Graham Corrigan usually writes for Pigeons and Planes, but he magically scored access to the Cannes Film Festival this year and has been sending in unsolicited, nonsensical updates from his trip. These are his stories.
People are happiest on airplanes when they’re unconscious. The cramped spaces, complete loss of control, and plastic cabin crew smiles are a recipe for short tempers, which is why I usually try to knock myself out as soon as the wheels lift.
But my roommate is a damn liar—he said his gift of weed chocolate would put me to sleep like Rowdy Roddy Piper, and it didn’t. It did the opposite—I spent my overnight flight to Nice trying to quiet the opera in my head, and the subsequent bus ride believing I could understand the two women flooding my ears with Portuguese.
By the time I got off the bus, my sleep-starved brain was confusing reality and hallucinations. The town of Cannes, however, doesn’t need any help creating a dreamscape. Boats of all sizes swayed gently in a harbor to my left. Beautiful old clay-tiled houses climbed a hill to my right, and bejeweled glitterati swarmed in every direction like an unending stream of fireflies. It was a dizzying first impression, and I stumbled to my room sure of only one thing: I stank of airport.
There was, however, no time to sleep. A shower later I went to collect my press pass. The Cannes Film Festival is one of the industry’s most storied gatherings, a two-week carousel of premieres and parties where cinematic excellence is rivaled only by excess. And your pass, I had been told, is everything in Cannes. The pass hierarchy is as rigid as it is regimented. Last year, TheHollywood Reportercalled it a “caste system,” which seems generous. My own plastic was pink—a cut above the filthy yellow and blue savages, but still below spotless white. Black passes are given to industry attendees and academics, and there are rumors of an all-access badge reserved for the Weinsteins and Theron’s, which is most likely a hue you need diamond contact lenses to see.
The pass dictates which screenings you can attend, which lines you can skip, which interviews you can conduct, and which parties open their doors to you. It is the main semblance of order for the festival—without it, that same THR article claims, “it would be chaos.”
But as far as I can tell, it’s already chaos. Cannes is a small fishing town most of the year, with a population just over 70,000. That number triples during the festival—the thin sidewalks are packed, cars and Vespas abound, and restaurant goers spill out onto the street at every turn.
There’s an infectious energy in the air, but it’s accompanied by a subtle menace. “The Talent” is fettered to and fro in black tinted Benzes that stop for no one and screech around hairpin turns. Security is heavy. Roadblocks are rearranged like an Escher painting depending on the day’s screening schedule, and a drunken lunch can turn momentarily sober when one of Cannes’ walking patrols stroll by wearing camo and shouldering artillery the size of a Great Dane.
But none of that crossed my mind on the first day. All I saw was that sweet, sweet pink press pass and my swag bag, a dense collection of schedules, magazines, and maps. The BFG was starting in a half hour, and it seemed a good fit for my current brain capacity.
It was playing at the Soixantième Theatre, which, with a capacity over 300, is one of Cannes’ larger venues. Once through security, I found a huge line guarded by one of the festival’s typically steely-eyed, tuxedoed gatekeepers. There was no way everyone was getting in.
“Is this the line for the BFG?” I tried in halting French.
“Oui.”
“Is it the line for press as well?”
He paused. “...non.” The penguin stepped aside and let me in the press pen at the front of the line. I hadn’t budged a line in a decade-plus, and I had forgotten how good it felt—especially when I felt the burning hatred from the plebeian eyes behind me. The movie itself is an adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic. It’s the story of an orphan (Sophie, played with too much heart by Ruby Barnhill) who is adopted/kidnapped by a giant. He’s routinely bullied by the other, much larger giants before deciding, with a little help from the Queen of England, that enough is enough.
The whole thing plays out like CGI marzipan—the best bits happened when someone other than the precocious star and the gee-whiz giant come on screen and add a bit of humor to the moral lecturing. I watched it next to a Japanese cable reporter whose main job at the festival was to act as the ventriloquist for a very popular puppet fish. Apparently, Japan loves their puppet fish reporters.
I emerged rejuvenated, and decided to get drunk. A couple of friends are also in town for the festivities, and we settled into a cafe for some of the best people-watching in the world. The industry dresses the fuck up for Cannes, and for the next hour I sat agog at the procession of beautifuls that swayed down Boulevard de la Croisette in floppy technicolored hats, long, sweeping gowns, and crisp boutonnieres. It all seemed impossibly elegant, up until some cops started poking at a couple of homeless people who had deigned to find a patch of sunlight in the dying day. The elegance was very real, but also no accident.
As the night’s red carpet event started to fill the main drag (Marion Cotillard’s From The Land of the Moon was making it’s debut, followed by the Russell Crowe/Ryan Gosling buddy cop movie The Nice Guys), the crowds thickened. A different species of beggar took the vagrants’ place by the carpet—these premieres are only for the loftiest of ticket holders, but passholders that beg for extras (sporting homemade signs with stirring entreaties like “PLEASE!! NICE GUY NEEDS TO SEE NICE GUYS”) sometimes get in. It seemed a fitting end for a first day—an out-and-out grovel seems to be the only way to move up in this stratified world, no matter what color your pass.
As I picked my way back to my room, the evening’s rosé softening the crowd’s bumps, I thought how great it is that something as immaterial as a movie can create a week this full of life. People are literally lining up around the block to see these films. They spend ridiculous amounts of money on outfits they largely wear in the dark, and burst into applause when the Cannes logo appears before the credits start. It’s all in the name of art, and the energy thus far had been nothing short of unbridled joy.
But then I heard something that snapped me out of my reverie—two producers passed me in the opposite direction, and I only needed to hear one line of their conversation to remember the real reason behind it all:
“It’s great they’re interested, but everybody’s ‘interested.’ We’re here to sell shit!”
In other words:
