He Came, He Saw, He Partied - Jason Korsner Goes To Cannes

In London he zips around on a push-scooter. He's an indie director and producer, but he's not Nathan Barley. It's our man at Cannes 2004, Jason Korsner - free drink in one hand, stick of Scandanavian liquorice in the other...

The world's focused on the stars of a couple of dozen films in the Cannes Film Festival. But the real action's up and down the Boulevard de la Croisette - where producers sell and distributors buy. It’s the Cannes Film Market, with thousands of films being sold.

Only a small proportion will ever even make it to the big screen.

Then there's me.

And hundreds more. We're not here for the Festival (though it’s nice to catch a film or two). And not yet in a position to make the most of the Market.

Distributors want to buy completed films. Producers will consider packages – that’s to say, a complete script with any combination of stars, directors or financing already confirmed. But as an independent writer/producer and one-time director, with only a handful of shorts on my filmography, all I have to offer is scripts. On this, my sixth trip to Cannes, I have a slate of six screenplays, in various stages of development as the stock film phrase goes.

Aside from the films themselves, there’s the socialising, the networking and the partying. Everyone goes to Cannes for some combination of the films and the fun – only some people seem to be more interested in the fun.

As someone who’s not yet making any money out of film-making – a low budget film-maker – it’s not possible to live the high-life of business-class BA flights and £200 per night hotel rooms in the heart of Cannes. Instead, I take the EasyJet approach, staying in the next town up the coast. For the cost of a night in Cannes, I get accommodation for almost the whole week. And taking someone with you splits the cost. This year, I travel with a writer-director friend, Sam, who’s trying to sell a script of his own.

Because the kind of people we need to meet – producers with access to financing – won’t have time to meet us till they’ve sold their own films to distributors, we leave it a few days. We fly to Nice at lunchtime on Sunday 16th May. We’re crossing the foyer and someone calls our names. It’s our mate from London, producer Johnnie Oddball. He’s flown in a couple of nights earlier, primed to network. Last night he threw a party. Johnnie says everyone was there, even Ewan McGregor’s mother. Tonight, he’s off to Johnny Depp’s party.

We pick up our car, check in to the hotel room. Last time, it didn’t have bunk beds. It’s like being back at school: for the first time I can get the top bunk. The excitement persuades me to let Sam have the double bed.

We need to collect accreditation - the ID Badge without which you can’t go anywhere. To get this, you just have to convince the organisers that you have a right to be there. I qualify by having produced six short films, four of which have been screened at Cannes.

Anyone who’s anyone in the world of low-budget film-making – that’s to say anyone who’s a no-one in the world of big-budget film-making – meets in one of three places: the American Pavilion, the UK Film Centre or the Kodak Pavilion. The first two offer beach-front access to the internet as well as café services and the occasional seminar or get-to-know you sessions with film-makers, such as the actor Tim Roth.

The Kodak, offers its VIP visitors free soft-drinks, and if you’re lucky, free ice-cream. There’s also a quiet alcove at the back, where anyone can gather their friends and screen their own films on a large plasma screen TV. This year, I’m showing 3 new productions - earning them the as seen at the Cannes Film Festival label. Last year, I screened a couple officially at a section of the Market called Short Film Corner. Back then, they were testing it out and the service was free. This year, it would be £200. In reality, no-one goes to Cannes to buy short films.

It’s time for our first meeting. Sam wants to hook up with his agent – or at least a representative from the agency which had agreed to back his project. We go to the headquarters of Scandinavian Films – a first floor terrace, overlooking the beach. Was his agent also representing the Icelandic film Cold Light, or any of its contemporaries? No, but the drinks are free, so’s the liquorice. Then it’s dinner in one of the restaurants, balanced precariously along the steep, narrow, cobbled Rue du Suquet.

It’s Monday, we’re in time for a free lunch with the agent, to get us into at the Kodak Pavilion. That’s a problem with the Kodak – VIP badges often aren’t enough. It tends to close for private, invitation-only functions. In the event, our contact is tied up in a 2-hour meeting – when she arrives we’re too late for lunch.

