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| Harvey Weinstein's Cannes gala turns tricky for the Guardian | Harvey Weinstein's Cannes gala turns tricky for the Guardian |
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| Harvey Weinstein's annual Cannes reception, in which he unveils clips of forthcoming movies and banters with the press, has become a key event. Crowds jostle at the Majestic Hotel on the Croisette, where it is held, insisting to the three iPad-wielding assistants on the door that they are on the list, and would they kindly look again. It's always a lively affair. And so it was again on Friday evening. But sadly this year it marked a new diplomatic low between Weinstein himself and the Guardian newspaper whose "reviewer" he denounced from the stage in his speech. It made going up afterwards to talk to the great man something of a trial. | Harvey Weinstein's annual Cannes reception, in which he unveils clips of forthcoming movies and banters with the press, has become a key event. Crowds jostle at the Majestic Hotel on the Croisette, where it is held, insisting to the three iPad-wielding assistants on the door that they are on the list, and would they kindly look again. It's always a lively affair. And so it was again on Friday evening. But sadly this year it marked a new diplomatic low between Weinstein himself and the Guardian newspaper whose "reviewer" he denounced from the stage in his speech. It made going up afterwards to talk to the great man something of a trial. |
| Guests were ushered into a hall where rows of seats were laid out facing the screen. Having accepted champagne and canapes from waiters, we sat down and my friend Anna Smith of Elle Magazine remarked crisply that it was like being at a school assembly waiting for the headmaster: rather like a prizegiving ceremony at the very beginning of term in which the headmaster cheerfully awards and accepts the prizes himself. Unfortunately, it was also to feel like one of those school assemblies when the headmaster says one pupil sadly has let the whole school down. | Guests were ushered into a hall where rows of seats were laid out facing the screen. Having accepted champagne and canapes from waiters, we sat down and my friend Anna Smith of Elle Magazine remarked crisply that it was like being at a school assembly waiting for the headmaster: rather like a prizegiving ceremony at the very beginning of term in which the headmaster cheerfully awards and accepts the prizes himself. Unfortunately, it was also to feel like one of those school assemblies when the headmaster says one pupil sadly has let the whole school down. |
| Harvey bounded onto the stage, and introduced Naomi Watts and Ryan Reynolds who are due to appear in his upcoming movies – respectively St Vincent, a comedy with Bill Murray, and The Woman In Gold, about Gustav Klimt. | Harvey bounded onto the stage, and introduced Naomi Watts and Ryan Reynolds who are due to appear in his upcoming movies – respectively St Vincent, a comedy with Bill Murray, and The Woman In Gold, about Gustav Klimt. |
| Then the clips began, featuring films such as The Imitation Game, a WW2 drama featuring Benedict Cumberbatch as codebreaker Alan Turing; Tim Burton's Big Eyes about the painter Margaret Keane; Macbeth starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard and The Disappearance Of Eleanor Rigby with James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain. | Then the clips began, featuring films such as The Imitation Game, a WW2 drama featuring Benedict Cumberbatch as codebreaker Alan Turing; Tim Burton's Big Eyes about the painter Margaret Keane; Macbeth starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard and The Disappearance Of Eleanor Rigby with James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain. |
| The clip of Macbeth (a FilmFour production in fact) looked like a sweeping, majestic epic with a touch of Mel Gibson's blue-faced William Wallace. Michael Fassbender looked charismatic in the lead role. Marion Cotillard was a sinister and doe-eyed Lady Macbeth. Some of the famous lines seemed to have been cut down a bit. | The clip of Macbeth (a FilmFour production in fact) looked like a sweeping, majestic epic with a touch of Mel Gibson's blue-faced William Wallace. Michael Fassbender looked charismatic in the lead role. Marion Cotillard was a sinister and doe-eyed Lady Macbeth. Some of the famous lines seemed to have been cut down a bit. |
| Difficult to tell anything really from the trailer, of course, but it looks intriguing. And the superstition about bad luck applies only to theatre not cinema. | Difficult to tell anything really from the trailer, of course, but it looks intriguing. And the superstition about bad luck applies only to theatre not cinema. |
| An excerpt from Paddington gave what was probably a very realistic idea of the film: a wacky live-action comedy about the well-known young ursine hero from Peru who floods the bathroom and sends the tub whooshing down the stairs in a deluge of water. | |
