Judge dread ... Sean Penn at the Toronto film festival. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP
It is Sean Penn's misfortune that he has become so easy to mock. When it was announced earlier this week that Penn was going to be head of the Jury at next May's Cannes Film Festival, the response was predictable. Does the surfer dude from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, the ex-Mr Madonna and celebrity bad boy really deserve to be taken so seriously by the film establishment? Jury head at Cannes is a position that has been held in recent years by Martin Scorsese, David Cronenberg and Stephen Frears. Does Jeff Spicoli belong in such exalted company?
The response to Penn's political activism, especially on the conservative right, has often been to snigger. This was most notoriously the case in 2004 when he was mocked in Trey Parker and Matt Stone's Team America: World Police. Penn responded by accusing the filmmakers of encouraging "irresponsibility that will ultimately lead to the disembowelment, mutilation, exploitation, and death of innocent people throughout the world" and signed off his note to them with a "sincere fuck you." Inevitably, this prickly behaviour encouraged the hyena-like catcalls to resound yet more noisily.
Penn's supporters responded to the din by making lofty claims on his behalf and treating him as if he were some latter-day prophet.
Take a step back, forget about his private life and public pronouncements, and you realise that Penn is eminently qualified for the job in Cannes simply because of his achievements as a filmmaker. And it doubtless helps, too, that he is available in May. This is not some celebrity stunt dreamed up by the festival organisers to hog media limelight from rivals like Sundance and Berlin in the dead of January.
Cannes likes to keep it in the family and Penn has a long history with the festival. His first film as a director, The Indian Runner, screened on the Riviera back in 1991. His masterful The Pledge was also in the festival as was Clint Eastwood's Mystic River, in which he gave arguably his best performance. Penn has been winning plaudits - if not doing spectacular box-office - with his latest film as a director, Into the Wild, which is now being tipped for Oscar nominations.
It is a moot point whether jury heads in Cannes are able to exercise much influence when it comes to picking winners. Last year, Stephen Frears failed to talk his fellow jurors round into giving any award at all to the Coen Brothers' No Country For Old Men. A few years back, Cronenberg had an uphill struggle to secure a screenplay prize for Alexander Sokurov's Moloch. Penn will no doubt face similar battles but one prediction can safely be made - Trey Parker and Matt Stone won't be winning the Palme D'Or this year.
