Cannes Diary: I'll Be Seeing You…
It’s only my second year at Cannes but I already recognize so many faces from last year. I prefer to drift in and out of this world without anyone really knowing who I am. Plenty of people I know from observing them online over the years are around the Palais and in the wi-fi room. I saw film critics like Todd McCarthy, Lisa Schwarzbaum, and Michael Phillips. But I also saw these faces of unknown journalists and photographers returning again to Cannes. Another year, another Cannes.
To hear them talk to one another is to sometimes be in a French movie. The other day, the room was full. We were all tapping away on our keyboards, photographers were busy editing their photos, when into the quiet one of them sneezed. It was a small sneeze that came in threes. One person said “bless you,” another said, “bless you!” and a third person said even louder, “BLESS YOU!” And the entire room burst into applause. The sneezing reporter blushed deeply.
It’s hard not to feel a camaraderie with them. You wait for an open seat in the wi-fi room, sometimes having to sit on the floor to find a space. You walk over to the coffee bar and order either an espresso or a “lungo,” which is a double. This year, they offered up vitamin drinks. Everyone loved the chocolate flavored kind and only drank the others when the chocolate ran out.
Read MoreCannes Diary: Tree of Life at Cannes
The climax of the Cannes Film Festival, at least from this American’s point of view, was yesterday’s screening and gala for Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life. It started out being the most anticipated title, and it ended up being the most talked about, and most “important” film to screen here. Some might even describe the 64th annual fest as, “there was The Tree of Life and there was everything else.”
But the night before the 8:30am screening, my podcasting partner Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood-Elsewhere.com sent me a text, “I’m on a train to Juan-les-Pins. Let’s record the podcast from out there.” Jeff Wells has been coming to the festival going on ten years now. He is the hardest working blogger on the beat, producing five or six stories per day without fail. He is more motivated than anyone else I know Рhe has admitted, more than a few times, that when he dies he’d like to have it all end hunched over a keyboard somewhere. And he was on a train already. Where was I? In my pajamas with my second glass of wine, laptop resting on my thighs, my daughter also on her computer. For us the night would have ended in about one hour from that moment. But we knew if Jeff Wells was coming to Juan-les-Pins. It was time to get ready.
Read MoreCannes, Day 5: Morning in Cannes and Stranger Tides
It’s only been five days and already I feel like a resident of the seaside community of Juan-Les-Pins. In my fantasy, I’m someone who lives outside of Cannes but commutes into work every day. I wake up around 5am, drink my Starbucks instant, which I heat in a mini electric kettle, take my shower with my sweet smelling French shampoo, am dressed and out the door by 7:15am, giving me more than enough time to make my way leisurely down to the Palais du Festival. One of the problems I must confront every day is where to park.
Imagine paying $20 a day to park and go to work. That is what it is like parking in the public garages here. You can take your chances on the street but you never know if you’re going to get a ticket or, god forbid, towed.
To truth of it is, any person with common sense would never rent a car to work the Cannes film festival. You either find a place in town or else you take the train or the bus. But I have no common sense, notoriously. That is why I am paying for a rental car, the rental car insurance (almost more than the car itself), the gas and on many days, the parking. The only reason I’m renting a car, other than sheer stupidity, is that my daughter is staying with me and I need to be able to get to her if I have to. So I’ll pay through the nose for peace of mind.
Read MoreCannes Diary: Day Three – The Art of Conversation.
[UPDATE: four more photos added to the street scene gallery on page 2.]
Coming to France is a lot like having an affair. The love at first sight turns to passion, lust and undeniable true love. Suddenly, your world back home loses its shimmer ever so slightly. You begin to compare the two worlds. But what can compare with France? Even tourist-choked, traffic-clogged, over-priced Cannes beats just about any other city in the US. That’s it, you think. I’m packing my bags just like Owen Wilson in Midnight in Paris and I’m exiling myself away from the capitalist nightmare, the over-medicated, over-populated, health-care-lacking, economically depressed, mind-numbingly stupid country that is America and I’m moving to France.
Yes, I’m moving to France, specifically the South of France where the people are so warm and friendly, where they always smile at you and say thank you and “au revoir madame,” where they do things with flour, water and salt that is all the religion you’ll ever need, where the warm sea and the warm air wrap themselves around you like a silk scarf, where children buy baguettes from the boulangerie and eat them straight out of the bag as they walk home from school. I could be happier here, couldn’t I. Yes, I damned well could.
But of course, it doesn’t take long for reality to sink in. Sooner or later it’s time to pack up the dreams and go back to where you belong. Kansas, if you must know. Or, in my case, North Hollywood. I’m an American girl at heart and I miss the comforts of home Рjust in case you were starting to worry that I’d run out of things to whine about. Cannes is great and all, but there’s nothing like living in a city where all you have to do is wave around money and people act nicely to you. Or maybe it’s just that we miss our cats. Either way, this will be a delightful diversion but alas, nothing more than that.
Read MoreCannes Diary: Day Two
The weather is unusually sunny this year in Cannes, which means that if you’re hurrying to a screening with your heavy computer bag, your badge flapping up and down on your chest, your feet long since blistered by your shoes, you’re bound to be sweatier than usual. Even those who never sweat turn up sweaty at screenings.
But to wait a full hour in line and be turned away at a screening can cause even the coolest among us to despair. This was why I decided to squirrel up my courage and talk to the press office about my yellow badge. I’d been told that if you make a good enough case they’re “look at your file,” which means they’re reconsider your application. In my case, I’d gotten a bump by doing some freelance reporting and reviews for The Wrap, which did change my application status. After a long, heated debate with a very pretty, poker faced woman wherein I invoked the French Revolution, I was informed that they would have a decision for me in the morning.
Since I’ve been driving back and forth from Juan-Les-Pins to Cannes, I’ve come to know the backstreets quite well. I’ve learned, for instance, that the French people here, except in Cannes, shut their doors, turn out their lights and head to bed around 9:30pm. If you’re in need of dinner your choices are going to be fairly limited.
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