David Fincher and I could both use a gentle breeze and peaceful view of the Med. Photograph:AP
To the outside world, the Cannes film festival is starlets on the beach, flashbulbs on the red carpet, and ladling down rosé on a 40-foot yacht.
All true, to lesser or greater extent. But Cannes has also evolved into a highly efficient publicity machine that has largely eliminated the kind of informality for which it was renowned in the carefree Riviera days of the 60s and 70s. Gone is the possibility of drinking a leisurely cappuccino on a hotel terrace with the likes of Robert Mitchum: the coffees cost over a tenner, and if Mitchum was alive you'd probably have to sit at a table with 10 other sweating journalists to get replies to a couple of soft-lob questions.
If you are lucky enough to score an interview with a major player like David Fincher, as I was on the festival's opening day, the military level operation you have to undergo in return for a half-hour chat is staggering.
Warner Bros, the owners and makers of Zodiac, have accommodated their high-status personnel - including Jake Gyllenhaal and Chloe Sevigny - at the Hotel du Cap, a legendarily expensive venue about 15 miles down the coast at the tip of a (relatively) isolated headland. (This is a place where you can pay only in cash. Roman Abramovich was supposed, a couple of days back, to have bought it to turn into a personal residence.)
Upon reporting to Warner Bros' office in central Cannes, I and two other journalists, are led to a minibus and driven for 20 minutes along the winding coast road. After negotiating a couple of posts manned by headset-wearing security types, our driver is given a punchcode that then enables him to get the bus past yet another security point blocked by a retractable metal villa. Half a mile down another narrow lane, we are deposited outside the gate where a couple of official-looking women are waiting.
These, it turns out, are from Warner Bros, and they lead us, moist and perspiring from our trip, into the airy enclave within. We wend our way through a jasmine- and acacia-scented garden, with your correspondent, at least, feeling like a chimney sweep about to be presented to the town beadle. Suddenly we come out on to the rocky coastline, and it's back to business.
A dozen or so plastic marquees (the kind you might set up for a beach barbecue are scattered along the shoreline. (The Med, not having a tidal flow, doesn't really have much in the way of sandy beaches.) We three interlopers are corralled in the "hospitality" tent; we are candidly told by our minder that "we don't want you wandering about". A map on a nearby table reveals that each tent has been assigned a specific purpose: "Jake Gyllenhaal photo/TV" or "Chloe Sevigny print". I am led towards the tent designated "David Fincher print", and sit down. I am left alone for 10 minutes while Fincher is called down from the hotel itself, some distance away.
For the first time throughout this entire rigmarole, I can definitely say I enjoyed myself. Sitting in complete peace and quiet, the deep-blue Mediterranean right in front of my nose, a glass of water to drink, and a remarkably pleasant breeze circulating in the air, this was a tiny chunk of the lifestyle that these people presumably enjoy on a regular basis. That may not apply to Fincher though - the last time I met him was in a nondescript Parisian hotel when Fight Club was released.
At the end of my allotted time with Fincher - whom I found articulate and extremely likable - I was removed from his presence practically in mid-sentence, led to a waiting minibus and returned with all due speed to the packed streets of Cannes. The whole thing seems like a distant memory. I never thought I'd be nostalgic for an interview - normally I can't wait to get the hell out of the room. No doubt it's a central part of the film company's tactic to impress on cringing journalists how special their clients are. I don't know if it affected my thoughts on Fincher and his work, but it certainly made me want to get back to the Cap again.
All I need now is a few million in the bank...
