May
13
Cannes' Stinking Badges, Penn's Jury Pulpit
Truth is, one year I had a white badge. It was a lovely fluke--someone above me on the food chain had just left the publication, and his replacement was too new to know any better. I got the badge. I earned it, damn it. But it's not going to happen again any time soon.
This year, all's right with the world because I got back my pink badge with a yellow dot, the status I had been accorded for years--until last May, when I had just started at Variety. I was happy to be at Cannes, but suddenly I was demoted to a plain pink badge and no cassier, or press box. The Horror! Here's A.O. Scott's musings on Cannes badges. And The Circuit has rounded up a selection of stories on the subject.
The Hotel Carlton has more billboards crammed onto it than ever. Various studios are based there, including Paramount/DreamWorks, which is mounting several Kung Fu Panda events tomorrow--Jack Black and 40 Kung Fu Pandas will pose for photos on the Carlton Pier-- and then Paramount runs Indiana Jones over the weekend.
Sean Penn, this year's jury president, is staying at the Carlton, attended by two press agents, ID-PR's Kelly Bush and Mara Buxbaum, with whom he was hanging in the deserted Carlton lobby Tuesday night--I went over to say hello, not having talked to him since I visited the set of Oliver Stone's U-Turn for Premiere--and two burly security guards, with whom he had lunch today before assembling his first jury meeting. He's sporting an interesting pompadour, which I would show you except that I chickened out on trying to grab his picture. It's Sean Penn!
Penn is on a civic crusade. Not only did he persuade fest topper Thierry Fremaux to show the tsunami doc The Third Wave at Cannes, which is about ordinary citizens making a difference after a disaster, but he was inspired by the film to try and reach other young people who might want to volunteer to help others in need. (Cinetic Media's John Sloss is selling The Third Wave at Cannes.)
Invited to attend Coachella, Penn took the stage to ask for volunteers to ride three biodiesel buses with him on the Dirty Hands Caravan from the music fest over 1800 miles to New Orleans. The Monday after Coachella, 150 kids (all over 18) went on the tour with a tour manager and a cause wrangler making eclectic civic stops along the way. (Penn's agency CAA helped to make it all happen.) The kids talked to anti-Iraq War activist Cindy Sheehan, met a 12-year-old leukemia survivor, went on an AIDS walk in Tucson, and cleaned up parks in Texas. What warms the cockles of Penn's heart is that at the end, after they saw the devastation in the 9th ward of New Orleans, 12 kids elected to stay behind and help.
Here's his speech at Coachella:
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