This is the story of a character I met, that I wouldn't have believed was real, had I not met him. His story is straight out of a Hollywood film, but there's no happy ending. This is the curious case of C.S. Leigh, a man who has spun the most incredible fantasy around himself while damaging, ruining and even ending lives, in his ruthless pursuit of his own personal glory.
In January of 2011, still buzzing from becoming a father for the first time, 3 months earlier, I answered an ad on the Film & TV industry website; Mandy.com. The subsequent events that took place, folded together in order to weave another patch of the rich tapestry of life.
Back in December 2011 I was pretty high on life, I had little money, but I had a new place to live, a new business and a new baby. Things were good and it felt like they were going to get even better; the ad that I saw on Mandy was asking for an editor with creative vision who wanted to be involved in a lo-to-mid-budget film project, financed by the French TV and film giant Canal +, and was destined for Cannes.
Hell why not? I thought to myself, this is way beyond me and they probably want broadcast credits coming out of my arse, but things are going so well; so who knows?
I got a reply.
Woohoo!
The mail I received back was from a producer; Rob, who said that the director C.S. Leigh would like to meet me as he was intrigued by my showreel and my beautiful work.
"Baby, can you get the baby oil ready, I think I'm going to need it to help me get my head out of this door. it's grown so big!"
I met C.S. Leigh in a cafe on Baker St. not far from Marylebone Station, he bought me a tea and a Danish, while he supped on cola and we discussed his project, as we talked, I fell in love.
"This project is made for me!!!"
I started talking passionately about the project, this was something I could do, this was me, this was MY BIG BREAK!!!
I pulled out every trick in the book, I was charming, daring, bold, creative, passionate, obssesive, I was every damned, positive adjective I could muster.
Our meeting finished, we shook hands warmly; I resisted the urge to hug him and tell him that I'd been waiting so many years to meet someone like him. Instead, I asked him when he'd let me know, he said Producer Rob would be getting back in touch with me shortly. He ended our meeting with the words; "I have a good feeling about you."
I felt like I was 15 again, skipping home, light headed, like I was hearing those words from my playground crush...
Rob emailed me - I GOT THE JOB!!!!
I am pleased to inform you, that Syntax Editions would like to employ you as Principal Editor on the film An American In Paris. Christian
was struck by your passion and ideas for the project. He felt that you
were on the same page creatively and he can't wait to start working
with you.Please forward me your expected rate for the job, also stating how you would like to be paid (bank details etc.) and we can go from
there.
After dancing and whooping round the living room for a full 2 minutes, with my girlfriend looking at me with that; I-knew-he'd-snap-one-day, look on her face. I finally managed to settle down enough to tell her that from here on in, life was going to be different. I was going to be a film editor, no sorry, I was going to be a famous, award-winning film editor.
I knew exactly what I was going to say in my interviews for Canne, BAFTA and of course The Oscars.
They don't show interviews with editors do they? They'll make an exception for me and my genius; who wouldn't?
Oh and on top of all that, he want's me to set MY OWN RATE!!!
Shit, I have no idea what I should charge, luckily, I have industry friends...
I was advised that £1300 + double time for weekends, per week, based on 10 hour days, 5 days per week, was pretty standard, depending on broadcasting rights, blah, blah, blah.
Nobody had ever paid me that much before, now someone wanted to pay me shit loads of money to fulfill a lifelong ambition, I was prepared to accept half of that! So I fired off the email to Rob with my, what I felt were rather exorbitant pay demands.
Rob wrote back;
If you drop the overtime and agree to do the odd weekend at the standard rate, we've got a deal
OH-MY-GOD!
This is going to be a 6-8 week job, I'm not going out, because of the baby, I'll be working minimum 10 hours a day, I will have saved up roughly between 8 and 10 grand, awesome, and on top of that, I'm going to Canne with a film that I've edited.
I don't mind telling you my dear readers, I felt a certain stirring in my trousers, as I was thinking about all of this.
Our baby daughter was still sleeping in our bed (great way to stop her crying all night) with me on the sofabed in the living room. So I converted our daughter's bedroom into an edit suite, which consisted of me moving my computer and 2 chairs into the room. I bought an old cathode-ray monitor, for grading purposes and I was ready.