Next door at the American Pavilion we meet producer/actor Tom. He’s raising finance for a feature about the Red Baron and hoping to sell a short he’s produced and starred in. He shot it last year in Cannes. He invites us to the screening. First, there’s a party at the Kodak hosted by the British film-makers’ support group, the New Producers Alliance (NPA). Over free drinks and nuts, we met the same producers, actors and other film-makers we’ve met at networking events back in London. Tom’s there. Actor-producer Jon’s there. Actress Montserrat’s there.

Sam’s got an upset stomach – he can only manage rice. This turns out to be a plus – we discover a cheap Chinese five minutes from Cannes epicentre. A bowl of rice and chop suey later, we were back at the Riviera for Tom’s film. It’s not in the low-budget Kodak alcove, it’s in an official Market screening room at the Riviera - one of the exhibition centres – and it’s packed. Canny Tom was offering free beer afterwards. The film’s personnel include writer-director Huck, one of Johnnie Oddball’s fellow party organisers.

Sam’s frustrated. He wants meet companies, but feels that all we’re doing is partying. Sam would rather do business first. But I reckon that, though hit-and-miss, parties make a relaxed opportunity to meet people. Days pass, and more parties. Kodak hosts an event for student film-makers featuring a wide range of canapés. The people are the same.

We go to the BBC Films Party. It’s impressive, in a beach-front venue linked to one of the exclusive palace hotels – a cut above the pavilions.

My day job is with the BBC, so I thought getting in would be easy. No. The woman on the door said she was under strict, specific instructions not to let in anyone from the BBC without a ticket. It’s late, and I have a specific contact - she lets us in.

There’s a couple of senior executives I’d met briefly in the past; a producer who could be useful for Sam; and an old school friend. He’s Nick Hirschkorn, just putting the finishing touches to his first feature – Five Children And It. Nick says it’s the biggest-budget independent film shot anywhere in the world last year. So what of the business? Most of our work-time involves finding companies whose past slates suggest that they might be interested in our kind of projects. This worked for Nick Hirschkorn when he turned up in Cannes two years ago with little more than a children’s book and his self-confidence.

Sam and I have less luck. It’s always easy to interest companies – whether American producers looking to get into a co-production to take advantage of British tax incentives, or German distributors interested in getting involved in controversial projects at an early stage. But getting commitment is nigh-on impossible. In previous years, I’ve had any number of companies saying they’d be willing to put up 30% of my budget – but not the first 30%. I still haven’t worked out whether this is just to make their investment less of a gamble or whether, in reality, it’s a polite way of saying Go away. No-one is ever rude – your film could be the next Blair Witch. So, they’ll keep stringing you along until they’re absolutely sure they want nothing to do with you. Ever. They can’t assess this till they’ve read your script. So Cannes is a good way to get people who would normally refuse to read your script unless it’s submitted by a recognised literary agent to invite you to send it to them personally.

But they don’t want to take it in Cannes – they don’t want to fly home with a suitcase bursting with 100-page documents. So after Cannes comes the lengthy – expensive – often futile – routine of sending the script to the dozens of people who’ve requested it. Then sitting and waiting for them to get back.

It’s all about getting the right project to the right company. At least in Cannes, there are so many firms there at the same time, that if there is a right company for your project, you up your chances of finding it.

What about the Festival? This year, the organisers have modernised the procedure for getting tickets for the big competition screenings. Anyone with Festival Accreditation can see the films free of charge.

But getting hold of a ticket – which used to be easy – is nigh-on impossible. Technology!

Before, you had to make a trip to the edge of the festival world, queue up and ask for tickets. It was such a hassle, you could be sure anyone who made the effort actually wanted to see the film. This year, you have to log into a special website and book online. So people book for anything, regardless of whether they’ll actually go. Which means that by the time Sam and I log in, no tickets are left.

