The Cannae Files

The Cannae mail, Hannibal and the Tannenberg Battle

To write the Cannae email to Lydie in 2007 was one of the saddest moements in my life. Lydie Denier wanted to push me out of my own movie and take it to Avi Lerner. She was absolutely sure she could make me to turn the movie over to her. She had teamed up with Roswitha Schreiner, the German actress who played the Mrs Tanner part and Lydie had replaced Katja and Jean with two other actresses, Esther Seibt and Jutta Fastian. The camera was now operated mainly by Roswitha´s husband and Lydie had already a scheduled meeting with Avi Lerner. She was supposed to meet him some days later at the Cannes Filmfestival to show him some edited scenes of "A Bouquet for a Kill". She had made me to believe earlier she wanted to meet with Avi to bring him in as a co-prodcuer and had asked me to give her the receipts of shooting so she can show it to Avi Lerner. Later she admitted it was not to bring in Avi Lerner as a co-producer but to make him buy me out. She wanted me to leave the movie so she could take over and Avi Lerner should pay. I refused to leave my own movie.

Lydie´s take-over attempt was very poorly designed. She did not own the copyright, I do. I also had shot the same story twice in Germany years before, so I can prove it is my copyright and the English script is registered at the Copyright office in Washington in 2003 ! I have contracts with the actors I brought in like Katja Bienert and Rolf Eden, while Lydie obviously not even had signed contracts with the people she brought in to replace the old crew / cast hired by me. They shot for some days without contracts and insurance and I declared I will not give them more money if not contracts with all involved are signed before starting shooting long version in may. I have signed contracts with all people involved in the april and february shootings including Lydie; the only exception is Roswitha Schreiner who did not sign her contract and told me she has first to mail it to her agent in Hamburg. From march 2007 till may 2007 she and her agent always wanted to re-negotiate something in the contract and I finally declared she has to sign it before start may shooting. Then Roswitha sent me an email admitting she will not sign any contract before Lydie has talked to Avi Lerner in Cannes.
So when I refused to pay more money for the may shooting they did shoot anyway. I was present on some days of the shooting on some not. I had set up the may shooting, paid already money, paid the props, rentet locations and much more. I still allowed them to use the locations and props, my lighting equipment and as mentioned I was present on some of he shooting days ie at the restaurant scenes and PI office, street scenes in Damaschkestrasse Berlin. (Roswitha´s lawyer later claimed I had not even been present during the shooting).

I did warn Lydie several times she is about to make the same mistake as the romans when fighting Hannibal at Cannae: The much bigger roman army attacked the center of Hannibal´s smaller army, pushing them back, Hannibal´s left and right marched forward, surrounded the roman army and then won the battle in spite of the fact they were actually outnumbered by the much bigger roman army.
In 1914 two big Russian armies attacked Germany and only a small German army was there to stop them led by Hindenburg, Ludendorff and Hoffmann. They remembered Hannibal and Cannae and used the same tactics. They surrounded with their little army the first of the much bigger Russian army.

My situation was similar. There was Lydie Denier, Hollywood star with more than 20 years experice in the toughest showbiz communtiy of the world, Roswitha, a very wellknown German actress and the big Avi Lerner one of the most powerful men in showbiz. By then I did not know that Avi Lerner would not support Lydie any longer as soon as he learned what is really going on. Everyone told me they are too strong to fight but it was my project and I was not willing to let Lydie push me out.
But thinking of Hannibal and Tannenberg I knew I had at least a chance. I have been a soldier in Germany and our headquarters were named after the Battle of Tannenberg, so I knew a lot about Cannae and Tannenberg and that you do not have to panic if
someone who seems to be much stronger attacks you.
I designed a plan how to stop Lydie and I and the DP went to the editor who was a friend of Roswitha´s and explained him what was going on. He agreed that he would not give Lydie Denier the edited scenes unless there are signed contracts. He went over to Roswitha´s place where Lydie and her German friends already had a good time making plans for Cannes. When the editor told Lydie he will not give her the tapes if she does not show him signed contracts of the project she had lost. She had trapped herself in her own trap like the Romans at Cannae. She had nothing to go to Cannes and to show it to Avi Lerner. She wrote me emails and called me asking me to sign a take over contract giving her the rights to use the shot material and show it to Avi Lerner (I have uploaded this email earlier in the blog: the email about letting the cutter burn the movie). I refused to sign the project over to Lydie, and the DP and I set up an own contract. I refused to sign Lydie´s contract and she refused to sign mine.
The meeting in Cannes had to be cancelled.
I contacted Avi Lerner´s office and faxed them what was going on and his office informed me they stopped talking to Lydie.

While this fight was going on, I wrote the famous Cannae email. Before mailing it to Lydie I showed it to the DP who asked me NOT to send it. I thought about for a while then decided to mail it and I thought after what Lydie did she deserved this mail.
I still think it was right. (I only made one grammar mistake. I do speak English but not perfect as you might already noticed. In the mail I wrote "part" instead of "share".

The Cannae mail story also shows of course that Lydie uses really every dirty trick to get rid of me.
She later tried to use this email two times against me.
I uploaded above:

1. my original Cannae email the way it was sent to Lydie Denier (and a copy cc to
Roswitha Schreiner)

2. The falsified and shortened email Lydie Denier presented in 2009 to Santa Monica
court

3. a letter of Roswitha Schreiner´s (!!!!) lawyer claiming I had written the
Cannae email to Roswitha !!!! offending and threatening her with that mail
to make her sign my contract !!!

