The Vaguest Ideas

Wild At Heart Redux -- Part 1 Cannes 1990 Dread and Victory

 

In 1990 I was working as an IT Consultant in London.  On a project in Paris, with some creative use of extra holiday time I headed down to the Cannes Film Festival for its last five days.  Barrett, a London acquaintance and fellow ex-pat was working as PA to the publisher of Screen International, had initially offered me floor space on their boat or their "office" in the Carlton, but I ended up in a hotel down the coast in Juan Les Pins.   I experienced a night without accommodation, wandering streets and bars the festival's jaded party. I blagged my way into the Palais to look at distributors stands where I met a would be indie film producer, IP lawyer Carl Person, and his singer/actor/writer wife Lu Ann Horst Person (star of their own film "Ramblin' Gal").  I ran into my English Teacher from Penn who'd taught a Hitchcock course.  I even got to see a couple of out of competition / out of festival films (a Soviet/American coproduction about Chernobyl called Raspad). I spotted Danny Aiello looking annoyed and tired in the American Pavilion.  And I hoped against hope that I might get myself into a screening of the new David Lynch film, Wild at Heart.

What follows is an excerpt from the account I wrote for my friends.  Readers, whether you read just this excerpt, or the whole tale in the link, please be charitable to my mid 20's self.  He's guile, clue and hap free, a hopeful hopeless romantic, shy, desperate, neurodivergent.  He may seem slightly creepy on paper, but I'd leave that to the judgement of those who were there.  They always told him he was a good listener, which may have only been kind.  I ask you extend your kindness as they did.

Saturday, May 19th: Wild Thing

I'm not about to give up. The press screening for 'Wild At Heart' is at 8:30 this morning. There's no way that everyone is going to be there after all the late night action. The sun is strong, it gives everything a rigid edge, I'm toned and energized as I stride from the train station. There were only two trains that could have gotten me here on time, and I ran for the second. I'm in by 7:40. There's no one in front of the Palais yet.

The Film Societe offices are closed, and I weigh the wisdom of giving up on the Lynch and sticking with this more assured way of at least getting into something. In one of the windows a dozen monitors are set up as an advertisement for European Cable, each tuned to a different channel, some of which are giving Festival coverage. I learn of the deaths of both Jim Henson and Sammy Davis Jr. (I flash on the day at College a few years back, when I thought I had heard a rumour that Henson had died of a virus - deja vu?).

I return to the steps of the Palais. A crowd has started to form. With some bravado I join the crowd in line and wait. After listening to the conversations going on around me, I start to chat up a few of the Americans. One of them, Joan Cohen, develops some film festival for, of all places, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She works for the Broward County film commission, whose offices are in LA. She's sort of a fortiesish slim overtanned Jewish maiden aunt, with what anti-feminists look on as a hobby-career. I mention that my parents live down there half the year; on hearing she's looking for indie productions, I go so far as to tell her about "Ramblin' Gal". I stop short of trying to sell it to her, but I promise her the information on how to contact the Person's. She tells me that you get the tickets to the official screenings at the Unifrance desk in the Grand Palais, but I don't have the credentials for it. It also turns out that she has an extra ticket to this morning's screening.

She starts ransacking her handbag for it. I try not to show my nervousness. An American couple have joined in the conversation, one of them thinks she misplaced her ticket, can she have the extra one. Joan says its been promised to me, and she's not sure she can find it. Almost at once, both women find their missing tickets. Wheww!

Joan hands me the ticket. Selection officielle. I experience an ungodly rush of endorphins. I remain calm, keeping the party to myself. This is it!

I am horribly and unbearably impatient. When are they going to let us in? They wouldn't start the film precisely on time without letting everyone in? How inefficient the French are, that would be just like them. I'm so tense I don't even look for famous people.

We're going in. WOW! Apparently the tickets designate whether you're on the floor or in the balcony. I'm in the balcony, more prestigious, but less to my taste, who's complaining. I find a seat, they are filling up at an amazing rate. I scan the audience. I have that half-awake mid-morning lustful-hope, it would be the crowning achievement if some ravishing Lynch fan were to sit by me, and there are plenty here, but, Ok, so I get some strange looking Europeans, fine, I'll be able to watch the film better. OHMIGODIMHERE WOW!

Wild At Heart. The film washes over me. Lynch's over-the-top strangeness, violence and sex, with sprinklings of incoherent allusions to Elvis and Wizard of Oz. I enjoyed immensely, but I'd really have to see it again to tell you whether I liked it (the more I think about it, the more I like it). And this is a REAL audience, a congregation of the church of mine own, they applaud before it starts, they stop talking and only make mostly group responses (I was one of the few people guffawing at the Wizard of Oz stuff), and they cheered and applauded enthusiastically at the end. No celebs showed up, they are to go to the screening this evening, but that doesn't matter, we're here for the MOVIE.

Afterwards, although in a contented, sated daze, my instinct manuevers me as quickly as possible past the security, to get my Day card, and straight down to the Unifrance line. I can't actually get tickets here, but maybe I can talk someone into giving me one of theirs, it worked once already. And magically, again, I'm standing next to two American women, thirtysomething New Yorkers, one manages one of the major art house cinemas, is basically here to shop for films, and the other just finished an MA at NYU film school, is trying to flog her school project to distributors, and get money to produce her next. They both seem glad to talk to someone who is here because they love film, they seem tired of the industry, show-the-"product" people. One of them has a few extra tickets to the screening of Cyrano De Bergerac which starts momentarily (a bunch of her friends desperate to get a break from the festival drove to Monte Carlo, and aren't making it back). I weigh the opportunities, take the ticket, stay here and hope to get something better, when we make it to the beginning of the line, I also hear that there's going to be a 'Wild At Heart' Press Conference in about an hour.

The way the ticket system works is that you apply for a certain number of tickets for each of the screenings ahead of time. Depending on your status in the pecking order, Industry, Market, or Press, you may or not get what you want. All the REALLY important people are just given theirs outright.

I opt for Cyrano. I probably couldn't BS my way into the press conference, there's nothing much else that I want to specifically see. So why not, by the time I get out, it'll be just about time to get in touch with Barrett who's been trying to introduce me to some PR girl all week because we're both film buffs (sure, I'll bite).

Cyrano was excellent, one of Depardieu's best, and a real surprise given that I'd seen him in mostly inarticulate roles previously. The adaptation captures both the literary zeal of the character as well as injecting some enjoyable swashbuckling. I later find out that Anthony Burgess did the verse translation for the subtitles.

I wander around the Palais again, picking up souvenirs like a tourist. Things are definitely winding down, only half the booths seem open. I contemplate asking for or stealing film posters, one for 'Comic-Book Confidential' with examples of various cartoonists, and one for some dutch film the poster was done by one of their better graphic artists. Moral and practical reasons prevail... how would I transport them? I buy the T-shirt with this year's Festival Poster on it. I buy the official program (an outrageous 120 francs). I buy a pin.

