Stickmen Pictures at the 65th Cannes Film Festival

(by Rishi Thaker)

My first experience of Cannes has been a wholly unexpected one. Nothing in all my preparation catered for the juggernaut that is Cannes during festival time. The population of this place trebles and many of the locals scarper as the glitz, glamour, corporation, seediness and pretenders consume this small town on the French Riviera.

I will explain the 4 corners of Cannes as I experienced it:

Seediness – Rather unexpected but there are places in Cannes which should be avoided. Although Asch and I were never completely exposed to this side, there were times when Normanton felt like it would be a safer place.

Corporate – It’s amazing how corporately structured the art-form of filmmaking really is. The Marché (and Hotels) at Cannes, where I spent most of my time discussing ‘Slaughter’ with the many interested parties, is where the work gets done. Here you get distributors, sales agents, financers, producers (you name it and they’re there) all running around the booths scheduling meetings and trying to cut deals. But it is difficult enough breaking through here even if you represent yourself professionally so the wacky artistic types must beware here. The Marché represents a business environment (akin to that of something like Wall Street) and in a way I couldn’t really see it as a place for storytelling (however that’s just my opinion). However for the dreamers amongst us, there are plenty of places to capture people's imaginations, it’s just a case of being at the right place (party) at the right time.

Glitz and Glamour – So to name drop, up close we saw Naomi Watts, Jennifer Connelly, Ben Stiller, Sean Penn, Ewan McGregor, Josh Jackson, Diane Kruger, Gerard Butler, Michelle Rodriguez, Jean-Paul Gautier, David Schwimmer (or as I almost called him, ‘Ross’!), Jessica Chastain amongst a whole host of others. We happened to stumble unwittingly (but happily) at the Entrance d’Artists at the end of a hard day at the Marche and were rewarded with this unique opportunity. It was difficult to get a word in with any of these guys as there were so many people about and so we settled for a quick ‘hello’ from a few of them. At other times during the week from a distance we saw Brad Pitt, Ray Liotta, Chris Tucker, Puff Daddy and so the list goes on. It’s all there if you want to fight 30,000 others to get to the heart of it.

Famous Cannes Parties – There are all sorts of parties cracking off in Cannes during festival season and Asch and I definitely burned the candles at both ends with early market starts followed by late night networking at some of these parties. We have met a whole host of producers and financers during these sessions (there were parties in the Chateau and in Mansions all of which showed a great opportunity to network as well as identify people who just come for the ride). However this was probably the only area we were under-prepped for but we have a great start for next time.

All in all Cannes was hard work and it goes without saying that preparation is key although an abundance of energy and enthusiasm (thanks a million Asch – you were awesome) will always be required as it is a tough place to be when you have such glitz and glamour distracting you from how much effort is required to get to the top. We did our part and we believe that we have a few months of careful consideration before any decisions are made on Slaughter! Bring on the next steps!