Cool, thanks Jude, that'll fetch me a few quid ... Jude Law signing autographs at Cannes. Photograph: Fred Dufour/AP
How uncool is it for a journalist to ask a film star or director for their autograph? It's a question of etiquette gaining a certain momentum here at Cannes.
I was in the festival press club yesterday, when a beautiful French journalist tapped me on the shoulder, and presented me with her digital camera. "Please, pleeease take my picture!" she beamed. It turned out she wanted a picture taken of her holding a photo of herself with Quentin Tarantino. Then another picture: this time with the photo turned around, to reveal Tarantino's signature on the back. "I got his autograph!" she breathed euphorically.
It happens at the end of every press conference featuring big-name Hollywood players here. After all the questions, there is a lull during which the stars sometimes chat amiably to those reporters who make so bold as to amble up to the front. This lull has evolved into a fully-fledged stampede during which journalists - card-carrying, fully-accredited journalists - throw all detachment to the wind and clamour for the stars to sign their festival press books.
Well, I have been tempted myself. And perhaps for real legends there would be no shame in it. I remember when Clint Eastwood gave a press conference, I was tempted to shuffle bashfully forward, hold out a biro and mutter: "It's not for me of course, it's for my nephew; could you just sign your name and then write: 'Was it six bullets or only five?'" A certain old-fashioned reticence stopped me.
But now you have to forget about bashfulness; you have to shoulder and elbow your way to the front, making no bones about what you want. Now, these people could be accused of nothing more than fan-geekiness. Yet there's a suspicion that in some cases, these autographs are ultimately getting put up for sale on the web. And the sleek, full-colour Cannes press books, as expensive-looking as the souvenir programmes sold at London West End theatres, really are potentially collectible items - if adorned by an autograph.
I was at a party earlier in the week, and a young film-maker told me about an invitation he'd got last year for the Cannes premiere of Sofia Coppola's costume drama Marie Antoinette. The invitation was printed on a tiny balsa wood box, in which there was a dainty, camp little fan. My friend told me he put the invite for sale on eBay.
"Guess how much I got for it?" he asked. "Er, I dunno ... fiver? Tenner?" "Two hundred quid!"
My facial expression, on hearing this news (which I have no reason to disbelieve) was the same as every other person I subsequently told it to: stunned shock, followed by a quiet, intense concentration, as if doing mental arithmetic. Hang on ... I mean ... I must've ... somewhere ...? I told the £200 anecdote to one person and she almost yelled: "But I've got the original Trainspotting party invite!" Then her face went into the shock-plus-calculation mode.
So here I am in my muggy hotel room at the end of the day, which is ankle-deep in flyers, invites, catalogues, brochures and press books. Is there a nugget of gold twinkling somewhere in this detritus? Where there's muck there's brass, they say, and where there's tacky movie memorabilia there's apparently a few quid on eBay.
Sheer apathy rather than disapproval stops me from investigating further. But who knows? Maybe Brad Pitt will scrawl a warmly appreciative note to me on some napkin tomorrow at the Majestic Bar.
I promise to give any profit to charity.