Meeting Barrett at the boat, she finally introduces Angela, the American PR film-buff she wants to fob me off on romantically. O.K. by me, Angela is very cute: petite, sleek short dark hair, and a Lynch fan to boot (I'd never met a woman who not only liked, but loved Blue Velvet), but unfortunately, Barrett has failed in her well meaning research again, Angela is meeting her BOYFRIEND down in Italy in a few days. On top of this Barrett has arranged to meet up with some Navy guys on leave, who she takes a perhaps sisterly interest in being a Navy brat herself.

There are four Navy guys, two pairs of buddies from different ships, they seem alright. They are good old boys, but without the clichéd patina that exudes from many of the military I've met. They all seem to be chasing Barrett in a surprisingly mellow, laid back fashion (considering that they've been at sea for three months). We troop about the harbour, passing Karreem Abdul Jabbar, the second and last famous person I saw that week. Angela is going to the big gala screening of Wild At Heart that night, I balk at asking her to get me in (what would I wear, do I want to see it twice in the same day?). She does offer to get me into one of the films her company is promoting. We all split up 'til later.

American Pavilion - I'm trying to leave Joan Cohen a message to get her hooked up with Carl Person - returning her favour. I barely recognize her as she comes to the desk while I'm writing it. She thanks me and goes on her way. I look for materials and food to scrounge, then I go to L'Ambassades to the screening that Angela gets me into.

The film is called 'The 4th Reich' it is pretty much at TV movie level, but it is interesting because it tells about the foiled Nazi coup attempt during WWII in South Africa, which adds to my pitiably small store of historical knowledge of South Africa.

Finally grabbing my first meal of the day (Quick, again), I chat up a trio of Scandinavians, who oddly hold English as the common language between them. I then meet up again with Barrett and the navy guys. We go to an open air bar attached to a condo where the Screen International people are hanging out, they disdain the American Navy personnel, and while I had been interested in getting to know a bit more about the film journo scene, their pretentious black garbed artsyfartsiness goes a long way to putting me off. We sit there for quite a while as its getting dark drinking our beers and rum and cokes.

I'm waiting for Angela to show up again, having fixated mildly, and wanting to discuss the Lynch with her, she's the only person I've talked to since I got here who seems interested in movies the same way I am. Even to most of those who are interested in the films themselves, its just commerce. The journo's are modishly blase, they don't mention the films, just the stories, or the pictures they're doing, they don't talk about the content, they talk about the work. Gossip here is all money related, who's backing whom. The film reviews in the dailies here seem as much interested in appraising a movie's marketability as itself. No one talks about what films they've seen, they drop which parties they've been to what execs they've met. I've seen no celebrities here because they aren't really here, they are just part of the product... producers and their money are the real matin-fuckin-ay idols.

Angela appears modestly dressed to the nines, just being at the gala showing of Wild at Heart, I'm somewhat awed, she has been to the promised land.

The evening degenerates from here. We walk down one end of the Croissette to find a bar near the Carlton where we're supposed to be meeting yet another navy guy. It becomes like a long march after that we troop all the way over to the other side of town, wandering up into the old port, a hilly area, with great Saturdaynightlife. Along the way we lose Barrett and one of the guys, we spend too much time looking for them and finally sit down to eat at a pizza place by the docks, the fugitives show up while we're just on our drinks, and tear us away from the restaurant. After much more walking and drinking, Angela and I peel off for dinner at a place called Cannibal Pizza.

The rest of the staff of her company have left town, she is alone in the apartment they've rented. I beg a place to crash because its too late to catch a train back to Juan Les Pins. She takes me in. I fight the urge to make a pass at her which I don't think would be a welcomed response to her generosity (she's mentioned her boyfriend just once too often). Exhausted and fed I collapse happily onto the bed, thinking irrelevant thoughts of a pretty film buff in the next bedroom. Frustration and contentment merge in a quiet pleasant buzz as I fall asleep.


Sunday, May 20th: Retreat

I wake first and, after a shower to remove the crud of another Mediterranean swelter night, I head off to the bakery to find goodies. Back in the apartment we manage leftovers breakfast and coffee. I step out on the balcony, complete with its trellis with fake plants and large plastic crustaceans (a wall which would have been at home in any Seafood Shanty restaurant). I survey Cannes below me, an overblown dream; harsh, Sunday morning sunlight glancing of beige yellow and white condominiums. After cleaning up breakfast, I head out, arranging to meet Angela and Barrett at lunchtime.

I laze my way through the streets, I can hardly be bothered. I've peaked and the festival is winding down around me. I try to go into the Carlton to visit their booths, but suddenly there is security, and they won't let people in - there was no security before, and by now everybody except the judges and the competitors have left town. I go to the American pavilion, looking for Int. Her. Trib., I scrounge the last one for the crossword. I look over the last of the promo materials, on one table I see a postcard announcing 'Nazi Zombies - we have the title, we have the story' and a contact for interested investors. I go by the Palais, but I don't bother getting a daycard. I've decided to change my plans and leave as soon as possible. I meet up with Angela and Barrett to say goodbye, they're on their way to lunch with the Navy guys. Barrett says she'll contact me when she got back to London, I never heard.

Trained to Juan Les Pins, changed flight. Haggled with the hotelier as I'm checking out late. I don't pay the extra, but the French hotels get their own back when I arrive in Nice too late to retrieve my deposit for the hotel there. Grab lunch at Freetime (the dubious bernaise burger). I make the airport with so much time to spare, I change my flight again. Nothing to do but browse the airport shops, I see the commemorative festival watch, ridiculous (film canister face, movie clapboard hands), but handsome, I buy it, my last strange souvenir.

Boarding the plane I argue with the guard who insists on putting my loaded camera through the x-ray machine, I want a handcheck in the end he tears it from my hands and throws it onto the conveyor belt. I relent, the French thug cops. (a photojournalist friend of a friend has an unpublishable photo he took of a French cop shooting and killing an unarmed suspect falsely accused of shoplifting)

I sit next to an elderly couple from Boston on the plane, they spend time in Nice every year, they don't know anything about this 'festival thing.' I turn to the last daily festival issue of Variety. The back cover has a still from Basketcase II, a picture of the gloopy monster grinning, large caption underneath 'GOODBYE'.


Epilogue: Victory
Safely ensconced in my apartment far from the madness, after an exhausting day back at work, I tune in the very end of the presentation ceremonies. I see 'Wild at Heart' Win the Palme D'Or - now I know how it feels to see your team win the World Series....

Addendum 20 Years Later:
Never saw Barrett again. While when I wrote this I implied that I hadn't heard from her, I vaguely recall finding out, too late to matter, that she had left a message for me at my work in London, which I didn't receive until I returned from Paris.

My beloved Cannes watch stopped working after about five years, and even after the drastic replacement of its workings it still is only correct twice a day. Attempts to find other copies on Ebay have been fruitless.

