You’ve Been Canned! Charles Finch’s Festival Diary

This town ain’t what it used to be. Or maybe it is—only more so, and that’s the problem. Charles Finch finds time between dinners, deals, parties and premieres to reflect on twentysomething years of festival-going.

The Cannes Film Festival turned 61 this year, but as a veteran attendee I knew better than to expect any maturity or grace for this femme d’un certain age. Cannes was never a festival of dignity, not in the 60s and certainly not today. This fortnight of film and film-makers has always struggled against the darker commercial forces of marketing, promotion and sales. Only now you have to factor in the international party set, the billionaire boater and the demands of the corporate sponsor.

Film-makers and stars compete for space on the Croissette with wannabes, hustling B-list producers and actors dressed à la tackorama. It’s Vegas on the Riviera, though even this display of vulgarity fails to completely destroy the hopes of the young film-makers who have come to show their work—and this I know, as I was once one of the desperate kids trying to show my own picture.

Even if the parties are less classy and the crowd more frivolous these days, the festival still chooses challenging films like Blindness, which this year opened the fortnight. These dark indie films are in stark contrast to the swarming hordes of desperate girls and partygoers. Thus, like a fat accordion player, the festival blares out a variety of notes (mostly flat), and, for me, even Blindness shed no artistic light.

DAY 1
Share a ride into Cannes by private jet with the great actress Cate Blanchett, my client and friend, and head to the Hôtel du Cap in neighbouring Antibes.

For the next week the Cap becomes the headquarters for the most powerful folk in the entertainment business. Almost impossible to get a room, let alone a suite, during this period. Brad and Angelina, Harvey Weinstein and Graydon Carter are already here; soon everyone else will be too. I once ran up a bar bill of $50,000 at the festival—and that was at a time when they only took cash… They know me better now, and I know myself better too.

At 5.45 we head to the madness of Cannes, which is a 30-minute drive at the best of times. The roads are already very busy. Mobile phones buzz constantly as we are running late. The red carpet has to be hit at 6.30 sharp for us to get there before the cast and director. On opening night the jury arrives last and is presented on the steps to the cameras. Cate will be the biggest star tonight and there are plenty of nerves around us, as we could upset the running order and offend the jury and the film-makers. I fix a smile and try and keep everyone cool. Drivers and bodyguards can get over-excited with paparazzi—with disastrous consequences. I never let the car go over 40, and the bodyguards, etc, report to me or my staff at all times, regardless of the event or the time constraints.

We manage to hit the red carpet at the right moment and meet Caroline Gruosi-Scheufele, our host from Chopard. It’s a perfect sunny evening and the red carpet is quite fun.

We attend the opening ceremony after negotiating a few small bumps. Cate is breast-feeding, and needs a private room.

Faye Dunaway is in front of us, looking beautiful. She starred in Network with my father and they both won Academy Awards.

The ceremony, with Sean Penn, Natalie Portman, Alfonso Cuarón and the other jury members, is very French and quite formal. Sean hates this kind of public exposure and it shows.

Blindness, directed by Fernando Meirelles, is the first-night film.
We sit front of the director and entire cast, including Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo and Alice Braga. The film is gruelling. I want to slit my wrists five minutes in, but of course I can’t leave.

Cate and I attend the Chopard/Alberta Ferretti party at the Carlton Beach, where Julianne Moore DJs and Bar Rafaelli astounds with her beauty. I polish off three martinis in quick succession before Mike, our bodyguard, and I have to rush past the paparazzi to get Cate back to the serenity of the Hôtel du Cap.

DAY 2
I wake to an overcast morning, thinking it’s almost as if the festival and I are on a parallel course of disintegration. Like fine wallpaper carefully hung in an old palace dining room that starts to peel away with age and exposure to the elements, we are, in my opinion, both a little the worse for wear.