1. The original mail: I load it up as I wrote it only blacking out two names of
two people Lydie and I know but who are not involved in his fight.
When the cutter refused to give Lydie the dvd she wanted to show it to Avi
Lerner, her take over attempt had failed. I wrote to her: Game over. and signed:
Hannibal. (I am NOT crazy and think I am Hannibal, it simply was a short and
perfect way to let Lydie know her take over game was ... over!)

If you go on reading you see this whole mail is about the fight over the movie,
Lydie´s situation when she was in Paris. She did not get anymore parts in Holly-
wood for a while and was in Paris not really knowing what to do next. When
I set up production of "A Bouquet for Kill" I realized she not even had a
Health insurance and I bought her one not only for the time we shot as usual
while producing a movie but also for the time in-between shootings. (I am not
a saint, acutally it did cost almost the same if I bought 3 times an isurance
for a couple of weeks or one for several months). I also tried to help her to
get new roles introducing her to producers and directors I know and also tried
to help her to sell her theater play about Garbo and her paintings she left here
in Germany while shooting Bouquet. So I was very sad realizing that she actually
tried to push me out of my project.
But there was still the problem left what to do with Bouquet. I have the tapes
of february and april shooting, Lydie and/or her German friends the tapes of
may shooting and none of us could do anything without the other. So when I wrote
things like if you do not save me I will not save your or if I will perish we
both will perish this was about the movie, NOT about a massacre as Lydie wants
to make believe Santa Monica court and press now.

And now look what Lydie did with the mail when she showed to Santa Monica court the
shortened version:

Lydie showed them only some parts inlcuding Hannibal, Tannenberg, the I will
take you away your magic and the we both will perish line.

Great! Looks like a maniac in love had written that who has totally lost his
mind. I cannot even blame Lydie´s fan´s and deputy Denham when reading this,
they believed Lydie she is stalked by a maniac. But you see it´s not true and
you see how Lydie operates now, if you look at the original email.

Also a few words about magic. Lyide Denier was an actress who had a certain kind of magic. Few actors have this. Like James Stewart, Peter Cushing, Lee Grant, Barbara Eden, Erich von Stroheim, Maurice Chevalier. Lydie had this kind of magis earlier. When we started shooting Bouquet I felt she was sad and the magic was not here anymore. As you can see on her website she hadn´t had any parts for some years and she seemed to me very unhappy. After we started shooting this changed and when we shot the scene outside when she was kind of dancing around the tree that magic came back. I am horribly sad that Lydie dediced to fight me and try to push me out of Bouquet. She was kind of Jeklly and Hyde, one day hugging and kissing me and telling me how much she loves working with me, the other day telling around she will never work with me again. I think she just hated the idea of having to take orders from a low budget producer as she thinks herself still to be a big Hollywood star.
As far as I am concerend I always loved and admired her as an actress and I would have stayed with her forever. At the beginning it was so much fun working with her and I thought I had found my Stan Laurel. I always looked for a partner in Hollywood I could work the same way I work with Katja Bienert in Germany and to me Lyide seemed to be that person. She had worked for so many years in Hollywood and when we started working and shooting together at first it was not only fun but I realized if we go on we could become a couple like Laurel and Hardy, Martin and Lewis or Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, setting up together some special kind of thrillers with very cool leading ladies. Lydie also realized early this concept would work, but she decided she only wanted the concept and not me. So she tried to take the concept but WITHOUT me to Avi Lerner.

Looking back, not really a good idea.

As far as Roswitha Schreiner is concerned, she supported Lydié´s take over attempt for reasons I never really understood.
She even let her lawyer write a letter to my lawyer, claiming I had offended and threatened her by mailing her an email (see above) : "Sign my contract and we all
will win. Do not sign it and we both will perish...Your game is over...I am Tannenberg...."

Sounds familar? Yes, she gave her lawyer the or parts of the Cannae email claiming I offended and threatend her with that mail. If you read my original mail above you see clearly this mail was mailed to Denier, only a copy to Roswitha Schreiner. As she was involved and Lydie stayed at her place during may shooting I had mailed a copy to Roswitha to let her know what was going on.

I mentioned I felt very sad to had to write this mail and I am also not happy that I have to upload it now. I never would have made this public. I already have showed the original email to the German police in 2007 when Roswitha claimed I had offended her, but I had not the intention to make it public.
When Lydie now went not only to Santa Monica Court and showed them the falsified email to make me look like a crazy fan who is stalking her and when the falsified email along with court papers where given to TMZ and other media, I had no other choice but to upload the original email to show everyone what really happened.

There are obviously still fans of Lydie´s who did not get it yet and write how sorry they feel for Lydie to be stalked by some bad guy.
I would heave preferred to find a solution the way I mentioned in my mail to Max Keller, Lydie editing a director´s cut, and I editing a producer´s cut. It was Lydie Denier´s decision to go public telling lies.
So I had to go public telling the truth.
It seems one Cannae is not enough for Lydie.
I have no idea what Lydie wants to achieve with this. I want my tapes back, I want
to edit and release the movie. And I can imagine Lydie´s fans also would like to see the movie Lydie did direct. Movies are made to be shown. And it´s the job of the director to make sure they are finished.
Sincerely Yours,
Michael Huck