Cannes Quotes
Cannes, I slept on the beach in 1971. I had Sugar Cookies here, one 35mm film. I had the two cans, I rented theaters but I didn't have money for a hotel. Slept on the beach, the Palais loved it, the people of Cannes loved it, it was a festival. They were discovering people. An independent company could put leaflets, we could walk into the hotels, put leaflets under all the doors. We could put leaflets on all the cars that were parked. They were interested, they encouraged someone who was unknown. Nobody knew who Troma or I was. It was before Troma. I was a nobody and I still am pretty much, but they encouraged it. Now they don't want you to do this. You can't even walk into a hotel without some $600 pass. If you pay, you can put your leaflets on a table maybe. It's become an elitist festival.
Lloyd Kaufman
"Oh, look," she said. She was a confirmed Oh-looker. I had noticed this at Cannes, where she had drawn my attention in this manner on various occasions to such diverse objects as a French actress, a Provençal filling station, the sunset over the Estorels, Michael Arlen, a man selling coloured spectacles, the deep velvet blue of the Mediterranean, and the late mayor of New York in a striped one-piece bathing suit.
P. G. Wodehouse
Clerks spoke with the sure, clear voice of an original filmmaker. In Mallrats the voice is muffled, and we sense instead advice from the tired, the establishment, the timid and other familiar Hollywood executive types. The year that Clerks played at the Cannes Film Festival, I was the chairman of a panel discussion of independent filmmakers. Most of them talked about their battles to stay free from Hollywood's playsafe strategies. But Kevin Smith cheerfully said he'd be happy to do whatever the studios wanted, if they'd pay for his films. At the time, I thought he was joking.
Roger Ebert
Going to see Godzilla at the Palais of the Cannes Film Festival is like attending a satanic ritual in St. Peter's Basilica. It's a rebuke to the faith that the building represents. Cannes touchingly adheres to a belief that film can be intelligent, moving and grand. Godzilla is a big, ugly, ungainly device to give teenagers the impression they are seeing a movie. It was the festival's closing film, coming at the end like the horses in a parade, perhaps for the same reason.
Roger Ebert
When the film premiered at Cannes 2003, Lars von Trier was accused of not portraying Americans accurately, but how many movies do? Anything by David Spade come to mind? Von Trier could justifiably make a fantasy about America, even an anti-American fantasy, and produce a good film, but here he approaches the ideological subtlety of a raving prophet on a street corner.
Roger Ebert
I don't take stuff seriously. I saw 'Hellraiser 3' the other day at Cannes; it's OK, it's a good film, I didn't hate it or anything. I thought it was quite good, but it was all just so serious. Some guy walking round with pins sticking out of his face. I just can't sit there and think,'this is really scary.' If I made a 'Hellraiser' film, I'd like Pinhead to be whacked against a wall and have all the pins flattened into his face.
Peter Jackson
For many years I enjoyed the pleasure of cruising on my yacht all summer long and these were my best holidays. In mid-May, we'd start in St Tropez. I'd collect my bikinis from my home there and then we'd go up to Cannes for the Film Festival, on to Monte Carlo for the Grand Prix and then to Italy.
Ivana Trump
Cannes is a circus, so you have to have fun with it. Everything suddenly becomes funny. And the promotion of a movie - that's where you really need to be a good actor. You need to make journalists believe that what you're saying is just for them and you've never said it before, even when you're talking about the same film over and over again.
Mathieu Amalric