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Hollywood Spin
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Terminal PR
Did Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks miss a golden PR opportunity by sidestepping the real-life Paris airport inspiration for Tom Hanks' character in The Terminal? Absolutely.
Wednesday, June 16, 2004
By Richard Horgan
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When Iranian native Merhan Karim Nasseri first walked into Paris’s Charles De Gaulle Airport’s Terminal One in 1988, director Steven Spielberg was getting ready to film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and actor Tom Hanks was starring in Big. Now, all these years later, the Pacific Palisades pals are bringing their latest collaboration The Terminal to theaters this Friday with nary a co-opted PR peep from the man who has called continental airport washrooms and a McDonald’s home for the past 16 years.
Granted, The Terminal is the fifth film inspired by Nasseri’s plight and his increasingly eccentric personality does not exactly make him well-suited to the docile needs of the media circuit. For example, he prefers to be called Sir Alfred (in deference apparently to his ultimate desire to wind up in England) and, partly because of this, was alleged in fact to have refused to sign French identity papers issued in 1999 that would have allowed him to walk out the front door and hail a cab. Meanwhile, the country for which he had previous residence documents before they were stolen from him in France, Belgium, is also reported to have granted him refugee status earlier on, only to be denied as well.
In a profile of Nasseri published last fall in the New York Times Magazine, it was reported that Dreamworks SKG paid him $275,000 U.S. for the rights to his story. But beyond that, there is a notable absence of current featurish support along the lines of ‘Spielberg Visits the Other Terminal,’ or ‘Hanks Sponsors Refugee Nasseri.’
OK, that’s a little bit too much to expect, perhaps. But while Nasseri reportedly keeps busy by reading and making entries in a written diary, there are arguably few people on the planet better suited to an online blog than this guy. Imagine if, leading up to The Terminal’s Friday release, Nasseri had been keeping up-to-date daily entries about his latest brush with celebrity, his alleged ignorance of all things Spielberg, and so on. A donated laptop from Apple Computers, a Wi-Fi connection courtesy of one of France’s leading connectivity companies and presto, theterminalguy.com is born.
Other semi-plausible promotional ideas include:
- A chartered flight from Los Angeles to Paris, with Spielberg, Hanks, Zeta-Jones and crews from Extra, Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood in tow. Imagine the pictures of Nasseri enjoying his first Hollywood premiere on the Charles de Gaulle tarmac, from the vantage point of a comfy first-class seat?
- A meeting of the McDonald’s minds. Although The Terminal’s Christmas fable is a little out of reach for the Happy Meals target demographic, a certain photo opp might have gone a long way. In this corner, Morgan Spurlock, the man whose Super Size Me documentary dines out on the premise of a 30-day diet of Golden Arches items; and in this corner, Nasseri, a man who likes the Fish Fillet sandwiches, French fries and has subsisted largely on his airport neighborhood’s franchise since ‘Where’s the Beef?’ was a hot catchphrase.
- An hour on Larry King Live with a panel sourcing Nasseri and/or those who know him best: airline personnel, baggage claim handlers, security personnel and his famous attorney Christian Bourguet.
- A Michael Moore mini-documentary DVD extra. Sure, the Flint, Michigan native is busy with his year-long Bush BBQ, but there could be no better reason to rush out and buy The Terminal Deluxe three-disc set this Christmas than the chance to watch Moore track down and interview Nasseri about his ongoing refusal to leave the airport. Besides, it’s the kind of topic tailor-made for Moore and one he might have been willing to broker a sidetrip for with Dreamworks. Working title: Merhan and Me.
There have been three documentaries made about Nasseri and one fictional French film, the 1993 Jean Rocheford starrer Tombés du Ciel, a.k.a. Lost in Transit. The latter international release title brings to mind of course a more recent award-winning Sofia Coppola entry and the tantalizing idea of how Bill Murray might have played a guy stranded in an airport for years on end. But that’s another film, another column.