The Fourth Reich strangely has disappeared from IMDB, although this article (The Cinema of Manie van Rensburg) esteems it one of the director's best films. This may be an oversight by IMDB, but perhaps it is an issue of data confusion as there is a new film by the same title coming soon to our screens which is not about South African National Socialists, but is about.....
Nazi Zombies! (The 4th Reich at IMDB, not to be confused with the 2009 Norwegian skiing Nazi Zombie flick Død snø). Even great ideas take a long time in the movie business.

Labels: Back-B-Log, Cannes Film Festival, My Life in the Movies, XPat Files

posted by Brian R Tarnoff @ 6:10 pm 0 comments

Back-B-Log: Catch-Up: New Forest Film Festival 2011 Wrap Up

I've gotten around to finishing all articles relating to the 2011 New Forest Film Festival, a series of events at which I both volunteered and puntered and more.   I love the idea of having this Film Festival on my doorstep in the forest, and want to help it succeed.  After an excellent taster evening in 2010, the 2011 Festival was the first with a full program, and it is an encouraging building block for the future.

It was immediately before my three week trip to the States, and much of the time since has been devoted to preparing then caring for the litter of puppies who are now four months old and, except for the lovely Anya, have gone to wonderful and loving homes (Anya has stayed in our wonderful and loving home) -- which is why this job lot are so late for completion, the puppies ate my homework.

13/09/11	New Forest Film Festival: Project Nim: Responsibility and Mind
17/09/11	New Forest Film Festival: The Americanization of Mary
17/09/11	New Forest Film Festival: Shock Treatment
18/09/11	New Forest Film Festival: The Ghost That Never Returns
18/09/11	New Forest Film Festival: Vehicle of Horrors - The Sequel!!!
18/09/11	New Forest Film Festival 2011: My Playlists

If you've ended up here because you Googled the Festival, be warned, I do go on a bit.  Of course, whether you care for my self referential musings is your problem.  Feel free to dip in and out of them as you wish.

I also was short listed (1 of 2) for this years New Forest Film Festival Critic of the Year (over 18). Here's my review as entered for The Brothers Bloom, as well as two other essays I considered submitting, a clip of the awards presentation, and my Critic's Cut of my review (including the bits that were over the submission's 500 word limit).

11/09/11	Review: The Brothers Bloom: The Sum of Its Parts
12/09/11	Fantasy Reviews: Mamma Mia! as directed by Michael Haneke
12/09/11	The Last Picture Show as Reviewed By A Critic With an Axe To Grind Over This Gimmick of Black and White
17/09/11	New Forest Film Festival: And the Winner...
19/09/11	New Forest Film Festival: The Brothers Bloom Review = The Critic's Cut

Here's a couple of tangentially related pieces, the strangely negative effect of Richard O'Brien on my existence, and why you shouldn't disabuse people of their love for a film that you patently know is wrong (which casually mentions my role in the winning team at the NFFF Film Quiz)

13/11/11	My Life in the Movies: Richard O'Brien , Unintentionally My Nemesis
13/11/11	My Life in the Movies: There Are Some Arguments You Don't Want to Win

As I perversely prefer them to be posted to the dates when either I started writing them, or more relevantly  chose to post them, this means they don't show up as the latest thing  in the arbitrarily chronological feed of this blog, hence this catch up round up.  If any of you gluttons for punishment particularly enjoy the above, you may be interested in my former festival experience, when, as a young IT consultant, I crashed the Cannes Film Festival, starting with Back-B-log 1990: Cannes - Dread And Victory (I.a.To Cannes (and hell)).

Labels: Back-B-Log, New Forest Film Festival

posted by Brian R Tarnoff @ 3:01 pm 0 comments

Back-B-Log: Another Summer in Hell (1988)

[Author's Note: This brief memoir from 1988 is posted here as it is related to my story of my ongoing unintentional persecution by Richard O'Brien, which includes part of my summer of 1983 spent in the GCC Walnut Mall 1 2 3]

(English 135 Advanced Expository Writing, Professor Cavallo, August 1, 1988, Assignment #6)

[Author's Note: To those of you disparaged directly or indirectly above, apologies.  I appreciate we've all grown up now, and, at least those of you whom I'm still in touch with, we turned out O.K.  Keep in mind this is the raw perspective of an undercooked youth.

Diana Cavallo's writing course was possibly the best I've taken, and I wish I'd taken her other writing courses as well.  Anything wrong with my writing sure ain't her fault.

It should be noted that the following Summer I did not take my own advice completely, I travelled to Britain to interview for the job that changed my life, and haven't stopped moving since.]

Labels: Back-B-Log, Life Irritates Art, My Life in the Movies

posted by Brian R Tarnoff @ 12:23 pm 2 comments

Back-B-Log: Catch-Up: The Social Network, Worst Films 2010 etc.

I've gotten around to finishing the following articles, and, as I perversely prefer them to be posted to the dates when I more relevantly started writing them, this means they don't show up as the latest thing in the arbitrarily chronological feed.

30/09/10 Surfin' Multiplex: Fear, Loathing and Claustrophobia: The Town, The Hole, Buried, Devil
21/10/10 Review: The Social Network: Fight Club for Nerds
31/12/10 Recycled: My Worst Films of the Year 2010

Enjoy!

Also, note, due to my Advent Calendar in Song project in December 2010, going back chronologically may be a bit laborious, you may want to take advantage of the "labels" feature of the blog to see "Reviews" only, for example.

Labels: Back-B-Log, Reviews

posted by Brian R Tarnoff @ 9:41 am 0 comments

Back-B-Log: 1990: Cannes - Dread And Victory (V Retreat and Victory)

[From the 2nd and final issue of the Tuesday Express/American Voyeur Paris/Cannes Issue! 1990]

V
Sunday, May 20th: Retreat

I wake first and, after a shower to remove the crud of another Mediterranean swelter night, I head off to the bakery to find goodies. Back in the apartment we manage leftovers breakfast and coffee. I step out on the balcony, complete with its trellis with fake plants and large plastic crustaceans (a wall which would have been at home in any Seafood Shanty restaurant). I survey Cannes below me, an overblown dream; harsh, Sunday morning sunlight glancing of beige yellow and white condominiums. After cleaning up breakfast, I head out, arranging to meet Angela and Barrett at lunchtime.

I laze my way through the streets, I can hardly be bothered. I've peaked and the festival is winding down around me. I try to go into the Carlton to visit their booths, but suddenly there is security, and they won't let people in - there was no security before, and by now everybody except the judges and the competitors have left town. I go to the American pavilion, looking for Int. Her. Trib., I scrounge the last one for the crossword. I look over the last of the promo materials, on one table I see a postcard announcing 'Nazi Zombies - we have the title, we have the story' and a contact for interested investors. I go by the Palais, but I don't bother getting a daycard. I've decided to change my plans and leave as soon as possible. I meet up with Angela and Barrett to say goodbye, they're on their way to lunch with the Navy guys. Barrett says she'll contact me when she got back to London, I never heard.

