Cannes Film Festival: Part 2

One of my bosses, who has been doing the Festival for like 20 years described Cannes to me as "a marathon" and to pace myself. Back in the day, he said, he used to stay out all night for the first 3 nights and then want to kill himself on the 4th day, and that I should take a lesson from this, which I did. Cannes is a marathon, and it is very fun and glamorous but it also goes on for 12 days, which is a really long time.

Around the 3rd or 4th day it started to rain. Like rain hard, all day, all night, which made it very easy to pace myself, because coming home feeling like a wet cat makes it very straightforward to stay inside and keep yourself warm. While this was going on though, I worked. I worked hard all through the Festival and had a really enjoyable time doing it, even though I unfortunately did not get to go to any red carpet screenings. To do that you have to get all dressed up and then wait or try to beg for tickets, and as I usually got off when the red carpet began, that was not possible. Truthfully though I didn't have high hopes for that happening, and I did get to see a free screening of "Dr. No" at Cinema de la Plage one night when it wasn't raining, which is a part of the festival that does free screenings on the beach every night.

Fireworks: Legitimately the only thing that could make James Bond more epic.

Unfortunately though they did confiscate our bottle of wine, which we may have been brandishing proudly after removing the cork with a room key and therefore may have been partly to blame. There aren't open container laws in France, but they're "concerned about litter" on the beach (which probably means the Cinema de la Plage ushers are going to have a giant rager later with all their stolen booze). As an act of retribution, Karnig stole one of the fleece blankets they give you, which probably were ours to take anyway.

Haters gonna hate.

My internship was fantastic, I genuinely really enjoyed working with my bosses, who were sweet and funny and down to earth. They taught me a lot, and by the end I legitimately felt as though I was part of the company. The goal of the internship if you're a Film Production student (which focuses almost entirely on the creative and not the practical aspects of filmmaking) is to teach you how distribution companies work, how the market works, and what happens to your movie after you make it. What I learned primarily was regarding making films that have a universal message so that it will appeal to foreign markets (which was my company's focus), for example, teenagers in Italy don't get the "slacker movie" thing that was so big in the 90's because they weren't facing the same kind of apathy and issues. This is why horror movies sell so well overseas--sexy teenagers getting brutally killed one by one by a serial killer is scary everywhere. On the other side of that, action-adventures like The Avengers do well too, because no matter where you live or what language you speak, really attractive people kicking ass and saving the world is enjoyable. Samuel L. Jackson with an eyepatch and a bazooka is a universal symbol everyone understands, like bathroom signs or shaking your head yes or no.

Working at the Carlton was absolutely amazing. Being there just sort of makes you feel like a big deal, even if what you're doing there is being a secretary and making yourself coffee drinks all day and listening in on meetings and giving people their 3D glasses for our one 3D trailer on the 3D TV (which we showed to people who didn't even want the movie because we were just proud of that). The ambiance of the Festival is truly invigorating and electrifying, and even when it was raining or I was tired, it was really exciting to be in Cannes. I think I read an article once describing the festival as "The world turns its eyes to Cannes for 12 days in the spring..."And it really feels like that. After the first few nights, we got used to the whole red carpet thing too, which was funny. Eventually you're like, ugh whatever, Kristen Stewart, that's cool, I'm sure your movie sucks, GOD can you people move I'M TRYING TO GET TO THE BUS. Which isn't to say it still isn't exciting, it just because amusingly normal, like oh yeah, doesn't the Croisette get blocked off every day with like a thousand people trying to catch a glimpse of celebrities? It's amazing, and it was all I could have hoped for it to be and more.

 I also received a visitor the last weekend of the Festival, as my internship ended last Thursday, who perhaps you might be familiar with, by the name of Evan Revak. Being done with his finals he decided to come to Cannes for the weekend about three days prior (this is generally the method by which Evan and I decide to undertake relatively large travel endeavors--about a week in advance).

The exploration of Ile St. Marguerite continues. We're buying a timeshare and a boat.

 His visit was incredibly fun, and it was blessedly warm and sunny so we did Ile St. Marguerite, St. Paul-de-Vence (that was actually straight up rain but we made it for a good long while!) which is a medieval village that my Art History class visited on a field trip that I couldn't go on because I was too sick. It was terribly picturesque, and we had fun walking around and exploring and taking pictures of hallways.

St. Paul de Vence

Evan left yesterday, but before that we went to the beach and undertook more exploration of Cannes and got very sunburned and it was lovely. The rest of this week is just anxious packing and getting ready to go, the town cleared out, classes are all but done, and now we just wait! Ahhhh...

Greetings from St. Paul-de-Vence!

Read my next post for my musings upon the end of our time here...I started to write it out in this entry but it got too long and irrelevant, so read on for further thoughts!