Cannes Update: My Red Carpet Moment

FIRST OF ALL let me say there wasn’t actually a red carpet, but I did attend my first Cannes ‘premier' last night and it was about what I expected: glitz, glamour, stars, a level of superficiality I’ve never experienced before --it had it all. I’ll give all the annoying details of the evening (including lots of name-dropping) in a later post. Right now I’ll just focus on what I went to see and how I got an invitation. It turned out to be quite a little saga.

It started last Monday evening when a colleague asked if I would like to attend an event two day later at the Festival -- a premier of a documentary film directed by Jermy Gilley called The Day After Peace, which chronicles his attempt to get the United Nations to establish an official Day of Peace. I’m not going to try to explain it any further, but instead direct you to this website where you can view a trailer. I urge you to take a look. The film centers around Gilley, but also prominently features Jude Law (yes, he was there; yes, he’s hot; yes, he’s way shorter than me). Here's a story about Gilley, Law, and the film from a British newspaper.

But the night before the event I received an email saying that due to the huge demand to see the film, I was being uninvited. I wasn't going to be able to attend because the people at the door and were going to have lists and I wasn’t going to be in the list! My colleague tried to talk to the organizers by no amount persuasion was going to work -- we were no longer invited, leading me to this sobering reality: high school history teachers don’t have much pull at the Cannes Film Festival.

Well, I decided I was going to go anyway. So Wednesday morning I did some research and found the phone number of the hotel that was hosting the party, a swanky little joint just off the Coissette called Hotel 3.14. I gave them a call and explained to the woman on the other line that I was calling to make sure my name was on the list for the film screening that evening. She looked over the list and didn’t see my name. I told her there must be a mistake and could she please add my name. And you know what? She did!

But I wasn’t out of the woods yet. I had no idea if the woman on the phone was actually putting my name on the list or just saying she was putting my name on the list, so even as I arrived at the venue I didn’t know if I was actually going to get past the door. Making matters worse was the fact that when I arrived the line of people waiting to get in extended 200 feet down the street. As I went to take my place at the end of the line, I scanned the crowd for anyone I might recognize and two things came to mind: 1) how is it possible for all these people to be so great looking, and 2) the last time I saw this much plastic was when I accidently opened my sister's Barbie-drawer in 1984. [Note: And it wasn't just the women! I saw one guy who appeared to have cheek implants. It looked like he had boiled an egg, cut it in half, applied one half to each side of his face, and covered them both with brownish-orangish face make-up. And one of the women I saw had so mch collagen in her lips they looked like the jet safety barriers you see on aircraft carriers.]

But I digress. My attempt to get in took a sudden turn for the better when I saw one of the parents of a student of mine – a parent who just happens to work for an organization that was helping to coordinate the event and just so happened to be in charge of…letting people in! Can you believe the luck. When she saw me she told me to wait right at the front of the line. Ten minutes later I was walking into the huge tent set up on the beach – right behind Dennis Hopper (yes, he looks great; yes, he’s way shorter than me -- I’m guessing 5’6, tops).

The rest of the story later.

(Excerpt from tomorrow’s post: After seeing Selma Hayek in person I realize she doesn’t come across very well on camera.)
CJS