Trained to Juan Les Pins, changed flight. Haggled with the hotelier as I'm checking out late. I don't pay the extra, but the French hotels get their own back when I arrive in Nice too late to retrieve my deposit for the hotel there. Grab lunch at Freetime (the dubious bernaise burger). I make the airport with so much time to spare, I change my flight again. Nothing to do but browse the airport shops, I see the commemorative festival watch, ridiculous (film canister face, movie clapboard hands), but handsome, I buy it, my last strange souvenir.

Boarding the plane I argue with the guard who insists on putting my loaded camera through the x-ray machine, I want a handcheck in the end he tears it from my hands and throws it onto the conveyor belt. I relent, the French thug cops. (a photojournalist friend of a friend has an unpublishable photo he took of a French cop shooting and killing an unarmed suspect falsely accused of shoplifting)

I sit next to an elderly couple from Boston on the plane, they spend time in Nice every year, they don't know anything about this 'festival thing.' I turn to the last daily festival issue of Variety. The back cover has a still from Basketcase II, a picture of the gloopy monster grinning, large caption underneath 'GOODBYE'.


Epilogue: Victory
Safely ensconced in my apartment far from the madness, after an exhausting day back at work, I tune in the very end of the presentation ceremonies. I see 'Wild at Heart' Win the Palme D'Or - now I know how it feels to see your team win the World Series....

[Addendum:
Never saw Barrett again. While when I wrote this I implied that I hadn't heard from her, I vaguely recall finding out, too late to matter, that she had left a message for me at my work in London, which I didn't receive until I returned from Paris.

My beloved Cannes watch stopped working after about five years, and even after the drastic replacement of its workings it still is only correct twice a day. Attempts to find other copies on Ebay have been fruitless.

The Fourth Reich strangely has disappeared from IMDB, although this article (The Cinema of Manie van Rensburg) esteems it one of the director's best films. This may be an oversight by IMDB, but perhaps it is an issue of data confusion as there is a new film by the same title coming soon to our screens which is not about South African National Socialists, but is about.....
Nazi Zombies! (The 4th Reich at IMDB, not to be confused with the 2009 Norwegian skiing Nazi Zombie flick Død snø). Even great ideas take a long time in the movie business.]

Labels: Back-B-Log, Cannes Film Festival, XPat Files

posted by Brian R Tarnoff @ 4:18 pm 0 comments

Back-B-Log: 1990: Cannes - Dread And Victory (IV Wild Thing)

[From the 2nd and final issue of the Tuesday Express/American Voyeur Paris/Cannes Issue! 1990]
IV
Saturday, May 19th: Wild Thing
I'm not about to give up. The press screening for 'Wild At Heart' is at 8:30 this morning. There's no way that everyone is going to be there after all the late night action. The sun is strong, it gives everything a rigid edge, I'm toned and energized as I stride from the train station. There were only two trains that could have gotten me here on time, and I ran for the second. I'm in by 7:40. There's no one in front of the Palais yet.

The Film Societe offices are closed, and I weigh the wisdom of giving up on the Lynch and sticking with this more assured way of at least getting into something. In one of the windows a dozen monitors are set up as an advertisement for European Cable, each tuned to a different channel, some of which are giving Festival coverage. I learn of the deaths of both Jim Henson and Sammy Davis Jr. (I flash on the day at College a few years back, when I thought I had heard a rumour that Henson had died of a virus - deja vu?).

I return to the steps of the Palais. A crowd has started to form. With some bravado I join the crowd in line and wait. After listening to the conversations going on around me, I start to chat up a few of the Americans. One of them, Joan Cohen, develops some film festival for, of all places, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She works for the Broward County film commission, whose offices are in LA. She's sort of a fortiesish slim overtanned Jewish maiden aunt, with what anti-feminists look on as a hobby-career. I mention that my parents live down there half the year; on hearing she's looking for indie productions, I go so far as to tell her about "Ramblin' Gal". I stop short of trying to sell it to her, but I promise her the information on how to contact the Person's. She tells me that you get the tickets to the official screenings at the Unifrance desk in the Grand Palais, but I don't have the credentials for it. It also turns out that she has an extra ticket to this morning's screening.

She starts ransacking her handbag for it. I try not to show my nervousness. An American couple have joined in the conversation, one of them thinks she misplaced her ticket, can she have the extra one. Joan says its been promised to me, and she's not sure she can find it. Almost at once, both women find their missing tickets. Wheww!

Joan hands me the ticket. Selection officielle. I experience an ungodly rush of endorphins. I remain calm, keeping the party to myself. This is it!

I am horribly and unbearably impatient. When are they going to let us in? They wouldn't start the film precisely on time without letting everyone in? How inefficient the French are, that would be just like them. I'm so tense I don't even look for famous people.

We're going in. WOW! Apparently the tickets designate whether you're on the floor or in the balcony. I'm in the balcony, more prestigious, but less to my taste, who's complaining. I find a seat, they are filling up at an amazing rate. I scan the audience. I have that half-awake mid-morning lustful-hope, it would be the crowning achievement if some ravishing Lynch fan were to sit by me, and there are plenty here, but, Ok, so I get some strange looking Europeans, fine, I'll be able to watch the film better. OHMIGODIMHERE WOW!

Wild At Heart. The film washes over me. Lynch's over-the-top strangeness, violence and sex, with sprinklings of incoherent allusions to Elvis and Wizard of Oz. I enjoyed immensely, but I'd really have to see it again to tell you whether I liked it (the more I think about it, the more I like it). And this is a REAL audience, a congregation of the church of mine own, they applaud before it starts, they stop talking and only make mostly group responses (I was one of the few people guffawing at the Wizard of Oz stuff), and they cheered and applauded enthusiastically at the end. No celebs showed up, they are to go to the screening this evening, but that doesn't matter, we're here for the MOVIE.

Afterwards, although in a contented, sated daze, my instinct manuevers me as quickly as possible past the security, to get my Day card, and straight down to the Unifrance line. I can't actually get tickets here, but maybe I can talk someone into giving me one of theirs, it worked once already. And magically, again, I'm standing next to two American women, thirtysomething New Yorkers, one manages one of the major art house cinemas, is basically here to shop for films, and the other just finished an MA at NYU film school, is trying to flog her school project to distributors, and get money to produce her next. They both seem glad to talk to someone who is here because they love film, they seem tired of the industry, show-the-"product" people. One of them has a few extra tickets to the screening of Cyrano De Bergerac which starts momentarily (a bunch of her friends desperate to get a break from the festival drove to Monte Carlo, and aren't making it back). I weigh the opportunities, take the ticket, stay here and hope to get something better, when we make it to the beginning of the line, I also hear that there's going to be a 'Wild At Heart' Press Conference in about an hour.

