Our designer threatened to go public. He was killed that same night.

Source: http://www.crazydaysandnights.net

A Favor Declined – House On St. Charles

When you are dealing with Hollywood, it seems that many of the ideas they have for scripts are not very original.

It is the same thing all of the time.

This is not always the case and three decades ago a movie was made which showed the premise of how the government could use people who worked in the movies to make things look real when they weren’t.

The idea wasn’t just a thought plucked out of the air, it was happening. It has been shown in the movies several times since, usually based on real life incidents.

This is not about that though.

The owners of the House On St. Charles saw a benefit to having someone who had experience in movies, and specifically in production design make things look real or to set things up in a way to make things seem like something they were not.

So, with a ton of money in their pocket, they went out and found one of the very best that has been.

An offer was made and from time to time this A list production designer would help out with projects.

He knew what he was doing, but didn’t know what was being done with what he was doing.

That was his version anyway.

Over the years, he managed to steer a lot of high profile celebrities to the people who owned the house.

They, in turn made further introductions.

It was a huge network and the owners always were looking for every advantage they could get.

At some point, this A+ list mostly movie actor was introduced by our designer to someone involved with ownership.

That apparently led to many adventures in the house and elsewhere where the A+ lister was filmed doing things which would cause great damage to his career.

In fact, it was at this time that the A+ lister pulled back.

The A+ lister discovered the recordings when he was asked for some special favors.

Our actor completed those tasks but wanted out.

He contacted the designer who had been the source of the introduction and asked for help.

The designer agreed to help and had a meeting with some of the decision makers.

He got angry and huffed and puffed and said he didn’t sign up for the kind of thing that the actor had to do favor wise.

Our designer threatened to go public.

He was killed that same night.

A list production designer: J. Michael Riva

Three decades ago movie: “F/X” (plot)

A+ list mostly movie actor: Leonardo DiCaprio

F/X PLOT:

Movie special effects expert Roland “Rollie” Tyler is hired by the Justice Department to stage the murder of mob informant Nicholas DeFranco. DeFranco is set to testify against his former Mafia bosses and go into witness protection, but the Justice Department is afraid he will be killed before the trial. Tyler rigs a gun with blanks and fixes DeFranco up with radio transmitters and fake blood packs to simulate bullet hits. The Justice Department supervisor on the case, Edward Mason, asks Tyler to be the “assassin” wearing a disguise. He is paid $30,000 and assured by Mason that he is “100% protected”.

During the preparation, Lipton, the Justice agent in charge, handles Rollie’s gun. DeFranco wears Tyler’s rig to an Italian restaurant and the public “assassination” goes flawlessly. When Tyler is picked up by Lipton, the agent tries to shoot him. In the struggle for Lipton’s gun, the driver is killed and the car crashes, allowing Tyler to escape. He contacts Mason, who is shocked by Lipton’s actions and instructs him to wait for other agents to take him to a safe location. Another man thought to be Tyler is killed by the agents, proving that Mason is trying to kill him too. Rollie is worried that Lipton may have switched the blanks in the assassination gun with real bullets, meaning that Rollie really did kill DeFranco.

Rollie retreats to his girlfriend Ellen’s apartment. In the morning, Ellen is shot and killed by a sniper aiming for Tyler. Tyler kills the sniper after a fight when he enters the apartment to finish the job.

Manhattan homicide detective Leo McCarthy investigates the death of Ellen and the sniper and realizes it is connected to DeFranco, whom Leo has been pursuing for years. He discovers that the assassination was faked and that Mason planned it. When he is suspended by his captain for his reckless methods, McCarthy manages to steal his boss’s badge and gun.

Using an elaborate phone prank, Tyler lures Lipton out in the open and kidnaps him in his official car. He stuffs Lipton into the trunk and takes him on a rough ride to get Mason’s address out of him. Tyler steals back his impounded van with the help of his assistant and escapes following a chase through Lower Manhattan with McCarthy’s partner. Tyler goes to Mason’s mansion where, using his special effects expertise, he incapacitates Mason’s guards (and tricks some of them into killing each other). McCarthy arrives and seeing two unconscious guards at the gate, he alerts the State Police.

Mason and DeFranco figure out that Tyler has found them. DeFranco shoots out several windows in Mason’s study and Tyler falls through one of the windows, appearing to be dead. Mason and DeFranco try to leave the house when a helicopter arrives, but DeFranco receives an electric shock when he touches the metal screen on an outside door, rigged by Tyler. The shock disrupts DeFranco’s pacemaker. Before he dies of heart failure, Mason coerces and takes from him a key to a Swiss safe deposit box containing the funds DeFranco stole from the Mafia.

Mason prepares to escape, but is surprised by the appearance of Tyler, who points an Uzi submachine gun at him. Mason tries to bribe Tyler by giving him the key, proposing that they split the money, but urging immediate departure. Tyler places the gun on a table and tells Mason that the plan won’t work. Mason picks up the gun and demands the key back. Tyler shows Mason the bullets for the gun and a tube of Krazy Glue. With the gun glued to Mason’s hands, Tyler shoves him out the front door. Misinterpreting his action of walking towards them with a gun in his hands, yet making pleas that “It’s a mistake”, he is shot by the police.

Tyler’s “body” is found and taken to the morgue. He gets out of the body bag, removes the makeup simulating death and jumps out a window to escape. He is confronted by McCarthy. The film ends with Tyler impersonating DeFranco at the bank in Geneva and retrieving the $15 million in Mafia funds, after which he and McCarthy make a getaway with the cash. – Source

Leonardo DiCaprio, the Malaysian Money Scandal and His “Unusual” Foundation

According to the Justice Department, certain donations to the Oscar winner’s charity came directly from a multibillion-dollar embezzlement drama in Southeast Asia.

On the evening of July 20, under a tent at a vineyard in St. Tropez brimming to his specifications with booze, billionaires and babes, Leonardo DiCaprio was preparing to host one of the glitziest charitable events of the year: the third annual fundraiser for his Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation. Earlier that same day, under far less glamorous auspices half a world away, the U.S. Department of Justice was filing a complaint with the U.S. District Court in downtown Los Angeles that suggested the recent Oscar winner is a bit player in the planet’s largest embezzlement case, totaling more than $3 billion siphoned from a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund called 1MDB.

While the complaint does not target DiCaprio — he’s referred to twice in the 136-page document and only as “Hollywood Actor 1” — the scandal shines an unfamiliar light on the charitable foundation of the most powerful actor in Hollywood thanks to the way the LDF has benefited directly from DiCaprio’s relationship with key figures in the saga. And much like the gala in St. Tropez, with its expressions of one-percenter excess ostensibly in support of saving the environment (guests helicoptering in to dine on whole sea bass after watching a short film about the dangers of overfishing), a closer look at the LDF itself raises questions about its ties to the 1MDB players as well as the lack of transparency often required (or offered in this case) for the specific structure the actor has chosen for his endeavor.

Set up not as a nonprofit but instead as a donor-advised fund (DAF) attached to the California Community Foundation, which is a nonprofit, the LDF therefore is not required to file itemized public disclosures about its own revenue, expenditures and disbursements. “It’s difficult to characterize the giving of the DiCaprio Foundation because its status as part of the CCF makes it impossible to look at its finances,” industry trade journal Inside Philanthropy noted in 2015.

Despite repeated efforts, DiCaprio, 41, the LDF and the CCF all declined to fully answer fundamental questions related to transparency and accountability of the foundation — a decision that disappoints charity experts consulted by THR. “Everything might be perfectly fine, but we don’t know,” says Aaron Dorfman, president of the Washington, D.C.-based National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, of the LDF.- Source