Sasha Stone from Awards Daily will be contributing to TheWrap's coverage of this year's Cannes Film Festival. This is her first report.
The day before the 64th Annual Cannes Film Fest felt a little like the day before the big race. The runners are journalists, bloggers, production companies, publicists, talent, photographers, festival organizers and everyone in and around Cannes who makes most of their money in the next two weeks.
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As I write this, I have awakened at three a.m., much to my own disappointment. Since sleep is the one thing that we have mostly no control over, I somehow hoped that jet lag wouldn’t get the best of me. Film screenings need your full attention and if you fall asleep during them, it’s like falling asleep during geometry class: you might as well as have missed the whole thing, even if you still got a lot from it. Some is still not all.
But when you are awake at three a.m., you are wide awake. Here in Cannes – as I’ve discovered from renting a car and driving back and forth from the center of town to Juan-Les-Pins, where I’m staying – it goes quiet after 10 p.m. Perhaps in the summer it is more lively into the night, but it was startling to drive the backstreets and see them so vacant. It is as quiet as a cathedral on the streets now.
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When you are a blogger here, you are not a journalist, even if you have a badge that lets you into screenings. I stubbornly hold on to this American idea that bloggers and journalists should be created equally. But they are not. The class system is alive and well here. It is fairly arbitrary, but you do have to make your case to get a better badge than my yellow one. I’m okay with my yellow, thank you. I am more than okay. I wear it as a badge of honor.
There is nothing worse than being here and complaining about anything. You need only breathe in the sea air, listen to the gentle murmuring of French, catch the occasional breeze on your face to realize where you are.
Cannes will kick off officially with a screening of Woody Allen’s "Midnight in Paris" at 11 a.m. Wednesday morning, followed later by a screening of Julia Leigh's "Sleeping Beauty." The festival screens several films a day, but there are also private screenings. If you want to be everywhere and see everything you have to be a bulldog and start working angles. This has never been my style. I must, therefore, keep my eyes and ears open. The interpretations of events are more interesting to me than the events themselves. Or maybe I just tell myself that to feel better.