Days passed and no reply to my of course I'll drop the overtime email, the days turned into a week and still no reply.
I reread the email, maybe, in my excitement I had missed something, or maybe they had just worked out that I was a fraud, I wasn't a real editor, this guy can't pull this off, let's get a professional.
Oh how my stomach churned;
please let this be real!.
I emailed Chris direct and told him that we now had a nice quiet edit suite to work in.
The next day, he replied!
Hi, sorry about the delay, I've been in Paris meeting with Canal +, finalizing the finances
Oh, yeah, I'd forgotten about Canal +, they had agreed to show the film on French TV after Cannes, meaning I would have a broadcast credit to go along with my film credit, fucking A!
I am back in London on Sunday night, so we can start Monday; what's the best way to get to yours?
Phew, OK, it's fine, it's real and it's on.
The story was one of beauty, passion and intrigue, I couldn't believe that I was being made custodian of what could be, in years to come, considered an important piece of discourse, an esteemed historical record.
(Have I mentioned I have sensibilities in the area of delusions of grandeur?)
The subject was Ralph Rucci, an American couture designer who in 2002, had the honour of becoming the first American designer in more than 60 years to be invited to show in Paris by the French Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture.
Rucci was and is an artist, some of his dresses could clearly be defined as works of art, indeed he had previously sold his private art collection, in order to fund the lavish process by which he made clothes.
One particular dress cost €100,000 to make, and took around 150 people to complete, Rucci made it with no prior guarantee that he would sell it. For him, the dress had to be made, whether it was sold or not, it was about the art, the beauty, not the profit.
The Philadelphia born designer, had started Chado Ralph Rucci in 1994 after graduating from the New York, Fashion Institute of Technology. He worked with Hugo Balenciagia, but his real hero was, Madame Gris a French artisan, who had moved from the world of sculpture to apply her art in the rarefied atmosphere of haute couture.
Rucci was intoxicated by stories of Mrs Mellon; Rachel Lambert Mellon, an American socialite who would take her entire army of staff to summer in Paris. There she would take residence in her apartments at the Ritz, so she could be fitted in the latest by Chanel and Dior. Her staff too, would be liveried in coordinated uniforms.
Ralph Rucci, took this spirit of oppulence and started to work with the venerable houses of French embroiders, like the famous Lesage.
What insolence! An American no less, he is making clothes like a Frenchman! Mon Dieu! We must see this man, Paris must know of his work!
Things changed for him after that, his business which had been hemorrhaging money due to the extravagant processes he employed to fashion women's clothes. But now, he was recognised, his sister, tears up as she says on camera;
He had arrived, this was his Oz
The intrigue was supplied by, La Maison de Chanel, who Yves Saint Laurent was now contracted to; they had realised that the late 20th century had changed sufficiently enough from the early years to warrant a new approach to making clothes. They were a business. they had shareholders to satisfy, interests to protect. No longer could they afford to have hundreds of people involved for the making of just one dress, the economic climate could no longer support such shameful extravagance.
So Chanel decided that if they couldn't make dresses this way anymore, nobody should, after all, they were La Maison de Chanel, they were couture. As far as they were concerned, they defined what the term couture meant. So they systematically bought up all of the old houses, including the eminent House of Lasage.
Apart from asking Chanel to promise not to monopolise the industry and hike up prices, the French government took a remarkably lax stance to a manufactured monopoly, that I don't believe many others would have taken.
Now Ralph Rucci, went from the ecstatic heights of acceptance, to the low despair of foreboding. Dior raised the prices of lace by a factor of ten. This meant that a dress that cost Chado €25,000 to make last season, would cost €250,000 this season. How can you sell a dress that cost a quarter of a million euros to make?
The story promised to be a rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-redemption story, and I was going to help tell it.
This was as far as I got in the intriguing story of Ralph Rucci and his company Chado, because C.S. Leigh, aka Chris Leigh, aka Kristien Leigh, aka, a whole lot of other names, was a con artist, a Walter Mitty type character who dealt in the currency of fantasy.
