Cannes Film Festival 2007

Anyone compiling a Cannes survival guide for journalists may want to consider the following:

1. There are parties and there are parties. After I got an invite to a major Hollywood bash at this year’s festival it quickly became clear that while it may get you through the door, it won’t get you to where you want to go. Hoping to check out the magnificent building at the end of a large garden where most the guests had gathered, my path was barred by two burly security guards standing next to a sign saying “limited access” (or some such). So that must be where the great hang out, while the merely good, and the journalists, mill around on the lawn.

2. There are stars and there are superstars. While the stars generally hold court in Cannes, more often than not on a swanky hotel balcony or the beach itself, the superstars have a habit of demanding much more of your time and effort. The really big productions, and those that feature top Hollywood actors, often hold their interviews at the exclusive Du Cap hotel located about 30 minutes’ drive from Cannes. So I travelled there to meet Angelina Jolie for “A Mighty Heart” while a colleague did the same to interview Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Matt Damon et al for “Ocean’s Thirteen“. Although the surroundings are pleasant enough — manicured gardens, azure seas, towering palm trees plus the odd paparazzo bobbing up and down in a nearby boat with an ultra-along lens — the waiting can be tedious and the temperatures draining.

And for a five-star establishment, the coffee they serve needs some attention. The “Mighty Heart” interviews actually ran fairly smoothly, meaning a round trip of around four hours for six minutes of questions with Angelina (plus a similar time with three co-stars).

It could be a lot, lot worse.

A young man in a black suit pokes his head around the corner of our little office at the Cannes film festival and asks whether I can help. Im an actor, he says. Im not well known at all. No-ones ever heard of me. Can you help me become famous?

He explains he is sleeping on the beach and bluffing his way into receptions by dressing like a security guard. Ill do anything, he says.

I never discover his name but he embodies a phenomenon that is almost as integral to the Cannes film festival as the red carpet and the stars, namely the desperate struggle of the unknowns.

If you don’t have a pass for screenings or press and promotional events it needs cunning and determination even to get in the door and enter a different realm from the tourists who crowd around the entrance to the main festival hall with signs asking for spare invitations.

More than one independent film maker sits on the Croisette busking his unfinanced projects while passers-by take pictures with their mobile phones. It seems hard to believe they have much luck.

On closer inspection, the suit worn by the young man who stopped in our office had the fatally shabby look of an ill-fated social climber in a Balzac novel and his naively direct approach was probably not the most profitable to take. Even young hopefuls with more obvious advantages struggle to get past the security guards in the big hotels and marquees.

 I put on big sunglasses and act like a star, explains one actress, trying to step up from the minor roles in horror films that she has had so far. Her striking looks and confident personality no doubt help and she at least is sleeping in a hotel room, albeit on someone else’s floor.

But it still doesn’t sound like much fun.

Just a thought, but are dark forces at work in Hollywood to ensure young girls cast in major roles in blockbuster productions have to be called Dakota? Judging by the length of her career summary on the imdb movie Web site, Dakota Fanning is a film veteran at the tender age of 13. Then along comes Dakota Blue Richards, who at the same age has just landed her big screen debut with the central role of Lyra Belacqua in “The Golden Compass”, a $180 million adaptation of the first book in Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy. She was selected from around 10,000 young British girls who auditioned for the part.

As I watched the latter Dakota take questions from reporters in Cannes at a roundtable discussion to promote the film, I found myself pondering whether I would want my child going into movies. Sure, the money is good, but do the long days on set and the attention and fame mean that growing up into a balanced adult is more difficult? Any thoughts, readers?

The movie business has plenty of stories of kids who grow up too fast, or never grow up at all. Then again, the majority actually end up reasonably balanced individuals. And not that there was any suggestion that Richards was heading for trouble. She impressed us all with her composure and honesty. Unlike some supposedly more grown-up stars hiding behind dark glasses and looking bored, she looked straight at her questioners, smiled and spoke of wanting to be a part-time actress while finding time for a “real job”. When asked a question a second time, she politely answered it again. But after spending six months away from school during filming, having a private tutor to teach her and approaching a time when she could become a widely recognised face, she may be forgiven for feeling a little overwhelmed.

    One great thing about the Cannes film festival is watching films made around the world.
 
    Later this week, Cannes rolls out the red carpet for Hollywood flick, “Ocean’s Thirteen.” The movie, about a group of con artists robbing a Las Vegas casino, is fast-paced, features expensive sets and has global stars like Brad Pitt and George Clooney. There is little doubt it will do huge numbers at box offices, but does that make it good?
 