The way the ticket system works is that you apply for a certain number of tickets for each of the screenings ahead of time. Depending on your status in the pecking order, Industry, Market, or Press, you may or not get what you want. All the REALLY important people are just given theirs outright.

I opt for Cyrano. I probably couldn't BS my way into the press conference, there's nothing much else that I want to specifically see. So why not, by the time I get out, it'll be just about time to get in touch with Barrett who's been trying to introduce me to some PR girl all week because we're both film buffs (sure, I'll bite).

Cyrano was excellent, one of Depardieu's best, and a real surprise given that I'd seen him in mostly inarticulate roles previously. The adaptation captures both the literary zeal of the character as well as injecting some enjoyable swashbuckling. I later find out that Anthony Burgess did the verse translation for the subtitles.

I wander around the Palais again, picking up souvenirs like a tourist. Things are definitely winding down, only half the booths seem open. I contemplate asking for or stealing film posters, one for 'Comic-Book Confidential' with examples of various cartoonists, and one for some dutch film the poster was done by one of their better graphic artists. Moral and practical reasons prevail... how would I transport them? I buy the T-shirt with this year's Festival Poster on it. I buy the official program (an outrageous 120 francs). I buy a pin.

Meeting Barrett at the boat, she finally introduces Angela, the American PR film-buff she wants to fob me off on romantically. O.K. by me, Angela is very cute: petite, sleek short dark hair, and a Lynch fan to boot (I'd never met a woman who not only liked, but loved Blue Velvet), but unfortunately, Barrett has failed in her well meaning research again, Angela is meeting her BOYFRIEND down in Italy in a few days. On top of this Barrett has arranged to meet up with some Navy guys on leave, who she takes a perhaps sisterly interest in being a Navy brat herself.

There are four Navy guys, two pairs of buddies from different ships, they seem alright. They are good old boys, but without the clichéd patina that exudes from many of the military I've met. They all seem to be chasing Barrett in a surprisingly mellow, laid back fashion (considering that they've been at sea for three months). We troop about the harbour, passing Karreem Abdul Jabbar, the second and last famous person I saw that week. Angela is going to the big gala screening of Wild At Heart that night, I balk at asking her to get me in (what would I wear, do I want to see it twice in the same day?). She does offer to get me into one of the films her company is promoting. We all split up 'til later.

American Pavilion - I'm trying to leave Joan Cohen a message to get her hooked up with Carl Person - returning her favour. I barely recognize her as she comes to the desk while I'm writing it. She thanks me and goes on her way. I look for materials and food to scrounge, then I go to L'Ambassades to the screening that Angela gets me into.

The film is called 'The 4th Reich' it is pretty much at TV movie level, but it is interesting because it tells about the foiled Nazi coup attempt during WWII in South Africa, which adds to my pitiably small store of historical knowledge of South Africa.

Finally grabbing my first meal of the day (Quick, again), I chat up a trio of Scandinavians, who oddly hold English as the common language between them. I then meet up again with Barrett and the navy guys. We go to an open air bar attached to a condo where the Screen International people are hanging out, they disdain the American Navy personnel, and while I had been interested in getting to know a bit more about the film journo scene, their pretentious black garbed artsyfartsiness goes a long way to putting me off. We sit there for quite a while as its getting dark drinking our beers and rum and cokes.

I'm waiting for Angela to show up again, having fixated mildly, and wanting to discuss the Lynch with her, she's the only person I've talked to since I got here who seems interested in movies the same way I am. Even to most of those who are interested in the films themselves, its just commerce. The journo's are modishly blase, they don't mention the films, just the stories, or the pictures they're doing, they don't talk about the content, they talk about the work. Gossip here is all money related, who's backing whom. The film reviews in the dailies here seem as much interested in appraising a movie's marketability as itself. No one talks about what films they've seen, they drop which parties they've been to what execs they've met. I've seen no celebrities here because they aren't really here, they are just part of the product... producers and their money are the real matin-fuckin-ay idols.

Angela appears modestly dressed to the nines, just being at the gala showing of Wild at Heart, I'm somewhat awed, she has been to the promised land.

The evening degenerates from here. We walk down one end of the Croissette to find a bar near the Carlton where we're supposed to be meeting yet another navy guy. It becomes like a long march after that we troop all the way over to the other side of town, wandering up into the old port, a hilly area, with great Saturdaynightlife. Along the way we lose Barrett and one of the guys, we spend too much time looking for them and finally sit down to eat at a pizza place by the docks, the fugitives show up while we're just on our drinks, and tear us away from the restaurant. After much more walking and drinking, Angela and I peel off for dinner at a place called Cannibal Pizza.

The rest of the staff of her company have left town, she is alone in the apartment they've rented. I beg a place to crash because its too late to catch a train back to Juan Les Pins. She takes me in. I fight the urge to make a pass at her which I don't think would be a welcomed response to her generosity (she's mentioned her boyfriend just once too often). Exhausted and fed I collapse happily onto the bed, thinking irrelevant thoughts of a pretty film buff in the next bedroom. Frustration and contentment merge in a quiet pleasant buzz as I fall asleep.

[to be continued in V Retreat and Victory...]

Labels: Back-B-Log, Cannes Film Festival, XPat Files

posted by Brian R Tarnoff @ 2:16 pm 0 comments

Back-B-Log: 1990: Cannes - Dread And Victory (III Banana Republic and the Grand Palais)

[From the 2nd and final issue of the Tuesday Express/American Voyeur Paris/Cannes Issue! 1990]
III Friday, May 18th: Banana Republic and other guises.

Morning is hot, I head straight for the Carlton, just to get inside while I wait for Barrett. I look around the booths in the foyer, one - pushing subscriptions to the Hollywood Reporter, others - video sales for schlock films. I leaf through publicity material, but in some cases this is snatched from me, as it is obvious I'm not going to be doing business with them. An English woman working for the Australian Film Commission admires my Banana Republic T-shirt (Minister of Propaganda). Her daughter goes to school in the states and buys out the store. She is very friendly, and generous with the leaflets. After all, I'm the only one whose been loitering through here all day.

I head across the Croissette, wait for a free phone booth. There is a huge inflatable siren, a Thanksgiving Day Parade sized balloon of The Little Mermaid from the Disney film of the same name, she basks in the sun floating about fifty feet from the beach. I call Barrett. She comes down from the office to meet me, I'm sitting out in the sun doing origami. Boss lady isn't around so she takes me up to the office, introduces me around, I'm already a story to them, legendary embarrassment. I assure them, I'm OK now.

Colin the photographer shows up trailed by an artsy media-type in her early thirties, she's does freelance research for an English independent TV company, she's living in Paris. After I tell her I'm working there she gives me her business card, 'Carina B.' it says, maybe she couldn't afford to print the whole of her last name.

