The concept for the film came about during the Cannes film festival.  I  had heard of Cary Cremidas the director the previous year and now face to face at Cannes our collaborative creativity was sparked.  We both loved Paris and we were both returning for a brief stint after the festival.  We decided to shoot a short film in our favorite city.

I arrived in Paris two weeks before Cary and attended plays to meet French actors who we might possibly cast. 

A week before Cary was to arrive we still didn't have a script. 

I emailed my contacts in LA. “I need a script ASAP”,  I gave them the concept, and told them it had to be a short romantic comedy set in Paris with me as the lead.  I told them that this would be a very low budget film, no pay, but the chance to have a film shot in Paris!  We received 5 scripts, and chose “Only in Paris”

I asked Christine Allen, the Producer of  “L’Homme a Femme”,  with whom I had worked as an actress and Marie-Claude Schwartz a french casting director for some help with the names of  handsome male french actors. Christine gave me a list of actors, their names, ages, and telephone numbers.  I had no idea what they looked like or their acting experience. 

Thomas Gilou, the well known french director, (La vérité si je mens! 2) helped me location scout, and my girlfriend Marie-Laure graciously let me use her  studio apartment in the 13 arrondisement for Jean- Louis’s apartment.

Cary arrived the day before we were to start shooting.  The luxury of a long pre-production didn’t happen.  I rushed around to show him the locations I had found. Holding a casting session in a café,  I read with all the actors.   We chose Jean- Bertrand Aschraf,  who had a mysterious, almost slightly dangerous quality about him, yet very handsome as well.

We had three days to shoot the film.   I had to leave for a producers session for a series regular roll on the  french series “Plus Belle la Vie” (Life is Beautiful) in the South of France and Cary was returning to Los Angeles at the end of the week.

We were challenged with the weather and lighting. It rained for two of the three days.   Most of the film was shot in the streets of Paris so we had to use our ingenuity.  The outdoor scenes had to be shot as if it wasn’t raining. as if hair and clothing weren’t getting soaked.   Cary followed us with the camera.   We shot everywhere, on the metro, in alleyways, under archways in order to get enough coverage.

At the end of three days we only had the opening scene left to shoot, where Samantha wakes up in her luxury hotel room in Paris and finds out her fianceé in the states is cheating on her.  We decided we were going to shoot it in LA since we both resided there.

Easier said then done. Los Angeles had nothing that resembled Paris!  After 8 months of location scouting and 50 places later we found the location where we finally filmed, the Intercontinental, Los Angeles. 

The film was finally completed.