    Here at Cannes, Mexico’s “Stellet Licht” is exactly the opposite of “Ocean’s” with a slow tale of a Mennonite farmer in an adulterous affair, and it relies on few words to evoke complicated emotions. French musical “Les Chansons d’Amour” tells of a young man whose menage a trois ends disastrously but causes him to grow as a man.
 
    It is unlikely “Stellet Licht” or “Chansons d’Amour” will reach theaters in many other countries. If they do, it is just as unlikely they will play outside small, arthouse cinemas. Their box office figures will pale next to “Ocean’s.” But does the fact few people see them make them bad movies?
 
    In 2006, all of the top 20 films were released by a major Hollywood studio. But was “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,” which was 2006’s No. 1 box office draw with more than $1 billion in global ticket sales, good? Most critics did not think so. Some fans did; others did not.
 
    Moviegoing is subjective. What one person likes, their best friend may hate. Not all box office hits are good. Not all small, arthouse films are bad. The opposite is just as true.
 
    So, this week when the third “Pirates” film opens in theaters, think for a moment. Even though your best friend may be going, do you want to? There may be some foreign language flick playing down the street that has no queue outside, and it may be far more thought-provoking and entertaining. Or, maybe not. That would be up to you to decide.

“You should get out more.” That was the advice my wife gave me a few days ago when I was whingeing to her about how frazzled I got rushing from breakfast to screening to press conference to interview to screening to press conference to bed at the Cannes Film Festival. Not for the first time, she was right.

When covering the movie marathon, the temptation is to get so lost in cinema that you forget Cannes has much more to offer. A walk along the palm-lined Croisette boulevard at night shows a different side of the Riviera resort. The place is abuzz with tourists and locals soaking up the glamour and atmosphere of the festival, movies are shown on a giant screen on the beach and the thump of music from parties by the sea lasts into the early hours.

The other night I popped along to an event held for Finnish band Lordi, where the rockers dressed as monsters gave an ear-splitting rendition of ”They Only Come Out At Night” and “Who’s Your Daddy?” The only drawback was a packed bar and small bottles of beer costing 10 euros each. On the walk back to the hotel, I joined hundreds of onlookers to watch U2 sing a couple of hits on the red carpet outside the main festival cinema. It’s the kind of starry showmanship that Cannes thrives on.

At the weekend Ealing Studios held their bash for “St. Trinian’s”, the revamp of the successful schoolgirl comedy romp. Stars Rupert Everett and Colin Firth were there early on to meet and greet, models with ponytails, short skirts and indecently long legs circulated, and the drinks were free. The party was interrupted only by a stunning firework display across the water.

The drawback of course is late nights, and yes, I’m back to the old chestnut of sleep deprivation. Getting up for and sitting through the emotionally raw and harrowing “A Mighty Heart” this morning was a true test of the constitution.

So how did comedian Jerry Seinfeld take to hurtling down a wire from a great height at the Cannes Film Festival, where he’s promoting his animated film, “Bee Movie”? It wasn’t so bad in practice, but… here Seinfeld’s reaction here. You can find the flight of Seinfeld the bumble bee on video here.

Correspondent Bob Tourtellotte, covering the festival, joined reporters interviewing Seinfeld after the flight. Here are some of his comments.

Seinfeld on Seinfeld; he was asked whether he’d come back to television here

Seinfeld on comedians; he was asked who he likes from the “golden age” here 

Seinfeld on what’s left to do to wrap his new film here.

     Is the cinema dead? Director David Cronenberg (”A History of Violence“) thinks so. Atom Egoyan (”The Sweet Hereafter”) believes technology has changed moviegoing forever, and Roman Polanski (”The Pianist”) says he’s seen it all before.

   The directors all made 3-minute short films included in a tribute movie screened here on Sunday called “Chacun Son Cinema.” They also took part in a news conference that erupted into a debate over whether digital video, cell phone texting, Web downloading and home entertainment threatened traditional movie theaters with extinction.

    “The form of cinema as we know it already is a thing of the past,” said Cronenberg, whose short film centered on the destruction of the last movie house on Earth.

    Egoyan’s short followed two women in different theaters texting each other, videotaping the screen, and transmitting the images. Older film fans long for days when people sat in dark theaters, unbothered and engrossed in a well-told story.

