Cannes: Day 1

Not the first day of the Festival, but the day of my arrival. Jet-lagged but revitalized by a landing at Nice during which the captain made parallelograms out of the tire treads on the first bounce and damn near got the Airbus sideways on the runway before reverse thrust was deployed and nature took its course. Didn't get any nearer to Cannes than Cap d'Antibes where the Mercedes' GPS drove me into a stranger's driveway about a mile from the hotel. The receptionist kindly talked me into the hotel forecourt on the portable causing me to recall a scene from Stanley Kramer's It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (Air traffic control tower staffer: If you can, give us your position. Who is flying the plane?).

Dinner was with John Lawrence Ré at Restaurant Le César at Plage Keller discussing his Brigitte Bardot project, I Art House, Leon Trotsky and poster art agitprop along with the Weimar Republic, the vast difference between Formula 1 and the Carrera Panamericana and the correlation between pheromones and financial planning. A rosé de Provence complemented my Chateaubriand and I learned from the restaurant's host that he hadn't seen Cherries Jubilee served in a French restaurant in forty years. The evening finished with Grand Marnier on the hotel terrace under a full moon and the realization that I hadn't slept in twenty-four hours.

Is this what the Cannes Film Festival is all about? I pity anyone who thinks it isn't.

Cannes: Day 2
Cannes: Day 3
Cannes: day 4