By all rights, I should be in Cannes, France as you read this. I should be sipping Molotov cocktails by the beach, watching the topless starlets attract crowds and tut tutting about how this year is the worst year for films at the Festival, except, perhaps, for all the other years I've attended. I should be reporting on Jean Luc-Godard's latest incomprehensible entry at Cannes, and whether Japanese anime peaked with Ghost In the Machine.
I should be making fun of Tom Hanks in The Ladykillers.
Unfortunately, my editor, who, up until this year always struck me as a reasonable woman, would not give me an expense account. "it's not like our readers are actually going to go to Cannes," she told me in an interoffice memo that could only be described as "snippy." She added that, since most of the films I would be writing about wouldn't get a North American release, our readers would never have the opportunity to see them, making anything I could write about them irrelevant.
Let me tackle this second point first. Cannes is moving towards more populist, less esoteric movie fare, big budget American films like Troy and, yes, The Ladykillers. Our readers aren't likely to see these films because they're bad, not because they won't be playing in our theatres. And, if that becomes the criterion by which we determine which movies to review, our film section will come out monthly, and be very thin, at that.
As for readers not going to Cannes, in this past week the travel section had a four page pull-out feature on hitchhiking through war zones like Afghanistan and Iraq. It seems to me that lost limbs and torture aren't usually on most people's list of how they would like to pass their summer vacations, but did my oh so concerned editor pass on the feature because most of our readers were unlikely to go?
To heck with it. I'm going to write about Cannes anyway. That's right: a reviewer who wasn't at Cannes is going to write articles for readers who won't be going and, in any case, won't have the opportunity to see the films playing there. Think of it as post-modern film criticism.
So, uhh, how about that Michael Moore? He's an, err, big man. Somebody should tell him those t-shirts really don't flatter his figure. Really don't flatter his figure. Boy, his movieFahrenheit 9/11 sure is going to cause a stink, assuming anybody ever gets a chance to see it. Unless it wins some awards, I suppose, but there's no chance a movie that's so controversial will.
Let's face it: the Cannes jury is made up of Quentin Tarantino, a couple of French actresses and a box of Kleenex. If Tarantino has his way, the winner of the Palmes D'Or (the Golden Hand) will be a Hong Kong snuff film. Golden or not, we all know what that hand has been stroking. No wonder the jury has a box of Kleenex on it.
Life on the Croisette (literally: overpriced French pastry) continues to get worse. To get a sandwich and a beer now requires a payment plan similar to that of buying an automobile. You would think this would discourage people from coming, but, as it happens, it has become increasingly crowded over the years. People! Catching a glimpse of Brad Pitt really isn't worth mortgaging your house to pay for dinner and a hotel room for an evening.
In the end, it's about the movies. Wong Kai...Shek's 2112, for instance. Or The Wall, the latest Iranian feature about a girl who is so traumatized by being forced to wear a burqah that she stares at a wall for 80 minutes. You've got to love the economy of Iranian films; if this had been made in the States, it would have cost 100 times as much and lasted over two hours. That's a lot of wall.
Aww, who am I kidding? It's about the deals filmmakers can get in the market. Old Cannes hands know that new films are meat, and that producers in the market are looking for the best cuts at the cheapest prices. The market is the dark side of Cannes, where films such as Day Trading Topless Cheerleaders From Utah are sold to such coveted international markets as Finland, Togo and, yes, Utah. We all touch the magic where we can, I suppose.
Next up on the film festival circuit is Venice. What do you think the odds are that my editor will give me an expense account?