Barrett has to stop by the Palais to grab some of the competitors dailies - she has to classify and count the advertisements, and she has to get something at the boat. While we're waiting around for Barrett to change a small group forms chatting and scarfing down free pretzels, nuts, chips and OJ. I chat up one of the two women crew members, she's an Aussie ex-nurse working her way around the world. Two of the freelance writers show up, one in his forties a film critic, he seems interested in knowing how well I know Barrett... there seems to be a good deal of male posturing floating about here.

About this time my lie begins... a line of bull that I pitch in various forms to people while I'm down here. The gist: I'm here first and foremost a film buff, I work for a Computer consulting firm that is vaguely interested in acquiring a firm that does computer generated special effects (this is a left turn from the truth, we do acquire other firms, and most of the software we deal with has some sort of graphics capability). This seems enough to justify my presence, without making me look a complete tourist.

We finally head off to lunch, Barrett, myself, Colin, and the critic tags along; I invite Aussie girl, but she has boat stuff to do.

We have mediterranean pizza at crowded outside tables with authentically rude terrible service. We fight over the bill, I pay. We want more than one copy of the receipt so that we can all claim it for our expenses. The restaurant refuses, but we've already left the tip.

We wander back up the Croissette, towards the Carlton. I wander back towards the Palais alone, thinking I should just give the film idea up and go bask in the sun on the sand, but I'm afraid of ruining my camera (in tow). Anyway, I'd just hopelessly ogle the topless tannists. I stroll the promenade by the beach. I'm wrong, of course, when the whole beach is by and large topless, you lose that prurience, leaving only vague attraction without lust. I head towards the Brit pavilion, hoping to run into one of the women I met who works there.

Chatting up one of the workers in the Brit pavilion, I finally begin to find out some sensible things about getting into the barred screenings and convention rooms. There are three kinds of pass that I could conceivably get: press pass (which I thought I might have been able to sleaze out of Barrett, before the fiasco), to get one on my own I would have had to apply with credentials and clippings months ahead of time; market pass (this gives access to pavilions and to market screenings - non-festival related, popular entertainment films like Amazon Island of Cannibal Women) for which I'd have to pay 1000 francs (roughly $200, which seems tempting, but it's a little late in the game to blow that kind of money with only 2 days left); and day card, as I soon found out, all you need to get a day card is a business card and proof of identity (a passport), but the day card only gets you into the pavilions, not into the screenings.

On the way over to the pavilion, I tried the Film Societe office, if you pay a membership fee, they might be able to get you some tickets. After getting some pretty inconclusive answers as to the availability for the films I'm interested in, I finally wind up speaking with a French woman who lives in London, she is pleased by attempts at French, and says that I would have to get to the office early. Anyone who I mention trying to get tickets to the screenings of 'Wild At Heart' the new David Lynch film, just shakes their heads, it's the hottest ticket in town.

I go to the pavilion entrance to the Palais, but I'm barred entry by the thugs. I eventually manage to explain that I need a day card, they eventually manage to explain where the office is, but they insist I take the separate entrance to get to it. Nervous as hell, I enter the festival office, it's nearing the end of the day, so things are pretty sparse, I finally get the attention of one of the workers, she doesn't seem to want to be bothered, but after a cursory glance at my passport and business card, she gives me the day card.

I'm in, I proudly stride past the thugs. The inner sanctum, the Grand Palais du Festival, is just a convention center, on the lowest level there are partitioned booths and 'room's for various companies ranging from rival manufacturers of movie theater seats, to porn video distributors trying to channel some of their profits into more legitimate ventures - R-rated exploitation films - no, I didn't ask for samples. Film boards of various European countries, including the East Block (It's like 'ROAD WARRIOR', only with farm machinery). I stifle the urge to gorge myself on free publicity materials for films I may never see, or even hear of again. In one area a largescreen video is set up showing the French TV and European cable coverage of the Festival.

The meandering corridors seem endless. I duck up a deserted stairwell coming out in the lobby of the second largest theater in the building, I quickly go in before any security show up. There is a screening in progress. I simultaneously try to make sense of what is going on on screen and leaf through the dailies for details about this screening. Credits are running, oh great, I just missed something, no, it turns out this is a program of short subjects, ok, not the big thing, but something. The next one comes on: it starts off arty strange b/w, woman in an apartment suddenly realizes that the ceiling is slowly descending, she tries to cry for help, but can't open her windows looking out high above the city, she tries to prop up furniture, but that is crushed by the inexorable architecture, nearly impaled by her chandelier, in the last possible moments she begins to hit and tear at the ceiling, she breaks through, she is suddenly seen to be breaking through and emerging astonished from beneath the surface of a city street. After one other brief short, the program ended. Oh well, I've gotten my feet wet.

They're clearing out the theater, and ostensibly, the Palais, I duck into another stairwell and head back to the convention area. It's ghost-town time. Turning a corner, there are some chairs by one of the booths, I sit down exhausted. There are two women conversing loudly, a man and a boy, the only other people I've seen in twenty minutes. They are Americans of course; the guy, middle-aged well vetted, casual, figures out I'm American too, strikes up conversation. He is Carl Person, a New York Lawyer, he specializes in copyright law and is about to score big for his early involvement with the multimillion case against Mattel by the guy who invented the flanges on the Hot Wheels track; until now he's had no experience of the film industry. His wife, one of the women, Lu-Ann Horst Person, was a singer/songwriter, decided to add writer/director and made this musical inde movie on a sizeable shoestring (Carl's, he has shoestrings to spare). The movie is called "Ramblin' Gal", it's about a singer/songwriter who leaves her family to go to the big city, its a serious drama. Carl is under the misapprehension that I've sat through their film in a little video screening they just had. He seems quite glad, if not relieved to talk to me, another industry outsider. In New York he's a flash savvy lawyer, here, naive sitting duck.

His wife is talking to this faded American ballerina who's living in Paris. They're going to be working on a children's musical together. It turns out that this and the film are second ditch efforts after an Off-Broadway production they were trying to run ran out of steam and money in rehearsals. No, these are bland Americans, nothing Runyonesque or even Damonic about them. Their kid is assembling a cardboard working camera, probably a freebie from the Fuji booth. About nine years old, obviously bored, but not impatient, which seems surprising, he seems intelligent but he's not at all enthused or interested by being here, this is reason enough for me to ignore him, though I usually like smart kids.

Carl's telling me about some of the new developments in copyright's regarding 'intellectual property' and how that's going to be applied to software. I recall both: Lotus suing one of their competitors for making their program 'look and feel' too much like theirs, although the 'program' behind it is different; and: my friend Ken, has written a program which he's marketing through his company - he's been concerned about the ethics of the French company - apparently the French are close to the Japanese in idea stealing. Lawyer Person tells me Ken should almost hope that they steal, then whack them with a lawsuit. I get his business card to forward to Ken, who knows? I wish them good luck with the film, I feel strangely sorry for them, they'll need it.

