I’ve been holding out on you all, and I’m sorry. I have a job at one of the most glamorous events in the world, and I haven’t even posted any pictures of famous people or reviews of Wall Street or the new Robin Hood. For shame.
- Not-so-famous people climbing the red-carpeted stairs for a 4:00 premiere.
Well, I’m sorry to disappoint… but I haven’t seen any famous people, and the only films I’ve seen have been shorts at the Short Film Corner in the basement of the Palais. You see, my job, as most people who work in entertainment are bound to tell you, is not all that glamorous. I use a fairly ancient internet connection (seriously… it reminds me of my old AOL 2.0, when we had to disconnect the phone to go online) to post videos of red carpet and press conference footage that I get from my colleagues who actually go to these events and film them. They call out the names of famous people to get them to look their way, and I edit the clips into one-minute segments and post them online for the world to see. See? Boring.
So yesterday, I decided I had to do something fun. Well, that, and my roommate here au collège (the same school I stayed at when I passed my DALF almost three years ago), who is at the festival solely for the parties, decided that she was going to do something fun, and I felt lame trudging back to work again. Instead, I took the liberty of a long lunch, as people often do here in France, and walked from the Palais down to the Palm Beach Casino, at the end of the Croisette. There, at the de luxe Pool Beach, you can rent a transat (lounge chair) for 30 Euro and spend the afternoon being treated like a celebrity–or at least someone very, very rich and important.
We started with a bottle of rosé, the perfect beverage for a beach day, even if Cannes is a little bit cooler than it has been in past years (we wrapped ourselves with towels to stay warm and let the rosé do the rest). I then ordered a salade nicoise avec thon mi-cuit, which is a nicois salad with seared tuna–an absolutely delicious meal, especially when eaten off your lap as you stare off into the cool blue Med.
I was lucky that my friends had arrived early to snag us seats by the shore–most of the transats are closer to the pool that give the beachside restaurant its name, where a DJ was spinning electronica and house and dancers were high on platforms near the pool, a pool that people were keeping their safe distance from, as the wind was picking up, and no one wanted to be left in the cold.
We people-watched from our chairs for awhile, as a group of pipol (celebrities (that I didn’t recognize)) came in off a little put-put boat and picked their way carefully along the pontoon until the arrived on the beach, greeted by the hostess who somehow managed to pull off leopard-print high-heeled ankle boots, even two inches deep in sand.
As for me, I was more than happy to remain barefoot, sipping my glass of wine and watching everyone around me, that is, until 4:00, when the grey skies that had been looming to the west suddenly rolled in, bringing a couple of raindrops that had us up and out of there in a hurry.
Some were not so quick to leave, as they created tents of parasols and waited out the storm. We were lucky enough to snag a cab in the parking lot, and so I headed back to work at the Palais, where people were huddled under umbrellas as they watched those ascending the red-carpeted stairs for a 4:00 film. I was more than happy to get back to the safety of our dry office in the basement of the Palais, where my headphones and editing software were waiting for me. OK, so I’m a geek–what do you want from me?
