First of all, everything you imagine about a film festival like Cannes is wrong, wrong, wrong. You don't rub elbows with stars; you don't go to fabulous parties. You wake up, you see three or four movies, you write -- a lot -- and try to come to grips with the fact that for every movie you're seeing there are four, five, six more that you're missing. You try to not think about it, because you'd go mad -- but you do think about it, and you do go a little mad.
The thing you also need to know about Cannes is that it's essentially a big, shiny façade -- the reality of it is nothing like you see in the media. Cannes is a festival, but it's also a market -- a place where films are bought, sold and crafted. I remember my first year here, two years ago, seeing posters for 16 Blocks and thinking "Bruce Willis? Mos Def? Why haven't I heard about this film?" Then, sitting down with a coffee and reading the trades, I realized that the reason I hadn't heard of 16 Blocks before that morning was because before that morning it didn't exist -- the deal had been signed that night, foreign financing and markets brought on board and ensuring the film would happen.
When a movie is advertised as "from the writers
of" or "from the producer of," that means that they're unsure of how to either market the movie and/or
the movie looks kinda lame so they have to do all they can to associate it with a better, more well-known
film.
Whenever you see a celebrity on television and they are at a sporting event, they will be rooting for either the Los Angeles Lakers or The New York Yankees. This is because they don't really follow sports and they just throw on the cap from one of these teams and root for them so they seem like a regular Joe or Jane.
Whenever a celebrity says one of the following...
No one in the world enjoys those trivia questions we see on movie screens before the coming attractions start. I mean, "Unscramble this movie star's name: BOB EPOH?." They're not even trying anymore.
Whenever Jay Leno says to a guest after interviewing them, "I know you have to go...", that means the guest doesn't have any place to go but is much too big and important to bother sitting around on the couch for the rest of the show while the lesser stars are on.