One day we get tickets to a screening of Johnnie To’s Breaking News. When we arrive, Sam’s forgotten his ticket. It’s not as serious as when he forgot his accreditation badge – we had to go all the way back to the hotel. It’s at times like these that he realises how much he misses his wife and her organisational excellence.

Our attempts continue to be equally futile as the festival wears on. Sam gets the last ticket to see Clea, the latest film from the Olivier Assayas - so when I log in, there aren’t any left. I don’t want to see Breaking News on my own, so I manage to swap my ticket for the next day’s screening of The Life And Death of Peter Seller - by 24 director Stephen Hopkins. We now have a ticket each to see different screenings. Now all we need is two people with the right tickets who’ll swap.

The pavement outside the Palais’s crammed with people desperate for tickets – one woman has a sign saying she’ll dance for a ticket. We can’t get a swap, so we never get to see any official competition films. At least we don’t have to invest in tuxedoes – for official screenings, it’s black tie, or no admission.

It turns out easier to see out-of-competition films, and features in some of the side-bars to the festival. There’s Un Certain Regard which shows the more arty films. There’s The Director’s Fortnight - which tends to show-case younger film-makers.

In a Cannes where the official selection includes films such as Troy and Ladykillers – both already released in the US and elsewhere - it doesn’t seem odd to see Billy Bob Thornton’s Bad Santa. As the name suggests, this was released in the US last Christmas. We also catch The Woodsman - Kevin Bacon as a convicted paedophile trying to re-assimilate into society after prison.

In the Un Certain Regard, we catch Lightweight - a pointless French film about a boxer whose life gets bad, better again, bad again and - oh, who cares? There’s no logic to the story – it just happens to the characters in a self-important French kind of way.

For The Woodsman, the star and first-time director make appearances at various venues during the course of the festival. For Lightweight and Bad Santa, the film-makers appear on stage before the screenings to tell the 2-tier 1500-strong audience in the Claude Debussy Theatre about their productions. Billy Bob Thornton, unbelievably, has even more presence in person than he does on screen.

We go back to the Debussy Theatre for the final film in the Un Certain Regard programme. It’s Alexandria-New York - by one of Egypt’s foremost directors, Youssef Chahine. As the closing film, it’s preceded by an awards ceremony, in addition to the personal appearance by the director and stars.

It firmly puts the cinematic boot on the other foot – we’re watching all the supposedly American characters speaking to each other in Arabic. Now I know how the non-English-speaking world feels every time they see their own nationalities speaking to each other in English.

And the main subtitles are in French, with the English translation projected onto a strip beneath the main screen – not easy viewing for English-only speakers. It’s worth the challenge to see Sam’s excitement afterwards, when I take his photograph with one of the stars of the film, Yousra - an actress with the status of Julia Roberts. Sam’s Arabic by background – he’s giggling like a schoolboy. It’s Saturday, we’ve finished work. It’s back into Cannes to tie up loose ends. Mostly this involves hooking up with contacts made at the American Pavilion and the Kodak Pavilion - the UK Film Centre has long since closed.

We check emails, injest more free drink – and ice cream. Our final meeting with Tom catches me by surprise, because he’s no longer talking about his Red Baron film or the short he shot last year. He’s long since moved on to a horror film he’d been involved in last year. Film? It’s fickle.

For me, Cannes 2004 is over. We go to the airport. Sam meets his wife Emma – she’s come out to join him for a well-earned holiday. While I’m flying home, Sam and Emma are enjoying the celebrations at the close of the festival - brushes with Quentin Tarantino and the Palme D’Or-winning Michael Moore, an off-shore concert and a firework display.

Maybe next year I’ll finally get that elusive film deal – and my Cannes experiences will be very different. Maybe the year after, that film will be featured in competition, and I’ll be getting the full concert and firework treatment too.

Not so much the stuff all dreams are made of, but Cannes can certainly make dreams come true – if you can make all the bits of the puzzle fit together.

(c) Jason Korsner 3 June 2004

Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2012

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