POSTCARD FROM CANNES 2007 – DAY SIX
Monday, May 21
By Jimmy Thomson
Embarrassment all round at the press conference for Gus Van Sant’s new skier
movie (OK, skateboard film, if you must be so last century) Paranoid Park. In
the opening question, the moderator said he was astonished that this movie was
one of the first to be cast using MySpace. So were the three young actors
present. Although some of the younger cast members were found on the internet,
two of the three present had attended cattle call auditions and the other sent
in a tape. But nice idea, nonetheless.
On the topic of Van Sant’s use of young talent, he seemed to be saying that it
was often better to use young people who hadn’t yet been schooled into
pre-programmed responses to script, character and story. Which will be a blow
for all the parents who have spent a fortune making their kids picture perfect
in the hope that the next audition will be their Willie Wonka gold ticket to
Hollywood. But If the director of such diverse movies as Drugstore Cowboy and
Good Will Hunting (via As Good As It Gets) is to be believed, it seems the best
way is to let them hang around skate parks and shopping malls ... and get a page
on MySpace. Who knew?
*************
Confession time – I haven’t bumped into one famous person on my wanderings
around Cannes. I’m told that’s because all the big stars stay at the Hotel Du
Cap in Antibes and only venture into Cannes under the tightest of security. Even
so, it would be nice to look up from your morning cappuccino trade knowing
smiles with, say, Michael Moore or Angelina Jolie. Still there’s five days and
the Oceans 13 launch to go, so all is not yet lost.
*************
There was a poignant but edgy moment in the middle of the A Mighty Heart press
conference when an American journalist asked Mariane Pearl for her forgiveness
for asking the recently widowed journalist if she had seen the video of her
husband Daniel Pearl’s beheading. The question and her response is now a pivotal
point in the movie. Mariane smiled and said “I accept your apology”. That would
be a qualified “no”, then.
*************
The new Quentin Tarantino move Death Proof, the better half of the schlock flop
double Grindhouse ( the other, discarded, half having been made by his friend
Roberto Rodriguez), is basically just two extended car chases. The premise
behind the blood-soaked romp is a re-creation of 50s B movies (right down to the
bad edits, lack of continuity, worn film and varying qualities – it even goes
from black and white to colour in one scene). The philosophy behind it is sexist
verging on misogynistic and Tarantino’s whole “enfant terrible” act is wearing a
bit thin. “A criminal waste of talent frittered away on vanity projects,” said
one critic after tonight’s screening. At least Australia gets a couple of brief
mentions. New Zealand stuntwoman Zoe Bell playing herself, makes the point that
she’s NOT an Aussie and a movie billboard that’s trashed in one car sequence is
advertising Wolf Creek. The backpacker murder movie’s star John Jarrett will
surely see that as a hint to keep waiting for that call from QT who once hailed
him as Australia’s best actor.
*************
Nicole Kidman may never know how close she came to a horrible end during the
shooting of the huge new fantasy movie The Golden Compass. Director Chris Weitz
(In Good Company, About A Boy) had to travel 1000 miles north of Norway, well
into the Arctic Circle, for many of the shots for the $170 million production
that could be the big movie for Christmas 2007. There, he filmed among the
stunning glaciers, icy mountains, snow-covered rugged plains … and polar bears.
But he drew the line at taking his stars, including Kidman, Daniel Craig and
Craig’s squeeze in the last Bond movie, Eva Green, up there. “I don’t think we
would like to take actors to the places where I would like to shoot,” he told
film fans at the Cannes Film Festival today. “It’s beautiful country, but very
very rough. Everywhere we walked, we had to have a man with a gun in the party,
otherwise we might be eaten by the polar bears. Risks like that to actors are
not easily insurable by a studio.” Happily, however, Weitz saw no polar bears
killed in the course of making his movie which, if successful, could become the
first of a trilogy of the Philip Pullman’s classics. Asked if he shot any bears,
he replied, with a grin, “With a gun, no.”
Wish you were here ...
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