The 65th Annual Cannes Film Festival is wrapping this weekend. I was privileged to be in Cannes, France on two separate occasions during the Film Fest.
Prior to the Festival, I had taken a short tour around Cannes and learned about the famous hotels on the Croisette- who stays where, who has suites named after them, etc. As part of my Festival Preparedness Training, I decided to take a stroll through both the Carlton and the Majestic hotels. Now, I’ve traveled a lot and I’ve been in a lot of places- hotels, resorts, conventions, etc, etc. One of the biggest lessons I have learned is to act like you belong there and you know what you are doing and you will rarely ever be questioned. So a few weeks ago when I wanted to see inside the Carlton, I walked right in the front door, looked the doorman in the eye and said “Bonjour!” then found the stairs and walked through the floors of the hotel. On my way out I walked past the same doorman, said “Ciao,” and walked around the Bentley parked outside the entrance. The same game plan worked the next week as I explored the Majestic.
I was quite disappointed on my first visit to Cannes during the festival as the entire city was crawling with security and you could not get anywhere with out having your credentials properly displayed. Determined to make a solid attempt at getting into the Palais des Festivals this week a friend and I decided to do some filming. He owns a Muppet (Like a Muppet, Muppet. Apparently you can custom order them at FAO Schwartz. Guess what just went on my Christmas list? Just kidding….kind of). My friend has been wanting to make some videos of this little guy out in port so we decided to make a video of Karl the Muppet at Cannes. Much to our surprise, we walked right in! People were too busy looking at the Muppet to notice that we didn’t have credentials.
The first place we went was the International Village. I know for a fact we shouldn’t have been let in there because I was turned away last week. In the International Village, each country has their own tent, or pavilion, and people from those countries meet there or people who are interested in filming on locations within that country come there to gather information. We received an invite to the Emerging Filmmaker Showcase in the American Pavilion so we sat and watched short films and documentaries for over an hour. This was followed up by Q & A with the filmmakers. We left America (it was nice to be home) and worked our way through the rest of the village. We were given espresso in Italy, posed for pictures in Quebec, and were the only visitors in Hong Kong. At this point we arrived at the backdoor of the Palais. It was time to make our move.
No one stopped us, approached us, or even spoke to us. We walked right in, hopped on an escalator and we were soon wondering the floors inside one of the world’s most famous movie houses.
I expected the Palais des Festivals to be crawling with celebrities. I thought it would be very ritzy and glamorous. I expected there to be screening room after screening room with press rooms and celebrity lounges sprinkled about. It wasn’t at all what I had expected. It is actually a huge convention center- with small screening rooms throughout the floors. We walked into one of the screening rooms, but there was nothing showing and it was so dark we couldn’t even film anything in there. The rest of the space is occupied by distribution companies. These companies have their current movie posters proudly displayed and lots of filmmakers are trying to get meetings with them to get their movies out there. Some of these companies are very well know and some of them I had never heard of. It looked a lot more like a film distribution trade show than how I had pictured a Film Festival.
We saw on the monitors in the hallway that a press conference with Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron was going on. But we weren’t exactly sure where or which door to use so we moved on. We found an empty press room and went inside to shoot a mock interview. This was the only place anyone asked us to stop- and she didn’t really even ask us to stop, she just asked us to be quieter since they were doing a real interview in the gallery behind us.
We found the Grand Auditorium just as an event was letting out (probably the aforementioned press conference). We thought we could wait until it was about empty then sneak in unnoticed, but as the crowd left, the only people in the lobby were security guards. I think they were getting ready for a screening within the next hour. But sadly, it was time for me to head back to the ship to do my real job.
So here are some life lessons from my time in Cannes:
- Don’t Be Intimidated By The Unknown. I hold the world of movies in fairly high regard- a place that I strive to be, but feel that I’m not talented enough or glamorous enough. Well, I’ve seen behind the curtain and there is no wizard. Just ordinary people. Ordinary people who are willing to work extremely hard to get where they want to be.
- Be Confident. If you are not confident in you, no one else will be. Look like you know what you are doing and they will assume you do.
- When In Doubt, Use A Puppet As A Distraction. It works wonders.
Of course these aren’t foolproof and I certainly don’t have them mastered yet, but I’m working on it. I think these will serve as the premiss for my new book, “Being Awesome So You Don’t Have To Be: Tales of Amazing Adventures You Want To Have.” Available nowhere books are sold.