Full credit for the original mainstream introduction of the real-life Nasseri to North American audiences goes to Scott Kraft for his 1995 Toronto Star article ‘Man in Limbo for 6 Years at Paris Airport,’ as well as to Elizabeth Neuffer, a reporter for The Boston Globe. It was her article back on Christmas Day, 1997, entitled ‘A Man Without A Country; French Airport is 10-Year Home’, that really gave this modern fable a new impetus, as it was liberally sourced by various web sites. More recently, in 2001, a U.S. photographer tried to document his attempts to get Nasseri to leave the airport in the mockumentary Here to There, which obviously failed.
Nevertheless, despite all this, the story was for many just too fantastical to believe, prompting queries to places such as Cecil Adams’ syndicated q&a column The Straight Dope. In the end, the Internet’s main repository of all legends urban, Snopes.com, chimed in with this entry proclaiming Nasseri’s story to be true, using Neuffer’s Boston Globe article as the main source of evidence.
Were it not for the fact that the obsession with reality TV has not quite hit Europe yet the feverish way it has taken hold in these parts, Terminal One - hosted by some sort of Gallic equivalent to Jeff Probst or Joe Rogan – would undoubtedly be heading to the airwaves. It would probably have a short run though. Repeated episodes of a man getting ready for his day like clockwork at 5:30 a.m. in the public restroom, then reading and writing all day with the occa~sional interrup~tion from the airport doctor and other well wishers, does not necessarily good TV make.
While the aforementioned New York Times Magazine article by Matthew Rose was titled ‘Waiting for Spielberg,’ a 1999 French documentary about Nasseri's plight was titled ‘Waiting for Godot at De Gaulle.’ It took basically a non-partisan view of a man who some claim is crazy and others suggest is simply a glorified homeless person craftily refusing offers of a less visible alternative lifestyle.
In a recent The Terminal discussion board on Ain’t It Cool News, user Jackburtonlives was, if he is to be believed, definitely on the side of the former group. He wrote: “I actually met the guy, interviewed him and did a story on him in 1995. His name was Alfred. The French staff called him "Fred".”
“His story, how he got there was complete fiction,” jackburtonlives continues. “He claimed to be English but is barely coherent in English. He has boxes of garbage with him that he claims are his writings but to tell you the truth, he just looks like a homeless person you see in any large city. At the time I thought he was actually an Iranian trying to scam his way into the UK, but now it seems he's just insane.”
Regardless of whether Nasseri is a master manipulator or a semi-crazy itinerant a few frequent flyer miles short of a full fare, the fact that Dreamworks and co. have chosen to distance themselves publicly from the inspiration for The Terminal’s original story is an intriguing one. It may be nothing more than artistic license, meaning that the less the public is reminded of the real guy, the less they will compare his look and accent to the on-screen mannerisms of Hanks’ Viktor Navorski.
But much like Charlize Theron’s refusal to acknowledge Monster real-life inspiration Aileen Wuornos during any of the high points of her steamroll from one 2003 film awards season dais to another, it just seems like it wouldn’t have been that hard to include Nasseri a little more in the fanfare of a Christmas movie being released in June. Irregardless of his potentially touchy nationality in these muddled, post 9/11 times.
In a July 14th, 1999 article about Nasseri’s plight in The Irish Times, Lufthansa Airlines ticket agent Ute Lamberton was quoted as saying, “He [Nasseri] is a part of the airport now. He's like a prisoner told he is free after years in jail. I'm not sure he could make it on the outside.''
| Shades of Morgan Freeman and James Whitmore’s memorable characters in The Shawshank Redemption, who struggled mightily to make it beyond prison walls. In the absence of that tantalizing blog or fourth documentary profile of Nasseri as he approaches 60, a translated novelization of The Terminal’s fairy tale treatment is about as real as it is likely to get for the man who inspired it all, if of course he so chooses to borrow it from that trusty newspaper and magazine store at Charles de Gaulle airport.
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[Every Wednesday, Richard Horgan’s FilmStew.com opinion column “Hollywood Spin” takes a look at a notable entertainment industry media, PR or marketing-driven event. To reach the author, please email rhorgan@filmstew.com. To comment on this week’s topic, please go to our Hollywood Spin Discussion Board.]
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