I was 2 weeks into the job, we had spent most of the first week, logging and capturing the footage, in my tiny "edit suite". Leigh would arrive usually around 10:00 am with a 2 litre bottle of cola which he would drink in its entirety by the time he left at about 6:00 pm, regardless of my offers of healthy food and drink.
The footage consisted mainly of interviews, from Andre Leon Talley, the ex editor at large, for American Vogue and judge on America's Next Top Model, to Rucci himself.
Some of the interviews where in French and had been shot in Paris, like the one with the famous embroiderer, Lesage, this didn't matter as Leigh spoke fluent French and would help me edit and subtitle later. For now, we concentrated on the English interviews.
I was struck by the difference in quality of the footage, some of the interviews were beautifully shot, others were terrible, I was going to have to really pull out the colour correction and grading stops. However the content was engaging enough and the sound was fine, but still..
Chris had told me to get in touch with Rob about the money I was owed, he said that Rob had met with Canal + again and they had sent some of the money they'd promised. To really persuade them though, we should put together a 5 minute segment, of the film, it's OK if we change it later, but this will give them a flavour of what's to come.
Fine, we work like hounds to get it ready, trawling through hours and hours of footage, I fill 2 TB of hard drive space and quickly buy another 2.
Rob is still in Paris, but Chris agrees to meet me in the same Baker St. cafe we first met in, Rob has wired him some money; phew! I could do with the £2600 I'm owed.
I meet Chris on a crisp, sunny, Saturday morning, we talk about the project, I tell him I need some footage he said he has, but is waiting for one of his New York cameramen to send over.
OK, great, he needs to send it over quickly, I tell him, I want this 5 minute teaser to be as good as it can be and that footage sounds dynamite.
He assured me that we would have it by next week, he then reached into his pocket and handed me an envelope. A part of me relaxed, however the relaxation evaporated as I took the envelope,
hm, must be all fifties, it feels a bit light.
I opened it up, lots of twenties, no fifties, it was £400. Chris noted the barely disguised, appalled look that had spread across my entire face.
"Is that not right?"
"Well no, Rob had agreed to £1200 a week and we've done over 2 weeks now, I was expecting £2400"
"Oh wow! I didn't realise that, sorry, he should have made that clear to me, I can go to the ATM right now and give you another £200 from my own account. I will tell Rob off for you, because that has inconveienced me as well and I like things to be dealt with in a professional manner. I'm so sorry."
"£200? OK, that's fine, I guess, and when you say next week...?"
"Wednesday latest, but I'll see you on Monday morning and update you, I'm emailing him after I leave you."
After that, he took me to a cash machine round the corner and gave me another £200
The following Monday when Chris came round to my house, he told me that Rob had returned and apologised, their had been a problem transferring funds between France and America and now that the weekend had passed, the problem was sorted, on Friday I would get this week's money and the money owed to me; great.
We got the teaser finished by Wednesday evening, 24 hours earlier than planned, Chris flew to Paris the next day to meet with Canal +.
I couldn't get hold of Rob on the Friday.
On Sunday, Chris emailed me and said that Canal + loved the teaser and had agreed to full funding, they said that my work had an elegance and beauty to it, that they hoped would be prevalent in the rest of the film.
Honey! I'm going to be needing more of that, getting-in-the-door oil for my head again!
We worked for 2 more days on it, Rob had had to rush back to NYC, but the bonus was, he was going to get that golden footage by hand and bring it back.
Chris suggested I take a few days off, as we needed the footage to continue and he felt it wasn't right that I should carry on working, when Rob was being so slack with paying me. He was due back from NYC on Friday and Chris would get him to call me, if he hadn't called by 11:00 am, I was to call Chris and he'd put a rocket up his arse for me.
Great.
Friday came.
11:00 am - came, and went.
11:30 - I call Chris on the pay-as-you-go mobile he bought when he came to London, no answer, no way to leave a message.
1:00 pm - I call email Rob and call Chris, no answer.
3:00 pm - I scour the emails Rob has sent me for an office number or mobile, there isn't one, I look for a number in the book he gave me on our first meeting, Syntax #2: Too Much Night, but there isn't one.
