Cannes Day 4

Been a few days since my last post but I've been super busy, mainly doing awesome things such as going to Paris and getting engaged!

And staying in a hotel that really did look like the place where Roman Polanski lived in The Tenant. Here's the view - I swear I saw myself looking back from the opposite window a couple of times!


First off, I'm going to plug a couple of other people for a change. Went to Moviebar in Brighton and saw a 40 minute short by Brian Mayfield called Gorilla My Heart which was rather excellent. It's kind of an oddity in that 40 minutes is the perfect length for the film, which also puts it in an awkward position as far as festivals are concerned. But you can check out the rather pretty website and hopefully the film will get more screenings soon as it's worth seeing.

Also, blogging scriptwriter Phill Barron has posted the trailer for his latest feature Just for the Record here and it looks pretty special - check out that cast!

Anyway, it's been a while so here's the next part of the Cannes diary...

18/05/09 - 11:45AM

I'm rather hungover today hence not having left the house yet. Yesterday was a bit of a weird one. I had a proper go at networking in the morning, doing the rounds in the Palais, but most of the people there were sales agents looking to buy and sell finished films. A couple said they'd be interested in developing projects in the future so I've got some leads to follow up when I get back. There's a sense that a lot of companies are just working through their back-catalogues, so maybe in a year or so the pool of finished films will dry up and we'll start making new ones again!

Then we went to see Uwe Boll's latest film Rampage. The man himself was on the door handing out invitations and once inside proceeded to deliver perhaps the greatest introduction to a film I've ever heard. And the film itself was really good - well-acted and hard-hitting with a really interesting if controversial point of view. It was more arthouse than action and closer to the other really great Boll film Heart of America. I hope he continues to make more films like this one (couldn't find a trailer but it's worth looking out for - I know Boll has a bad reputation attached to his videogame adaptations, but Rampage is completely the other end of the scale and deserves some attention). The other cool thing that happened in the screening was that I spoke to a German producer who'd seen Ten Dead Men - it's the first time I've ever spoken to someone who's seen it that I didn't already know which was cool.

In the afternoon I sat in on another meeting in which the producer claimed he'd been in the business long enough so he didn't read scripts anymore - which made me being there feel a bit redundant. He was more interested in whether we had names attached or any other investors. Interestingly he did say it was possible to get names attached without money upfront. Also, once you start shooting you may end up with a completely different cast due to scheduling or whatever, but it doesn't matter - you just need the names to generate the interest in the first place. And to be fair, in order to get actors interested you need a really good script (presuming actors still read scripts!). So us writers are useful for something.

Also, Ang Lee walked past our table in the Carlton before we went into the meeting and I wondered how many famous people you would see if you just sat in the hotel bar all day. Then I saw the price of the drinks and understood why you would never do that.

The rest of the day was taken up helping to get the Stealth party ready - getting last minute supplies and helping set up the apartment. It was very reminiscent of one of those episodes of The Apprentice when they have to put on an event, only without the firing bit at the end. The party itself was good fun. I met some really interesting people and ranted about films a lot. Drank far too much but still managed to help clean up at the end. Went to bed at about four in the morning. It was great to go to a proper Cannes party, but it has meant that I've lost a good portion of the following day. Looking forward to watching more films later as it's about all I can manage at the moment!