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25.5.06 Cannesblog Extra: In Which I Fail To Meet Francis Ford Coppola

I suppose I should say something about yesterday. More great production meetings, first of all. I come back from Cannes convinced that my film is good and original and wanted. (Well, actually, my body is back from Cannes. My brain is still AWOL, off in some rosé-wine-overdose/sleep deprivation temporal shift. If found, please return to its One Careful Lady Driver.)

I then singularly failed to go to Marie Antoinette because 1) I find Kirsten Dunst annoying; 2) I also find Sofia Coppola annoying, but hey, at least her directing career keeps her from trying to go in front of the camera, as we all witnessed in Godfather III. Also, the film will get mainstream distribution, so if I can see it at the Odeon next week, why bother seeing it at Cannes this week?.

Instead, I went and camera-operated for Jeremy and Huck at one of the beachfront restaurants on the Croisette... mostly because they promised to buy me lunch. WILL CAMERA-OP FOR FOOD.

If you've ever been involved with trying to get work on the London indie film scene, you probably will find that a little too true to be funny. But anyway: blue, blue sky and sea, beach, white and yellow beach umbrellas, pretty people in bikinis... it was hell, I tell you. Every sun-drenched moment of it.

Then off to back to back screenings of things that will NEVER make it to the Camden Odeon, during which I saw my favourite film of the festival: Benoit Delépine & Gustave Kervern's Avida. Unrepentant old-skool French absurdism, with more sidesplittingly sick black comedy than any one film should have, and oh my sweet zombie Jesus the shot framing! So gorgeous! Black and white, of course. To be honest, you'll hate this film. I can only think of two or three friends of mine who would possibly love this film as much as me. It's just so beautiful and so wrong and has the greatest ending, where you realise just how clever and intellectual the filmmakers are. Shot on DV or HDV, and then flipped to B&W in post and blown up to a 35mm print for Cannes. You could see the noise in a lot of the shots, but it did not matter. I wish I had made that film. And, like Chetyre, I must someday own it on DVD.

Then came Sway, a Japanese psychological drama about both a swaying bridge and vaccilations of morality and relationship and truth. A little over-long, and I would have shot the ending scene differently (it wasn't hardcore enough for me - it kind of wussed out from where it should have gone), but a truly excellent first feature from director Nishikawa Miwa.

(On another note, there's so many mature-audiences animated features coming out soon: the futuristic thriller Renaissance from Pathé, with the voice of the rather ubiquitous Daniel Craig; and from Celluloid Dreams, the film of Persepolis and the portmanteau Fear(s) of the Dark - with animations by Charles Burns, Lorenzo Mattotti and others. Then of course there's Scanner... the comics revolution evolves and changes, but continues stronger than before.

On to evening, where at 9.30 I rejoin Huck and Jeremy and do more camera-work in exchange for dinner and beer: night filming on the Carlton Terrace and along the Croisette. They kept it up until 1am. While overworking one's crew far beyond sane working hours is par for the course in film, remember, gentle stranger, that I am in cute day dress and Loboutins rather than my normal film-geek clothes. Can you say "ouch"? At 1am, in front of the Palais, I down camera grumpily as the lads discuss the next slate ad nauseum. Until then I have been filming pickups and atmosphere shots on the street. Just as I get wrapped up in fiddling around with gain and aperture in preparation for filming against the (brighter) red carpet, I hear Huck behind me say, "Alex! ALEX!"

"Hang ON, I'm setting here..." A few moments later I look up, the frays in my patience and my exhaustion showing in my voice, "What?"

"You just missed Francis Ford Coppola. He walked right by me."

Story of my bloody life, gentle stranger. Story of my bloody life. You see, there's this Cannes Fantasy, and every young filmmaker who goes has it, even if they won't admit it: you will meet a rich producer or director at a party, and he will think your little low-budget film idea is so cool that he will give you a cheque for a million dollars, then and there. Chump change for him, but your entire film budget for you. This has to the best of my knowledge never happened to anyone. But I still can't help but think, if I had just managed to talk to Coppola, maybe, just maybe... because stranger things have happened to me... But I didn't.

I find out the next day that my friend (and line producer extraordinaire) Chantelle and her gang were out until 7am, having somehow gotten invited to Ivana Trump's birthday party. Sure, trainwreck, and after over six hours of filming I was way too exhausted to go, but how the cultural anthropologist in me curses having missed this opportunity to witness this particular tribe during their yearly celebratory rituals in their native habitat.

Now back in London I eye up the huge stack of business cards and follow-up bollocks I need to do, and the huge negative in my bank account, and my resolve to go straight-edge for the month of June begins to waver already. Anybody got any rosé?

( 4:51 PM )

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