Alex de Campi: Gojira!

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20.5.05 Cannes Without A Clue, Part II

Tuesday, 11.30am: Great Moments In Career Suicide. Cannes is where nouveau riche go to die and bad films go to be born. My producer has given me a day pass to the Marche (aka the Bunker, in reference to its architectural charms) and I spend an hour walking amongst its countless stalls of producers, distributors, DVD packagers, and national film-marketing boards. Jesus, the world is full of awful films. And many of them star name actors. I choke back a crazy urge to return to Cannes with a documentary film crew and a fake film, complete with a promo reel and someone posing as the director, and record the adventures of our fraudulent attempts to raise money and distribution for a film that doesn't exist. It would be hilarious. It would also be career suicide. I file this with the "let's do SDCC Saturday on acid" idea and retreat to the UK tent to check emails and read the Cannes editions of Screen and Variety. Producer C appears, and says we must be off to the New Zealand tent. Although our film is set in London, they might give us a significant proportion of our budget to film it elsewhere, and then we can just film some pickups for the London scene-setting. But then C gets a call, says he'll go by the NZ tent later, and disappears.

Tuesday, 4pm: What am I doing here? I sit in a cafe. My producers are at meetings where I am not needed. We're supposed to be at the Shepperton/Pinewood garden party, but it's raining again, so we skipped it. Depression has set in. Writers are at the bottom of the film industry food chain, and at Cannes, a writer whose film isn't completed yet has less status than the average waiter. I also have Badge Envy: those properly accredited for the Marche have a plastic badge they wear on a string around their neck, and a measure of your standing in Cannes is how many other plastic passes you have on the string - club IDs, party passes, the Kodak tent pass, and more. I have nothing but a purple paper badge. I am nobody. I need an agent, I decide for the millionth time. I need to concentrate on writing spec film scripts. Music composer Rob and lovely TV producer James B have offered to hook me up with agent friends of theirs, and I must actually follow up on this. I've been working solidly for a year, so I haven't thought it necessary to get an agent. I mean, I got my first film deal and I look like I'm getting my first book deal without assistance. I know I can get my own gigs. But it's exhausting me, and I would like help.

Tuesday, 7pm: The Pussy Whisperer. The phone rings. I've just settled down for a little nap. I groggily answer. Producer B is finished his spreadsheets and is at a bar next door to the Brasserie Splendid, a pizzeria where we seem to eat every meal. I mumble that I'll be there in a second, and appear an hour later, groggy and dishevelled. My producers want to do a micro-budget feature in time for Cannes next year (our big feature will be still in the edit suites by then) and last night I had pitched them a couple ideas that have been kicking around my head: a road movie, a remake, and a half-hour short. As I stagger in to the bar and order coffee, the first thing Producer B says is that he loves the road movie idea. Depression lifts. We're all tired, so things get silly very fast. Producer B, after launching into a diatribe about how well he can understand his girlfriend's cat, and animals in general, is re-christened "The Pussy Whisperer." If we end tonight without getting punched, I'll be amazed. We have dinner with a nice LA distributor named John. He's fascinated by screenwriters. He never gets to meet any.

Tuesday, 11pm: Three Shots, No Chaser. We're supposed to be at the Penthouse villa party, but instead we're at the Century tent. No, not THAT Penthouse. You really think we'd skip a Guccione party? The Penthouse is a posh London media club, apparently. But so is the Century, and crucially, its party is walking distance from the hotels, and is indoors. Producer B and I are getting drunker while the DJ plays funky 80s tunes. B turns to me: "Favourite three shots in all of film. Silent shots, no dialogue. The ones that made you want to be in pictures." I waffle. All I can think of are two from CERCLE ROUGE: The cigarette scene in the muddy field, and the sharpshooting scene in the jewel shop. Both real, unexpected, character moments. And then - embarrassingly - one from the MIAMI VICE TV series. A cut from someone washing their hands after a murder, to a baby being baptised. I think I saw it when I was about 10, and it marked the first time I understood how two images placed in startling combination can express a story. His were: the ball-being-thrown-back-from-the-shed scene from ET, the rock scene from INDIANA JONES, and the scene from EMPIRE OF THE SUN where the young Japanese boy runs into a fighter plane to play his part in his nation's defence - but the plane, like the nation, is broken. Two highly metaphoric scenes, and a shameless action one.

