biggest event on the American horse racing calendar. The idea was for me as the writer/researcher and the young Producer, Mark, to attend four of the Derby week parties in order to meet the kind of people I would put into any episodes of the series that dealt with the thoroughbred horses aspect of the story.
By the way, it took me a little while to get used to the idea of pronouncing the word Derby, as spelled instead of the bizarre British version pronounced “Darby.”
The first party was held at the holiday home of a family from Los Angeles, or Las Vegas, I forget which, whose daughter was hosting the party. The house was another fine old Kentucky mansion, but this did not deter the young hostess who had designers flown in to change the interior into a Japanese Tea house. I was personally horrified to see a lovely historical home filled with antiques, covered over with pseudo-Oriental decor. In fairness, they had done a surprisingly good job of it, which was offset by some very ordinary Chinese (not Japanese) food that could have been delivered by the local takeaway.
At least we got to meet some “horsey” people, although there were a number of visitors mostly from California and Vegas. I had a chat with a television star who was big at the time. He was surprisingly friendly and quite interested in our project. However, my mission was to get to know something about the racehorse owners. I listened in to an intense chat between a group of people who were debating the merits of the various horses who would be racing in the Derby at the end of the week.
I had briefly been around the racing fraternity in South Africa, when I became engaged to a girl whose father insisted that we join him in the Member’s Enclosure at the Greyville Racecourse in Durban every Saturday.
Frankly, I hated it. I was completely out of my depth sipping champagne and watching my future father-in-law throwing money away on the gee-gees, as British children call horses. That engagement quickly reverted to a dis-engagement, especially as I was a taxi driver in between movie jobs and not a great prospect for the father’s daughter, but that’s a tale for another day!
Back in Kentucky, I managed to get to speak to a couple of people in the group, but quickly discovered that as soon as they asked me whether I owned horses, which I did not, they literally nodded and walked away. That was the week I discovered that the things that most people found interesting about me, namely my years in movies and television and the fact that I lived South Africa, cut no ice whatsoever in Kentucky.
By the time of the second party, I had created a cover story, as a movie guy who was considering investing in some horses back home. There had been a famous South African horse called Sea Cottage that had been successfully sold to a Kentucky stud farm a few years previously, so the idea of a South African owning racehorses was not entirely strange to them. I am not normally in the habit of fictionalizing myself but, in this case, I found it actually worked.
The next party was even more bizarre than the first. For a number of years, a very wealthy lady, with the aid of charitable donations, hired tents from a three-ringed circus. She had three separate restaurants serve food in each of the adjoining tents with three different bands and numerous singers to entertain the 2,000 guests. It was noisy and totally incredible as a spectacle.
Somehow, I found myself seated next to a very nice lady, I would say in her fifties. The man on the other side of her insisted on telling me that she had just sold a yearling for the world-record price of eleven million dollars!
As is often the case with people who have absolutely nothing more to prove in life, we had a surprisingly normal conversation. I had no need to “trot” out my cover story.
The third party was much more like the event I had been expecting. The host and hostess kept their magnificent mansion exactly the way they lived in it. They served Traditional Kentucky food, consisting of baked ham with sweet bourbon mustard glaze, Kentucky burgoo (a kind of stew), buttermilk fried chicken, The hot brown (open face turkey melt sandwiches with bacon tomato and Creole-flavored cheddar cheese), fried green tomatoes, baked cheese grits, southern devilled eggs and creamy bourbon chicken and mushroom. This was more like it. The whole ambience was perfect for the setting and just to add to the glamor of the occasion, the lady Governor of Kentucky arrived in her helicopter, with her guest for the week – Olivia Newton-John.
Later on, I joined my producer Mark, who was chatting with a large and chatty Filipino lady. It turned out that she was the wife of one of the leading jockeys riding in the derby. Her husband was not at the party, obviously in training for the big day. She was funny and lively and, somehow, we ended up in the stretch limo provided for her, drinking bourbon and having our own mini-party with a couple of other people who had tired of the intense racing talk.
The fourth party was very different, but in terms of the food the best of the lot. It was hosted by another South African couple. The wife was a superb chef and had just published a popular cookery book. The food was a mix of French cuisine with some of the traditional Kentucky dishes thrown in. It was quite a small party by comparison with the others, but it was very well received.
Oh, and the race itself! The racecourse, Churchill Downs, is in Louisville not Lexington. Louisville is of course also the home of Colonel Sanders’ Kentucky Fried Chicken and Mohamed Ali. Just another horse race, as far as I was concerned, but I did find it interesting in that I had no idea that, in America horses race on dirt, not grass. By the way, the husband of the lady we partied with in the limo, happened to win the Derby.
To sum up, it was a fascinating experience and an exposure to a slice of American life, that, although I had my personal reservations about the racing world, there were some wonderful aspects of these Southerners and their hospitality – if only they had stopped talking about their horses!
As our ExoTeam grows by the week, I wonder what kind of culture we will create as we move forward closer and closer to creating a major new industry. I truly expect it will be based on a group intention to preserve the integrity of pure, unaltered communication, with a simplicity of operation never before seen in the history of computing. Who knows, we could end up a bit saner for the experience!
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.