Most directors and producers love to find someone with bottomless wealth who fancies themselves a Hollywood producer.

They especially love it if the person with the money is not all that bright and also doesn’t really care if they make a return on their investment.

All of these rolled up into person is hard to find.

Once you land one of these people, you don’t let them go.

That is why it is still shocking to me to this day that one of these hidden gems only did the movie thing once. The first movie out for this hidden gem was an Oscar winner for Best Picture.

He gave out the money for the movie with no questions asked.

You would think people would be lining up to take his money.

After that first movie, there were some, but they were essentially con men pretending they had a movie.

The real movie people stayed away from the guy who had billions to throw around.

Why?

On the set of the Oscar winning movie, our financier, was giving away bags of coke to anyone who wanted them and was partying day and night with the cast and crew.

The director finally had enough and threw him off the set.

There was so much buzz about that set, that no one really wanted to take his money again.

All of you know who this person is, and it isn’t a drug dealer.

Dodi Fayed
Emad El-Din Mohamed Abdel Mena’em Fayed, better known as Dodi Fayed, was an Egyptian film producer and the son of billionaire Mohamed Al Fayed. He was the romantic partner of Diana, Princess of Wales, when they both died in a car crash in Paris in 1997

Chariots of Fire

I threw Dodi Fayed off Chariots Of Fire set for trying to give the cast cocaine

FILM producer Lord Puttnam has revealed he ordered Dodi Fayed off the set of Chariots Of Fire after the man who later stole Princess Diana’s heart tried to give the cast cocaine. Dodi was an executive producer on the Oscar-winning film – due for re-release this week – after his billionaire father Mohamed Al Fayed set him up in the movie business.

But according to Puttnam, Dodi was more interested in drugs and girls than in the film – which told the story of the 1924 Olympics.

‘Dodi had other things on his mind than developing a film career for himself, of which girls and drugs rated pretty highly – and not necessarily in that order,’ he said.

Puttnam arrived one day to find a number of cast members whose mood had clearly been altered by what he suspects was cocaine provided by Dodi. ‘I said to Dodi, “With the best will in the world, Dodi, this didn’t happen. And I never want to see you again around my cast and crew.” It was very unpleasant,’ said Puttnam.

The story was leaked to Dodi’s father. ‘It upset him terribly,’ said Puttnam. ‘Al Fayed had spent a huge amount of his life dealing with his son’s problems and trying to contain them. So maybe he found it difficult now that it was out in the open. It was all very sad.’

Though he will always be remembered as the man who died beside Princess Diana in a car crash in Paris in 1997, Dodi was a little-known playboy at the time of the film’s making in 1981.

Al Fayed had been so desperate to tame his errant son that he had set up the film production company Allied Stars in a vain attempt to carve out a career for him.

It was this company that provided nearly £2million to finance the early development of Chariots Of Fire, meaning its future hinged on the whims of an unreliable and often drugaddled young man.

Puttnam said: ‘He was one of the laziest human beings I’ve ever come across. So the idea of him being an executive producer was always going to be hopeless because he had the attention span of the average flea.’ – Source

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