Gary Concoff, has traveled to the Cannes Film Festival more than a couple of dozen times, but he isn’t an actor. He’s one of a handful of L.A. entertainment lawyers who trek to France every spring to negotiate film financing deals and, of course, to enjoy a lunch or two on the French Riviera.
“If you spend your life structuring and negotiating deals, this is like the heaven of deals,” said Concoff, chairman of the media and entertainment department at TroyGould LLP.
Craig Emanuel, who heads the entertainment department at Century City firm Loeb & Loeb LLP, also attended the film festival last month with four colleagues. He didn’t spend much time with them. Instead, Emanuel, 49, met with clients.
“I got to catch up with people who I might deal with on the phone,” Emanuel said.
Meanwhile, Patty Mayer, 50, made a drive-by visit to the festival because the Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP partner had to jet back to Los Angeles for meetings.
“I tried to camp out at one place and get everyone to come and see me,” she joked.
Chinese Connection
There’s a new Chinese architecture prize that has some local roots.
Qingyun Ma, dean of the USC Architecture School, is the founding director and a jury member of the new Ordos Prize. The international prize is at least partly the result of Ma’s relationship with Cai Jiang, an entrepreneur from Ordos, which is in the Inner Mongolia section of China. Ma designed a mixed-use project in Ordos for the entrepreneur, who is sponsoring the prize along with the city of Ordos.
“He’s a very visible person. I am also,” said Ma, who is Chinese and collaborated with Jiang on creating the prize. “So sometimes his face and my face will show up in the same magazines. So we’ve know each other for a long time.”
The prize, which will recognize one emerging young architect at an Aug. 20 ceremony, has a high-profile jury and nominating committee. Rem Koolhaas heads the award’s jury and Robert A. M. Stern is on the nominating committee.
“China in the last 20 years has built so many buildings, including the Bird’s Nest and China Central Television Building,” Ma said. “The prize is really the first attempt to form something nonphysical that can last longer than even the physical manifestation of architecture.”
Staff reporters Alexa Hyland and Daniel Miller contributed to this column. Page 3 is compiled by Editor Charles Crumpley. He can be reached at [email protected].