Wednesday, 1.30am: Shaking It vs Just Kind Of Shuffling. The DJ at the Century tent cranks on Walk This Way and the Stones' Start Me Up, and suddenly we're all dancing. Just around the time I am thinking this guy is the best DJ ever, he makes an abrupt shift and plays nothing but soulless Eurodance. Now, I suppose there is a place in the world for wishy-washy music like this, but when all you want to do is DANCE YOUR ASS OFF, it just doesn't hit the spot. I pray for a little James Brown or Grand Funk, but all I get is more dance music for people who can't dance. I whinge to my producers. Where's the funk? I demand. They indicate the tent and its crowd of shuffling, off-beat revellers. "Alex, this is as funky as the film industry gets."

Wednesday, 4am: You Need To Think Bigger. The Century tent shut down at 2am. The remaining two producers and I go on to the Petite Majestique, a popular if basic after-hours bar. Producer A and I are in the midst of a massive mutual admiration society (she loves the quote from Dante's Inferno which is my symbolic basis for the film), although she takes me to task for dreamcasting the three major parts with actors known for British theatre work more than film work. "You need to think bigger, Alex," she says. "We need at least two names that can open the film." I wave my hands around and explain that Michael Sheen was godlike in CALIGULA, and because the character of the husband is a great tragic role which requires a difficult shift in audience perception over the course of the film (as well as having a breakdown scene which is among the best things I've written), we need someone who can really act; and that Toby Stephens out-shone everyone else in HAMLET and is both pretty enough and sinister enough to take on the character of M, and so forth. Two pints later, and we're arguing about Keanu Reeves vs Laurence Fishburne. This is how art dies at the hands of commerce, ladies and gentlemen. It is slaughtered at 4am in the back streets of Cannes.

Wednesday, noon: Scotland's First Gay Kung Fu Film. The victims of the previous night assemble, bloody but unbowed, at the Brasserie Splendid, clutching the morning's dailies. Last night, John the LA distributor asked us if we wanted to do cheap remakes of some old Hong Kong kung fu films to help extend their copyrights. We of course said yes, but we couldn't remember if he actually offered us the money to do it, or just access to the rights. Twelve kung-fu remakes at $3m a pop? Count us in. We make grand and stupid plans for tapping into regional film funding groups up and down the UK: since every major city has a Chinatown, we can set one film in each city. I suggest that, as karmic revenge, we start with the Highlands & Islands Film Council, hosts of Monday night's Scottish Country Dancing party. And so was born the saga of Dougal "Crouching Haggis, Hidden Dram" MacCheung, Inverness' kilt-wearing homosexual kung fu avenger. It just writes itself.

Wednesday, 3pm: And What Do You Do? I wait in the queue at Nice Airport to check into Easyjet. Ahead of me, an expensively blonded American lady in a Kermit-green shirt is going on at length to the rather mousy girl in front of her about her trials and tribulations as a London-based film producer and also scion of a Famous American Retailing Family. Because said family is notoriously tightfisted, she is forced to produce films using - gasp - her own resources. I eavesdrop shamelessly for a good 15 minutes. It's a slow queue. At the end, Miss America asks the mousy girl what her name is and what she does. I realise that Miss America - despite repeatedly telling Miss Mouse that they simply must hook up in London - had no idea who Miss Mouse was aside from that she had a Cannes badge and was a good listener. But Miss America was content. She had just told someone how important and hardworking she was, so it must be true. That's the rules.

( 1:40 PM )

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