Our man in Cannes, Chris Sullivan, heads off to catch Brad Pitt's latest film and get a glimpse of the gorgeous Angelina Jolie, but instead ends up in the middle of a massive nerd fight...
After nodding off in the middle of a club the other night, I had planned on a quiet night, but I was lured out of hiding by tales of cocktails and dancing girls at a party on the beach to promote Hard Labor – a new movie from Brazil.
But even though we’d been reliably informed we were on the guest list, we were refused entry by the Nazi on the door. C’est la vie. So after a drink at the Carlton I got my early night (2am).
The big deal of the day for we members of the press was the 8.30am screening of Terrence Malick’s Tree Of Life starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and Jessica Chastain. So I arrived at 7.50am to the scene of an almighty scrum as reporters pushed and screamed obscenities.
Eventually it descended into a fist fight between the various assembled film journalists (including a few women). The police were called. Anoraks at dawn you might say.
And after waiting for 40 minutes in the blazing sun, I failed to get in.
After the screening, I met with Damon Wise of Empire (who did get in) and he was not that impressed. “It’s earnestly intelligent film that never quite takes you where it seems to be going,” he said. “If I were reviewing it, I don't know what I'd make of it. I do think it’s pretty self-indulgent.”
Another writer, who I won’t name as he’s trying to set up an interview with Brad Pitt, said, “What a lot of old rubbish. I can't think of another film-maker who better typifies the phrase ‘up his own arse’.”
Malick, who began his career as a philosopher and translator of Heidegger, is famously never seen in public.
“I believe I can speak for him,” said Pitt. “He thinks of himself as building a house. And I don't know why it is expected in our business that people who make things are then expected to sell them. It is an odd thing for an artist to sculpt something and then be the salesman.
“He is a genius who sleeps eats and laughs just like ordinary mortals,” he added. “He even goes to the bathroom.”
I’m told the film concerns itself with sorrow and grief when the O'Brien family discover that that one of their three sons is dead. It then tackles the dawn of time and the beginning of creation before concluding with young Jack O'Brien (Hunter McCracken) recalling his peevish relationship with his manipulative dad (Pitt). Mmmm!
Tree Of Life has caused huge fuss but I won’t get to see it here. Besides I’ve always found Malick’s work pretty tedious. Badlands (1973) and Days of Heaven (1978) were lauded as masterpieces but I thought them exciting as a wet weekend in Hull while subsequent works such as The Thin Red Line (1998) and The New World (2005) were mediocre at best.
But the red carpet was much more interesting. Again I waited to see another film for 30 minutes and failed to get in due to it being full (that’s three in a day today) so I sat on the press balcony and enjoyed a bird’s eye view of the Tree of Life red carpet that was the actually hottest ticket in Cannes.
The mayhem on The Croissette outdid the morning’s brawl by a factor of about 100 as the crowd waited for Brad and Angelina, the world’s most glamorous couple, to arrive.
They did not disappoint. Brad Pitt was first out of the limo and tickled me by ignoring the festival’s inane TV interviewer – instead going straight to the crowd to sign autographs.
Angelina Jolie wore some huge false eyelashes and an Atelier Versace strapless dress with a revealing side slit and a long train, and Pitt – who sported a pair of tinted glasses, goatee beard, moustache and hair slicked back – really charmed the crowd walking back and forth smiling and waving in a classy and good humoured display. And by God is she beautiful.
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