Page 343 - James Caan - The Real Deal

33 · Into the Den

something funny about Peter’s Ferrari. It was the number plate.
Theo must have got his driver to change the plates while we were
filming: it read W411 KER with a well-placed screw in the middle
of the 11. I thought it was hilarious.
The filming itself was harder work than I had expected, and on
my first few days in the Den I was exhausted. The warehouse set
was inside a box inside a huge aircraft hangar of a studio and
walking into it was strange – it looks different with all the cameras
and the lights and the crew in it. With all the other chairs
allocated, I took the one on the end, and, of course, the first thing
I did was check out the pile of money on the table in front of me.
Well, wouldn’t you? I was just relieved they weren’t expecting me
to go the cashpoint every morning.
Then the hair and make-up people popped in to check we were
still as beautiful as we were when we’d left their department a few
minutes earlier, and I was quite pleased to find that I wasn’t
nervous, just really excited.
The next thing I knew, the director had said ‘Action’ and the
first entrepreneur was walking up the stairs.
‘Hang on. Stop!’
‘What is it, James?’ he asked.
‘I haven’t had my pack.’
‘What pack’s that?’
‘The one with all the details on the people who are coming to
pitch. I haven’t been shown anything.’
Theo turned to me. ‘What makes you think you’re so special?’
‘You mean we don’t get told anything in advance?
‘Welcome to the club.’
I felt hugely embarrassed as the director said ‘Action’ again and
we started for the second time. I had always thought that assessing
an investment in less than an hour – which is the most people
usually get in the Den – was pretty tough (in the real world, you
get weeks if not months to tie up a deal), but I hadn’t realised that

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