You Don't Need to Spend a Lot to Strike a Chord With Today's Audience
April, 28, 2011 5:29 pm | Comments On #Cannes, Ellis, hungry for beauty, Movies, music video, simplicityAn innocent encounter.
I was giving a script-writing workshop at ECU, the European Indie Film festival, and Ellis was there, with a number of other musicians, showcasing her music. She had something special, charisma, presence, and poetry that reminded me of Rickie Lee Jones.
“Are you doing anything tomorrow?” I asked her. “You want to shoot a clip? See what we can come up?”
Without hesitation, she said yes.
I tried to borrow a camera, with no luck, so ended up dusting off my trusty old Mini-DV. What I wanted was to try and capture her presence, her personality.
In a way, the old camera and format made sense, seemed even better for our purposes than a more modern rig. To get the moments of magic that sometimes come when you shoot this way.
The plan was to cruise around Paris to the backdrops I had in mind...
Read MoreA Slimmed-Down Cannes Was the Best Cannes
May, 25, 2009 3:28 pm | Comments On #CannesIt was Cannes in a time of crisis.
Less money, fewer parties and less ostentation, significantly fewer people, the bars of the big hotels virtually empty at times, tables easily available at many popular restaurants, the various trade publications noticeably slimmer as advertizing plummeted, a decline so steep that they simply stopped publishing by Day 8.
It was a Cannes of lowered expectations, and conflicting results, with some territories selling for 20% of what they used to, with a few sales companies reporting record years, but most expecting catastrophe, grumbling about expenses and relieved to secure minimums on the products they were flogging.
This was my 21st Cannes, and it was a great Cannes, maybe the best of all.
The good news is that below the surface, in the trenches, at parties, or on the lawn of the...
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Description
Jeff Gross is a Paris-based director, script writer and novelist who collaborated with Roman Polanski on the writing of “Frantic” and “Bitter Moon.” Latest projects: “Aden Sinclair” an apocalyptic fairy tale written for William Randolph Hearst II, and two film projects which he will direct, “Island Time” set on a tiny island in Greece in 1980, and “The Street” set in the world of street theater in Paris, where many of the most memorable Cirque du Soleil performers got their start.