| One film was The Giver, a fantasy sci-fi movie of the future, based on the 1993 children's bestseller by Lois Lowry. In a weird, bland, monochrome world yet to come, everything is perfect, and yet spiritually sedated. Young people are brought up in blissful ignorance of war, hardship, poverty — or freedom of choice. And yet one boy has to be chosen, a quasi-sacrifice, who must learn from an old man called The Giver, played by Jeff Bridges, everything about the chaotic but colourful real world which has been left behind. It looked like pretty standard YA stuff — but who can tell?Sin City, A Dame To Kill For, directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller is a digital comic-strip style noir pulp thriller, a sequel to the 2005 movie Sin City which premiered at Cannes, and is fact remembered with a tinge of sadness because it featured the now late Brittany Murphy. This new film looked like more flash-brash-trash, created relatively inexpensively in front of a green screen. But it will probably find its audience.The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, directed by Ned Benson, is in fact showing in the Un Certain Regard sidebar at Cannes, and it is being promoted by the Weinstein Company as a classy, cerebral drama, partly inspired by Terrence Malick. Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy play a couple who suffer an agonising break up and the audience effectively sees two films — the story from his point of view, and from hers. It's something that Cannes audiences will soon get the opportunity to judge for themselves. | |
| Eventually, the houselights came up, and Harvey felt moved to broach the topic of Grace Of Monaco, the movie he produced, and the fact that its Cannes premiere clashed fortuitously with his recent trip to a Jordan refugee camp. | Eventually, the houselights came up, and Harvey felt moved to broach the topic of Grace Of Monaco, the movie he produced, and the fact that its Cannes premiere clashed fortuitously with his recent trip to a Jordan refugee camp. |
| "I want to say – the movie reviewer from the Guardian …" Oh dear. I could sense people giving me sidelong glances. The Mail's Baz Bamigboye chortled loudly from a few rows behind me. | "I want to say – the movie reviewer from the Guardian …" Oh dear. I could sense people giving me sidelong glances. The Mail's Baz Bamigboye chortled loudly from a few rows behind me. |
| "… The movie reviewer from the Guardian implied that I had deliberately gone to Jordan to avoid seeing Grace Of Monaco. But that's ridiculous because they'd already commissioned Neil Gaiman to write about my entirely pre-planned trip, so that shows they don't read their own newspaper. Although I do like the Guardian," he added, thoughtfully. "They stand up for freedom." | "… The movie reviewer from the Guardian implied that I had deliberately gone to Jordan to avoid seeing Grace Of Monaco. But that's ridiculous because they'd already commissioned Neil Gaiman to write about my entirely pre-planned trip, so that shows they don't read their own newspaper. Although I do like the Guardian," he added, thoughtfully. "They stand up for freedom." |
| My head was spinning. Harvey could not have been talking about me, surely. I have never written about his trip to Jordan. He must mean my colleague Xan Brooks, who, in his diary, cheekily implied Mr Weinstein's visit to the Jordanian refugee was a bit of a get-out clause. It's all Xan's fault. He's got me into trouble. Would it be too awful to sneak round to the headmaster's study after assembly and drop him in it? | |
| I approached the great man after the speech, and the crowds around him parted to let me through. I greeted Harvey and shyly told him what newspaper I worked for. There was a hiss of indrawn breath from onlookers. Harvey's face really was quite close to mine and he looked the way Tony Soprano might, if I had told him I had placed my hand on his wife's thigh at mass. "The Guardian? Yeah, the paper that got it wrong about my trip to Jordan." | I approached the great man after the speech, and the crowds around him parted to let me through. I greeted Harvey and shyly told him what newspaper I worked for. There was a hiss of indrawn breath from onlookers. Harvey's face really was quite close to mine and he looked the way Tony Soprano might, if I had told him I had placed my hand on his wife's thigh at mass. "The Guardian? Yeah, the paper that got it wrong about my trip to Jordan." |
| "What newspaper was that again, Harvey?" shouted Baz Bamigboye, gleefully, from the back of the throng. | "What newspaper was that again, Harvey?" shouted Baz Bamigboye, gleefully, from the back of the throng. |
| "The Guardian." | "The Guardian." |
| I reclaimed a tiny sliver of self-respect at this point by not denouncing Xan, and was about to change the subject and ask Harvey an emollient question about what he was looking forward to seeing … when he returned to the topic. | I reclaimed a tiny sliver of self-respect at this point by not denouncing Xan, and was about to change the subject and ask Harvey an emollient question about what he was looking forward to seeing … when he returned to the topic. |
| "You see this just shows you – your editor doesn't read his own paper. Alan doesn't read his own paper. However, he is probably too busy worrying about being bugged by MI5 and CIA." | "You see this just shows you – your editor doesn't read his own paper. Alan doesn't read his own paper. However, he is probably too busy worrying about being bugged by MI5 and CIA." |
| With this genial remark, Harvey signalled that he may have forgiven us, a little bit, the mood lightened and he went on to tell me that Quentin Tarantino was coming out to Cannes to join him on a trip to see a series of Thai exploitation movies about boxing. | With this genial remark, Harvey signalled that he may have forgiven us, a little bit, the mood lightened and he went on to tell me that Quentin Tarantino was coming out to Cannes to join him on a trip to see a series of Thai exploitation movies about boxing. |
| We parted on friendly terms. But it was a tricky moment. | We parted on friendly terms. But it was a tricky moment. |
| • Read Peter's review of Grace of Monaco• Xan's diary about Weinstein• And our news story on the premiere |