A Cannes-Do Event: Stars and deal-makers all flaunt their stuff at the film festival
by Brian D. Johnson, Maclean's
May 31, 1999
For the 4,000 media members who serve as circus audience, the Cannes experience rolls by as a dreamlike collision of events and images.
Opening day. The festival flew in Jeremy Irons from London to surprise his friend, jury president David Cronenberg, onstage at the inaugural ceremonies. (Irons has always acknowledged his 1988 Cronenberg movie, Dead Ringers, as the turning point in his career.) And Irons has agreed to do an interview in the car from the Nice airport. But he arrives so late, the interview must take place in a helicopter. Looking like one of his more weathered characters, Irons shows up in a tan jacket and spooky little sunglasses, a battered leather bag slung over his shoulder. As he waits for his luggage at the Nice airport, he hand-rolls cigarettes and obliges a constant stream of autograph seekers, signing with an impressionist scrawl that spills over the page like an extended sigh. The helicopter whisks him to Cannes, and a car deposits him at the Carlton, where an appropriate horde of fans and cameras is waiting to confirm his celebrity.