This is fantastic, the palais is empty, I explore, the grown-ups are gone. I run around the several levels, ducking up stairwells, I find the roof and survey all around. I go down a corridor with mostly shut offices, risking discovery; I try to appear as if I know where I am. It's about six o'clock, it occurs to me that I could just stay in the building and then sneak into the Premiers that night with all the celebs, but, I'm not dressed to get away with it, and the film that night is Nouvelle Vague, the new Godard, which I'm not interested in. After a bit more on the roof (I'm joined by some lost Italian tourists), I leave the Palais before the magic grows thin.

I meander towards the cinema where I saw the Russian movie yesterday - maybe I'll get another offer, (maybe 'Plot Against Harry'?). No luck, I explore my way towards the train station, trying to decide whether to eat here or back in Juan Les Pins. The lagged tiredness is returning. I'm eyeing a cafe, when I notice this tall thin plain woman who looks familiar, not just because she's American, and is sort of a type... it's Ellen McWhirter, one of my professors from the U of P English Dept.

I approach her timidly and ask. She remembers me. She taught a course on Alfred Hitchcock, for which I developed my impersonation of the same to tease her. She's fairly blasé, she's waiting for a group of friends for dinner. We sit down for a coffee with a butch American woman and a somewhat fey Oriental guy. She's here as an instructor for PENN in CANNES some absurd summer program for rich Penn students. She's got tickets to 'Wild at Heart' and tells me to give up hope of getting any, they're impossible. The group they've been waiting for arrives and I leave, somewhat put off by what seems like gloating or mere disinterest.

Back in Juan Les Pins I rest for a bit, debate whether to bother doing Laundry, it's too late. I must eat to stay healthy, about 10:30 I stalk about, settling once again on Pizza (just about the only reasonable places that are open), but I go for the seafood (Pescadore) for a change, annoyed that it arrives with no cheese whatsoever. Afterwards I wander past the closed tourist arcades and a restaurant for tourists with a live conga band and umbrellaed cocktails. Down another street I am greeted with the welcome sight of a gelati place, and I splurge nearly 35 francs for a waffle sugar cone dipped in chocolate with stracciatella (chocolate chip) and framboise gelati. Strolling back along the promenade, gropers and interlopers on benches, it's a Felliniesque heaven, dimly lit by strings of coloured bulbs swaying slightly in the breeze, trespassing in the sky amidst the quiet stars.

[to be continued in IV Wild Thing...]

Labels: Back-B-Log, Cannes Film Festival, XPat Files

posted by Brian R Tarnoff @ 12:16 pm 0 comments

Back-B-Log: 1990: Cannes - Dread And Victory (II To Juan Les Pins)

[From the 2nd and final issue of the Tuesday Express/American Voyeur Paris/Cannes Issue! 1990 ]
II
Thursday, May 17th: To Juan Les Pins
10 AM, it is 28 hours since I last slept. I spent the last few hours wandering up and down the beach and between the beach and the train station, waiting for the tourist office to open so I can get the numbers of hotels in nearby towns, and a Cannes streetplan. I'm also waiting to talk to Barrett, who said I should call at 10:30. We might have lunch, I'm also holding that small glimmer of a hope that she'll find me a place to crash (a notion not helped by my vague juvenile attraction to her).

It is a pleasantly glaring hot, mediterranean-breeze cooled day. I can't be bothered waiting, I call the SI office, Barrett's not even in yet (I bet she slept). I resist the urge to call vindictively at five minute intervals. I call again at 10:30, not there, at 10:45 she's in, has no time for lunch, and hints that the chances are next to nil of finding me a place, but suggests lunch the next day. Also, there is no chance that she'll be able to get me any kind of press-credentials. I sign off, I need to crash, I go back to the boat. Demonic boss-lady is not present, the captain and one of his crew seem concerned, I chat them up, casually pretending that it's no big deal, I'll sleep eventually. They give me orange juice, which is the only thing I have an appetite for. I pick up my pack, get to the station just in time for the train to Juan Les Pins, the twenty minute ride seems like an hour.

I only picked Juan Les Pins because I already knew I could book there, and because more trains stop there than at the towns closer to Cannes. At the tourist office I get another list of local hotels, I balk at phoning the one I just cancelled with two days ago. I choose something within close walking distance from the train station. After paying for the three nights I intend to stay, I attempt to collapse, its hot I feel grungier than an entire summer camp, I shower, then collapse. It is between noon and one, roughly 30 hours since I woke up early to pack for the trip.

I sleep. An hour later I wake up. I sleep. Again, almost exactly an hour, I wake up. I sleep. Deep, fitful. At three I'm awake again. Alright, I must have trained my body to stay awake, now it rejects sleep. I decide to use the jet-lag cure, stay awake until the normal time, then sleep.

I go back to Cannes. I contact Barrett, arrange a time to meet for lunch the next day. She's been saying there's this American woman working as a publicist, she wants to introduce us, we're both film buffs. I'm game of course. But she won't be available that night. I have a good wander around town, check out the local fast food joint ('Quick'), I track down the locations for the non-official (not in the festival) market and press screenings, at the towns small ordinary cinemas a two and a five plex, one of which is screening the film 'The Plot Against Harry', which I'm interested in seeing, I find out that while some of these screenings are invitation only (like the official selections), you can buy tickets to some of the others. As I'm heading away from the theatres, a young woman approaches me on the street and hands me an invitation to a film that starting shortly, urging me to go see it. I figure if its no good, I can at least get some rest, and maybe the theater will be air-conditioned.

The film is 'Raspad' a Soviet-American co-production about the horrors of Chernobyl. It was pretty grim, with touches of bizarre humour, and surprisingly frank about the way the truth was initially suppressed, about the disaster. And all things considered, I did stay awake through two hours of subtitles. Given my own minor disasters it seems to fit perfectly into the odd logic of my experience here.

Mellowed, more optimistic, dog-tired, sleepy, I trundle to the train, back to JuanLesPins, and to sleep.

[To be continued with III Banana Republic and other guises...]

Labels: Back-B-Log, Cannes Film Festival, XPat Files

posted by Brian R Tarnoff @ 3:15 pm 0 comments

Back-B-Log: 1990: Cannes - Dread And Victory (I.c.)

[From the 2nd and final issue of the Tuesday Express/American Voyeur Paris/Cannes Issue! 1990 Part I. Early hours of Thursday 17th May, homeless, wandering through Cannes nightlife, continued]

{The snack bar - Petit Carlton. }
We walk back down the Croissette. I'm talking to Colin, this photographer who Barrett obviously has something going on with, but which she won't let on to. He seems likeable enough, which makes this puzzling. She grabs him, my buddy, she says. He has a room to himself, but he can't offer me any space because he has to dash back there by 2 or 3 to develop the nights pics for tomorrows issue.