    “I’m concerned that a new generation (of kids) will not understand that,” Egoyan said. Egoyan also espoused the view that in the future, huge cineplexes will only show big-budget Hollywood movies like “Shrek the Third” while smaller, art-house and foreign films will be confined to home or personal DVD systems.

    But in Polanski’s view it was an old dialogue only with a new set of gadgets. “I remember the same type of debate when videotapes and cassettes came out,” he said.
    How will movie theaters change, and is there still room slower, thoughtful movies? Is texting in theaters good or bad? Tell us what you think.

I am not entirely sure what it is that gives press conferences at the Cannes film festival their special, slightly awkward, feeling.

They are usually presided over by Henri Behar, a veteran French journalist with swept-back silver hair who looks out from the podium at his fellows with what seems like ill-disguised disdain, and they generally amount to a search for a sound bite in a tide of banality.

The stars and directors of the films are shamelessly flattered and they seem to do their best, but illuminating answers are at a premium.

Do you think that Jake is considered one of the most promising actors of his generation? someone asked David Fincher, director of the serial killer movie Zodiac of his star Jake Gyllenhaal.

Gyllenhaal, sitting alongside, responded with a creditable show of self- mockery and he had fulsome, if impenetrable, praise for his co-star Robert Downey Jr.

Working with Robert is like working in the eighth dimension, he said. He tells a Chinese journalist: “I love your shirt”.

Perhaps none of it is supposed to mean anything anyway since much of the time the press conferences seem to be about establishing a mood rather than conveying information.

Even so, the spectacle of journalists applauding, asking for autographs and taking pictures with their mobile phones is a strange one.

Listening to film makers trying to communicate their creative vision through the uncertain medium of a roomful of the worlds press can have a hidden comedy of its own though.

A dream is a form of reality but its your personal reality so the film is a dreamlike reality. It allows you to dream and I thought a lot in order not to give into the temptation to make images too beautiful, explained Andrei Zvyagintsev, director of The Banishment (through a translator, admittedly).

There is usually some kind of a gesture on everybodys part towards a shared love of the cinema. But occasionally what seems like a truer picture shows through.

British director Steven Frears, president of the Cannes jury, greeted a brash-sounding Australian journalist with a despairing Hello, Hello again, before turning to Australian actor and fellow jury member Toni Collette to ask Is she a friend of yours?

At the Cannes film festival, a lot of both was on display heading into the first weekend of parties Friday night. Along the beach on the Croisette, Relativity Media, which in recent years has been a major financier and producer of films, held a late afternoon bash at a flashy restaurant on the beach. You could spot the likes of Harvey Weinstein, who runs Weinstein Co., Jon Feltheimer, the chief executive of Lionsgate Entertainment, and Cassian Elwes and Rena Ronson, the powerful film agents from the William Morris Agency.

That was all money power.

That night aboard a yacht moored in the harbor, independent producer Nu Image, whose Millennium Films earlier Friday unveiled a deal to make a $60 million film starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, held a swanky affair attended by celebrity actress Jessica Simpson. Simpson was trailed by hundreds of photographers and television crews shouting her name and snapping her picture. She paraded up the gangplank, spent about 15 minutes in a room guarded by security, then paraded right back out and into a waiting limousine cameras chattering all the way.

And that is star power.

Simpson will get you splashy pictures on covers of movie and celebrity magazines. Over at the Relativity party, those men and women will get your movie.

You think showbiz is glamorous? If so, then it doesnt get any more glam than the Cannes film festival on the French Riviera, right? Well, that all depends on who youre with and what youre doing.
While Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Leonardo DiCaprio and George Clooney stroll up the red carpet outside Cannes Palais for glitzy premieres, underneath them in the basement bunker is the Marche du Film.
Forget the Warner Bros. and films like “Ocean’s Thirteen,” this is the real movie market takes place, where the down-and-dirty buying and selling goes on, and where businessmen and women will spend and make hundreds of millions of dollars before the festival ends next week.
Hundreds of companies such as Maxim Media, IndustryWorks and Phranakorn Film hawk rights for television, DVD and other products for movies with titles such as Autopsy: A Love Story, Mans Job, Hanuman: The White Monkey Warrior and documentary Bakushi which tells of The Incredible Lives of Rope-Masters.
Asked what a Rope-Master is, a representative for Tokyo-based Gold View Co Ltd., replied: about men who tie up women. Enough said. And ever wondered what happened to Oscar winner Faye Dunaway? You can catch her in Fashion The Movie. Ah, Faye, its been a long time since Bonnie and Clyde.