With a heavy heart and a sinking feeling, I call Chris again, reminding him that I have financial responsibilities that I need to take care of. I HATE having to do that!
4:30 pm - I'm beginning to wonder if Rob exists; is it just Chris playing a game with me? Finally, after more angry emails and messages, I do what I should have done after our first meeting, I Google C.S. Leigh
OH SHIT!
From left to right; producer, Mark Westaway, actress, Ezter Toth at Leigh's film Process (courtesy of Getty Images.)
I will never forget the feeling, seeing the first, yes, THE FIRST result, (oh boy did I feel even stupider than usual) was an article written by the Times of London, called, The Talented Mr Leigh, unfortunately these days you have to have a paid subscription to read the entire post.
Lets just say, the article talks about Leigh in less than favourable terms, below is an excerpt from the first paragraph:
He's a master of the vanishing act and reinvention. First he dressed
the stars at the Oscars, then he sold art to the rich, and now he's a
movie director. Every time he disappeared and changed his name,
leaving behind a trail of suspicion. Who is C S Leigh?
I dug deeper (I ventured onto page 2 of a Google search!), the reading didn't get any less depressing. There was an old People magazine article that told of him claiming to have designed Meryl Streep's, 1982, Academy Awards dress (Streep had never heard of him) and living from that notoriety.
The more I read, the more I found stories of him ripping off artists, art dealers, photographers, cameramen, producers, directors, the list went on and on and on.
He had actually made a couple of films, but because they were completed with multiple editors, cameramen and other people necessary for making a film, they made little or no sense.
After posting on a video forum I used, I got loads of replies from people he had ripped off or was in the process of ripping off.
After I gave that warning, I got a private message from someone saying they were making a documentary about him, he wondered if I would be prepared to speak on the phone.
When I spoke to the documentary maker, I realised that I had got off lightly, he told me of a producer, in Paris, who had lost €250,000 euros to Leigh and had committed suicide.
I later found out the producer was called Humbert Balsan, an Egyptian producer who had gone to live in Paris, he apparently had a passion for crazy projects, unfortunately, he met C.S. Leigh, who would present Balsan with a crazy project and then bleed the poor man dry.
That put things in perspective, I wasn't angry any more and I felt relief that he was out of my life and genuine pity for someone who could never settle anywhere. He could never make any true friends for fear of his past catching up with him.
I had a couple of bizarre email encounters with Leigh in the year or two after the whole debacle, the first was in November of 2011. He contacted me and said he'd become aware that I posted some of the content we'd edited online, with some negative comments about the film, running out of money.
I told him that he'd ripped me off, and that I just put it that way so it wouldn't detract from the content. He said he'd pay me the balance by the end of the following week, I told him I wouldn't hold my breath. Needless to say, he didn't pay.
The next contact was in 2013, via the warning post I had made on the video forum.
The feed had been dead for about a year, then suddenly I got an email notification about a response to my Warning About Syntax Editions And CS Leigh. A junior member called gazatthebop responded to the post defending him!
I immediately realised that it was Chris himself, but decided to humour him, I won't go into detail here, but you can read the full exchange here. But suffice to say, it was a strange talking to someone, pretending to be someone else and the person they are pretending to be at the same time.
Around the same sort of time, he also replied to one of my Youtube videos, he saw in the comments section some more negative things said about him and again tried to pretend to be someone else. I last heard of him in 2014, when a journalist from Vice, contacted me for an interview, because he was doing an article on Leigh.
Leigh clearly Googles himself regularly, and is rightly dismayed at the amount of negative press circulating about him, yet somehow, I believe that he is still doing what he does best.
He intoxicates with his erudite nature, he speaks with an authority and knowledge about the fashion, art and film worlds. He excites, he inspires. He facilitates the process of dreaming big and then he takes an equally big, huge, cola-induced, dump all over the dreams of the people drawn to his malevolent orbit. He pauses only to survey the wreckage, before waddling quietly off, into the sunset.
Photo credits:
Headline portrait C.S. Leigh, Vice magazine online - A True Rip Off Artist (article for which I was interviewed)
Too Much Night - from the same article.
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Till Next Time.