He's the only one who seems to know where we're going, we turn up this street, he remembers because there's the bar with the transvestite hookers out front. And sure enough one is standing in the middle of the street, looking desperate for curb crawls, forming a landmark which we navigate by. We turn parallel to Croissette, we ascend a few streets until we get to a seedy, bar-bistro, cranked up with festival people, spilling out onto the street, an international sprawl on the pavements. The sign reads SNACK BAR PETIT CARLTON. Obviously the French have no infringement laws, as the use of the Carlton's name is disastrously out of place here. From what Barrett says, this is the late-night place of the festival workers, low profile insiders, those who don't get to the big studio exec parties, or those who are slumming after dealing.

We have a few drinks, and the atmosphere is at once festive and dire, vetoing dodging the broken glass on the pavement we stay inside the bar, its beginning to get chilly outside. We run into an American guy working on the boat next to hers, whose name is something like Brad. She tries dropping me onto a greasy black haired lesbian friend of hers, who nods knowingly as if I chased down here to see Barrett and not the festival. We talk about movies for a while before she drifts off.

Barrett is dozing off standing up. A few guys hit on her, she seems utterly defenceless in this condition, perversely I begin to feel concerned for her. She occasionally recalls her absurd sense of mission to introduce me to someone who will offer me a place to stay, a cause I have considered long lost. I'm not drunk. I can see their eyes glaze over, nod their pities, shrug shoulders. She leerily says if she can't find me a place, she'll join me on the beach. I take this as joking, as much as wishfully thinking on my part, I don't detect a hint of anything from her except a self-induced guilt play.

Suddenly she realizes that she left something undone in the office-suite in the Carlton, that she MUST check on before going back. The guy from the boat-next-door and I decide to use this opportunity to steer her back to the boat. I've been trying to tell her that at least she should get some sleep, she'll be no help to me, or anyone else for that matter if she doesn't. That Bradley from the boat and I both insist on accompanying her, its really 50's like we're assuring each other of our 'honourable intentions'.


{The Carlton, counting the steps.}
We half run through the barely lit streets, drunk on moonlight etc. The Carlton security is really blasé at this hour, here we are in this palace/hotel, Barrett, being the tippler trying to keep her voice down, but it comes out as a loud stage whisper. We count the steps going up in French. She goes into the rooms being used as offices, there is no point even asking to stay on the floor there, she would get fired.... She has more or less forgotten her reason for coming there. We count the steps going down in German, slowly, as Barrett remembers how. Somehow the number of steps up and down are not equivalent in any language.

{The boat. The cafe. The snack bar 2.}
Brad and I get her back on to her boat. She suggests I sneak on, crash on the floor and sneak off again, but I think that it is unlikely that I will be able to sleep less than four hours, and I dread getting caught out pathologically, and that seems childishly worse than staying up all night. Also, I don't want Barrett in any more trouble, though at this point she doesn't seem to care.

Then Bradley wishes me luck and goes back to his boat. I wander back down the jetee. By the small 'place' across from the Palais, there's a café-Restaurant, obligatory snotty waiters, brightly lit, the atmosphere puts me off, I try to go to the one next door, but they're shutting down, its 3 A.M.-abouts. I sit down, order my café-crème. I can't sleep, in the parks, on the beach, on the street - I'll probably be attacked, robbed, or arrested. Make the most of the situation. See what happens.

I decide to wander back to the Petit Carlton to watch the nightlife. I'm not sure of my way, as I go down the Croissette, there are a few sleek long stemmed prostitutes leaning over cruising limousines (should I go with them, just for a place to doze? no, they have no place, they get in the cars that stop for them). I walk quickly up the street where I spot the transvestites, but at least I think I'm going in the right direction. The hotels have all darkened, noise and light both sparse, I'm not sure I've turned up the right street, nothing looks the same as an hour before, but I stumble onwards. And there it is, affirming my sense of direction even in my present state.

Even more of the crowd has spilled onto the street. There is a sort of a waiting-for-the-end-of-the-world mood. I'm feeling too tired to mingle, observe like a mutated wall-flower, avoiding the gazes of all around. I run into the lesbian again, she seems more sympathetic, but no more helpful. Dreadfully loud German demanding his beer in English, over and over again, as the staff slowly get through to him. The actually attractive people are dwindling, leaving a layer of desperation over the remaining population. I decide, for once not to be the last to leave. I head out.

{The Restaurant. Coffee 1. Writing. Soup. Coffee 2.}
Nearby, I turn down a relatively well lit side street, cobbled pavement, probably blocked to traffic. There is a very ordinary little restaurant, seemingly normal sane and french, like the little places in Paris. Its tables litter the street, annexing the areas that belong to the other shops and cafés, hastily scribbled sign promises longer festival hours.

I collapse, I have my café-crème. I need to stay awake. I need to write this down, if I have to go through this, I can at least use it to write. My notebook is back in my pack on the boat. I finally go to the toilet. I think of moving on, but I feel comfortable here. I order soup, it is the lovely soupe-de-poisson, with cheese and croutons and sauce all on the side, the first time I've had it. It restores me. One of the trees has large cardboard ad for the pre-Cannes issue of the French Premiere - I free it from the tree, and start writing on the back the bracketed text that begins, and pervades this story. But the notes are not enough, after my second café-crème the restaurant finally closes, and I move on my way.


{Orange half moon like a croissant (over the croisette). Blue 5:30 AM mediterranean blue cloud covers white moon (not light or dark enough to distinguish cloud from sky, the moon dissolving, a small miracle). }
I am walking around the park and the place deGaulle. In fluorescent reflective uniforms, the street-cleaners appear. The gnomes of our world, unseen normally, but I have the magic of insomnia.

{The chime of the park sweepers - broken glass. The unseen sleeper on the next bench. 5 45 the streetlights go out. I realize I should attempt to watch the sunrise. }
I drag myself towards the beach looking upwards at the moon. It seems like the sun has already risen, or it's just that the brightness of the haze on the horizon obscures the sun.

{Beach cleaner (Lucinda).}
There is a fleet of beach cleaners going to and fro. I think of the Randy Newman blues song about a woman getting ploughed under after falling asleep on the beach. No wonder I didn't trust sleeping here.


Also, I see, out at the very tip of the jetty, where last night there only seemed to be the lights of an ordinary group of yachts, a life-size galleon.

{A fucking Galleon.}
It just seems to absurd that such a thing should exist here, as if it sailed out of the all-night-long-mare that I've just walked through waking. Nothing can hurt me, you wake up just before you get killed in your dreams.

{6 05 nearly fell asleep watching the faraway static of ripples to hum of beach cleaner and the insistent coo of pigeons. }

[end of Part I. To be continued in II. Thursday, May 17th: To Juan Les Pins....]

Labels: Back-B-Log, Cannes Film Festival, XPat Files

posted by Brian R Tarnoff @ 12:25 pm 0 comments