By Katherine Nichols and Rachel Ross Bradley
The Maui Film Festival may not be Cannes. Or Sundance. But NOBODY CARES because it has perfect beaches, compelling films, and a chocolate gala. It’s always been popular with celebrities (Four Seasons Wailea…duh.), and was one of my better assignments. Over the years, I had lovely, civilized (as in, no red carpet chaos) interviews with Pierce Brosnan (eternally sexy, let me tell you), Dennis Quaid, Virginia Madsen, Zooey Deschanel, Willie Nelson, Felicity Huffman (before the gross college admissions scandal, obviously), William H. Macy, and many more.
Photo credit above: Michael Buckner for Getty Images. Dennis Quaid, Virginia Madsen, Pierce Brosnan.
Interview with Zooey Deschanel
One year, I invited my best friend Rachel Ross Bradley to join me. We were late picking up our rental car, which was supposed to be the smallest, cheapest, crappiest available. But the company had run out (it’s a thing everywhere, but especially on an island). There was only one left: A huge RED HUMMER. Rachel called it the Earth-f-er 4000, or something like that. When we drove around, everybody flipped us off.
Quick background on Rachel (below): She’s not only my closest friend, but she’s the most amazing human, a favorite of everyone who knows her, and a phenomenal athlete.
As my longtime endurance training partner, I credit her with extending my fitness, strength, and competitive abilities by years. Difficult to recall how many triathlons, marathons, bike trips, and more we’ve done together.
Here we are, for example, sitting quietly at the end of the 52-mile annual running relay from Kahalui to Hana on Maui (left), and on the cover of a magazine together:
I could fill a gallery with our photos. But you get the idea. She’s a badass real estate broker and a super talented writer. She started a blog called “Run Like a Mother” that became wildly popular (and now belongs to someone else…so you don’t get a link, but it’s still her Insta handle). At one point, it attracted hundreds of thousands of views. At the time, we were both unmarried, parenting five young kids between us, and juggling full-time jobs. We also had a lot of race wins between us. And lest you think we were aided by babysitters or nannies or cleaning assistance, we had none of those. We were insanely efficient. Like, military precision level stuff from 4 a.m. each day.
Anyway, with her permission, I’ll share occasional posts from those days because thinking about them still makes me laugh. Plus, I love her voice. When she finishes a book, I’m sure it will be a bestseller.
Here’s her take on part of the Maui Film Festival — by Rachel Ross Bradley:
At the Four Seasons Wailea Friday morning, Tori Spelling’s boobs were brunching, along with her kids, two nannies, and tattoo-guy, who I think was her husband. There is nothing low-pro about Ms. Spelling.
Post-brunch I needed to float around in reduced gravity for a while. I lugged my gut to the pool. Then I kind-of accosted Dax Shepard in the hot tub, but he was a nice guy (Kristen Bell was at MFF also!). So there, a celeb photo for y’all.
Katherine and I were walking the beachfront path through Wailea when we saw a fit Black man pretending to box up ahead. I made fun of him, because he was alone, on the run path, and fighting a ghost. And because I’m a little mean sometimes. He turned around and walked at us on the path, grinned and said Hi there. He was Eddie Murphy. We were cool, I swear. Until he was 10 feet away. Here’s hoping he didn’t see me making fun of him.
Tonight was the Taste of Chocolate, a party at the Four Seasons. It was all this incredible chocolate (every part of that sculpture (left) is chocolate!) and chocolate martinis and film makers and movie stars and individual souffles and chocolate fountains.
It was all great and glamorous, and then Katherine and I decided to walk home along the path between the Fairmont and the Four Seasons. It was after 1 am and very dark, but there were two of us, so we were safe, of course. We were looking at the Milky Way and lighting the pathway with Blackberries, when Katherine froze and started screaming. My instinct was to run from whatever was freaking her out, but she wouldn’t move, even when I pulled on her. Because it seems that the hairy creature that was standing on both of her feet had her totally immobilized. We couldn’t see it, but it was a big ass rat. After what seemed like a minute, she was free of the giant rat and I lost it. I was trying to drag her along by her little Gucci bag, but I was laughing so hard at her that I was crying and I couldn’t stand up.\
She said maybe it was a mongoose. And I said, Yeah, because they’re out at night. I laughed harder at her disgust.. and then tripped on a giant rat. Holy crap, it was so big it was on both of my feet at once. It was a solid eight-pounder, easy. It was ridiculously hairy and climbing all over my feet. It’s hard to run from the rats in heels. But somehow we did it. They were scurrying in and out of the Naupaka bushes along the path and I was chanting Pretend it’s kittens, pretend it’s kittens, over and over.
It’s not all glamour and photo ops, people.
Photo credit above: Maui Film Festival.
*** PLEASE NOTE: Our hearts go out to everyone on Maui following the tragic fire that devastated Lahaina. The state and island are encouraging visitors — everywhere except Lahaina, which interferes with clean-up efforts and is disrespectful to those who have lost loved ones, homes, businesses, and treasured possessions. Otherwise, Hawaii Community Foundation’s Maui Strong Fund is a reputable place to donate. Maui will recover!