The festival when I first knew it, some 23 years ago, was still arguably true to itself. A film-maker’s paradise, with just the right mix of sun and idealism, it was first and foremost a celebration of movies. Earnest cinéastes attached to the nouvelle vague, or to films of political comment, or to downright artistic experiment, strutted their stuff, puffing away miserably on Gauloises. I was a young film-maker, all of 21, tripping up in my first attempt at directing with a film starring Chris Lambert, fresh off the hit Greystoke, and Diane Lane. My disastrous debut set the two of them up as man and wife, and left my career in tatters when critics destroyed the movie and my dreams of directing. Good film-making friends like Jeremy Thomas convinced me to stick to writing and eventually producing and managing some of the world’s most important actors (and now brands).

The film market was already fast taking over the festival, but the buyers and sellers knew where they stood in the pecking order. The sleaze back then was limited to the Rue d’Antibes, behind the Croisette, and screenings at the old Palais were made up of true film people, together with the odd millionaire—who were, in those days, it must be noted, mere millionaires.

Today, Cannes has been overrun by corporate commercialism and sleaze. The international film market has taken over. It is like a Detroit car-sales convention on the Med. Film-makers fight for space on the pavement with car promotions and absurd event pranks. Swarms of celebrity-obsessed tourists arrive by the busload, chewing sandwiches and thrusting camcorders in the faces of silicone-enhanced models. The millionaires are now billionaires, and with a few notable exceptions like former studio owner Barry Diller, photographer and art collector Johnny Pigozzi and DreamWorks investor Paul Allen, most have nothing whatsoever to do with movies or even the arts, and irritatingly profess no interest in investing in the business. The hedge-fund guys have the grace to stay away from the parties and premieres. Actually, since they are bringing considerable funding to producers for the first time in years, they should be warmly invited.

Even my beloved Hôtel du Cap, sitting quietly near Antibes, cannot escape the hordes of wannabes and hustlers. One encounter in the lobby involves a couple of guys who had for $40 million bought the rights to Terminator 4—just what the world needs. Giddy with Cannes, and surrounded by desperate producers, they positively hover over the white marble. Near them I am introduced to at least two Russian oligarchs who have happily bankrolled their wives in multi-million-dollar epics. Nothing new in that. In fact, something traditional and rather romantic about it. What is new is that they are all here to party. The festival, it seems, is just another fixture on the social calendar where maybe, just maybe, you might spot Angelina or Brad. A sort of exotic safari with less chance of catching malaria but with its own herds of buffalo charging up the red carpet or across the lobby of the Carlton.

I used to say that if you shook the world, all the lost souls would end up on Santa Monica beach. Well, the same could be said for the narrow stretch of beach in front of the Carlton, which, for ten days in May, becomes the capital of desperation in the world of make-believe.

Nevertheless, I am hosting a barbecue for Cate at the Hôtel du Cap and, as it is the first time they have allowed this to be done, we are all a little nervous. But in the end it is a great success.

After lunch I make phone calls and hide in my cabana. Dinner is at Johnny Pigozzi’s, with Bar Rafaeli and Nat Rothschild.

DAY 3
Lunch with Graydon Carter and his wife Anna at the Hôtel du Cap. Hollywood arrives: Brad Grey, CEO of Paramount; Jim Wiatt, CEO of William Morris. Barry Diller, Diane von Furstenberg and Ronald Perelman. Sydney, my wife, arrives too.

Dinner with Cate and Sydney. We chat to Natalie Portman and run into Zac Posen and Elizabeth Saltzman.

DAY 4
The Vanity Fair dinner, attended by the good and the great, including Cate, Barry, Diane and Ron. The after-party takes over the pool and is a pretty wild affair. I only last an hour.

DAY 5
Johnny Pigozzi’s barbecue. One of the best events of the fortnight because it’s private and his estate is beautiful. Attended by billionaires and stars: Ronald Cohen, Alexander and Evgeny Lebedev, Rupert and Wendy Murdoch, Mick Jagger.

In the evening it’s the premiere of the latest Indiana Jones instalment, so another red-carpet night. The movie is fun, but I duck out of the party and dine with Mick Jagger, L’Wren Scott and my wife at Bacon.

DAY 6
A business day of meetings and hustles. Running out of steam fast.

Dinner with Graydon and Anna, then on to the Trophée Chopard party, where Andy Garcia and his band are playing, followed by after-party drinks with Mick, Johnny & Co at the Majestic. Finally festivalled out.

View the Cannes slideshow

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