CANNES FILM FESTIVAL – A MASTERCLASS IN SEDUCTION
I’m so proud to be French… half French anyway. Ancient Mother hails from Bordeaux – the greatest wine region on the planet and famous for dessert, decadence and political treachery. My first holidays were on my uncle’s farm and seventies Côte d’Azur. That might have set the bar for all future travel: glamour, hedonism and alarmingly long lunches. Even though I started living and working in Asia in ’88, I’ve always felt more Euro than Brit and still do even when told that I present like a Yank. I take that as a compliment. Recently I’ve been asked to put together more feature film treatments and investor decks so it’s seemed the perfect excuse to head off to the Cannes Film Festival. Resort gear packed, I Ubered off to the London City airport which has a rich clubby feel and less than two hours later British Airways dropped me in Nice in Cannesin time for lunch at the splendid Gaston et Gastounette. Order the whitebait!
Actually this whole Master Class In Seduction angle is a polite way of saying that Cannes is really about screwing someone important. It all starts with the hunt. For the average huckster, Cannes is 10 days of Friday nights and Monday mornings. Buggered, dazzled and bewitched, your average producer rarely gets to bed before the witching hour but still has to be bright eyed and bushy tailed by eight the next morning. Days are spent schlepping up and down La Croisetteschmoosing with sales agents, scouring the trades, queuing for screenings, watching a plethora of either barely watchable films or films that they love but ‘aren’t commercial enough’, elbowing their way into the Palais, arguing with officials, dodging Chinese tourists and all the while hoping they’ll find that one gem that will make the insane expense of attending the festival worthwhile. Days generally end with a bucket of rosé on the beach comparing notes with colleagues and full contact fibbing sun goes down. There are more stressful jobs, sure, but most of those involve blood and bullets. And none quite as nepotistically cut throat as the busy, boozy, sleep-deprived business of film.
And then there’s the risk of getting bombed… yes, proper bombed, suicide style. I like guns so seeing heavily armed anti terror squads roaming around winking at the pretty girls made me feel quite warm and fuzzy but I suspect I’m in the minority. Security gates are a new addition, springing up overnight outside the doors to the Palais, the vast brutalist conference centre on the Croisette. Security has ramped up in the wake of the Nice terror attack. Airspace and road space have been restricted and the local cops are sporting new semi-automatics. Only last year the place still felt like a playground. You could largely come and go as you please. Now you have to stand in line, loading your belongings into plastic trays before being herded one by one through the trauma of TSA security hell.
Fuck that. Way too much grief for this working boy. On the first day it was raining, the stars were hiding, the hacks and paparazzi were waterlogged and frustrated, and the shimmering images of the beautiful people walking up the red carpet were pale reflections of glories long gone. An alternative plan was needed. One that included exotica, elitism and ease. The film festival used to be a truly glamorous affair in days gone by. Cannes has changed dramatically since I first visited the Riviera. Tennis courts have disappeared and are now ugly apartment houses for the blue rinse brigade, shops hawking tourist crap and glitzy, expensive restaurants that serve so-so food line the shore. Sex has no meaning in Cannes, especially during the festival, unless some sweaty producer gets it up without aid of the blue diamonds. What Dante called ‘the intelligence of love’ works inversely to what he meant. In Cannes, you love who you screw, mainly financially but seldom sexually. The old eighties ethos of, “screw them before they screw you” seems to still hold sway. The uncontrollable urge that must be satisfied at all costs is what makes you want pull a fast one on others. As Gore Vidal famously remarked about a starlet who never made it, ‘she’s so dumb, she slept with the writer.’ Perhaps that’s what the Cannes festival is all about: screwing someone important. But enough worldliness worthy of Taki, let’s move into the action.
In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is a failure. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible. As I didn’t really want to lock horns with the hoi polloi so I set up my base of operations at Nikki Beach opposite the Carlton. I prefer beach clubs to nightclubs these days. I must be getting old but I enjoy a space where you can dine, relax and party without having to stay up until 3 or 4 in the morning. It’s comfortable and genial as the French say genial. Come noon the sun shines, the Med sparkles and the delegates frolic like kids on Christmas morn. They come pouring out of the hotels and apartments and into the bar with a spring in their step and a song in their hearts, eager to throw themselves headlong into a working lunch. The world is their oyster; nothing’s going to stop them. Everyone seems to be a better version of themselves at Nikki Beach. I met a host of charming current and prospective clients and caught up with old friend Michael Cook who really is the man to call if you want tickets for anything… and I do mean ANYTHING. Last time we spoke he could get you into the Oscars for $80K a pop.
Getting into a few of the better parties is still quite easy if you have self esteem to spare. The French still have class systems ingrained in their culture so act and look like you belong. And in three weeks, I’ll be doing it all over again as I’m back for the Lions – advertising’s orgy of egos. Must not complain, 2017 has been shaping up rather well. Thus far I’ve been in Thailand, Austin for SXSW, LA and now I’m in Nice recovering from Cannes… next trip is a silent retreat at Worth Abbey in August then Berlin for a week or so and hopefully Nov/Dec back in the US for duck hunting in Arkansas, gun play in Fort Bragg, boot scootin’ in Nashville and some end of year R&R at the Cosmo in Vegas. Next stop, London in time for tea!
