Cannes 2007 (Day Three)

Welcome welcome, to our last day in Cannes. It's more of a day and a half -- the last Friday and then half the day on Saturday -- but for the purposes of this post, let's consider it one day, as we had a nice, easy-going end to our festival.

Thursday night was Ocean's Thirteen premiere night, which made the whole town buzz -- everyone trying to get an eye on George and Brad and Angelina -- but we also learned a few days later that the cast and crew of Entourage also shot their season finale in Cannes, using the Ocean's premiere as a stand-in for the boys' own fictional premiere. So they had the Entourage cast (Grenier, Dillon & co.) walk up the red carpet after the Ocean's cast, making it even more of a crazy evening. And that also explained why the cast (including badass Jeremy Piven) kept popping up at events in Cannes, despite not having anything to plug at the fest -- they were filming their season finale. That's one episode I can't wait to see.

In any case, this means we took Thursday evening, as I mentioned in my previous post, to go see Smiley Face (shame on me!), which means we had a late night (again) and, added to our jet lag, explains why we slept in really, REALLY late (trust me) on Friday morning. We ended up spending most of the day in the hotel room or on the hotel room balcony, going through all the reading we had collected since arriving in Cannes -- Variety, Hollywood Reporter, film catalogues, Cahiers du Cinema, British Cinematographer Magazine, and many, many more. In the evening, we went to see Rio Bravo (one of the all-time great westerns) on a big screen, screened as part of the Festival's Classics collection, and that turned out to be a great experience -- not only did we see Malcolm McDowell (of Clockwork Orange) before the screening, but it was also attended and introduced by Quentin Tarantino (along with his "little brother" Edgar Wright), who described the film as one of his all-time favorites, said the characters in it were like surrogate fathers to him as he grew up, and also said that one of his criteria for women he dates is to show them Rio Bravo and make sure they like it. We also got to watch the film (definitely one of the best westerns ever -- if you haven't seen it, do it. Now. I'm serious. Stop reading this, open your Netflix queue, find it, put it at the top, and give back all the Netflix DVDs you have at home now so you're sure it comes really quick. And then the second it gets to you, sit down, watch it, enjoy, and come back and read the rest of this. Seriously. Go.) with a crowd of real film geeks, who'd applaud every time a baddie got killed, laughed and all the right lines, and all, including Maz and I, fell in love with Angie Dickinson every time she graced the screen. All in all, it was a great experience -- and without a doubt, ironically, the best film we saw at the festival.

We took an equally slow day Saturday -- the whole day was a stormy rain-out, and so we decided against waiting in line for 3hrs in the morning to see We Own The Night (which we're still amazingly excited to see), packed our bags, and went and had a nice long lunch by the sea (and sheltered from the rain). We then had a last coffee with Richard, who, amazing as usual, revealed that he had kept a bunch of Festival-related stuff (and this amazing book about Cinecitta) to give to us before we let, and then that's just what we did -- we left.

All in all, it was a terrific three days, just mind-blowing, mostly thanks to all the efforts my dad and Richard and everyone who helped us out gave to make sure we would get into some of the most exclusive events of the film year. Cannes is definitely no Sundance -- it's amazingly exclusive, a little pompous, and to be honest unless you've got tickets to everything, or a film screening of your own, or films to sell or buy, it's a hard festival to go to and freely enjoy. We do plan on coming back next year -- with a short, who knows? -- but it's definitely more of a "look at us, we've made it" festival (rather than a "we're gonna f**king make it someday" festival, which is what Sundance is), and that might be something we'll enjoy better later on in our lives. Even then -- a really great three days, which I hope I've described here in a decent fashion, and now...well, now...

...now we're back to work.