Cannes screening

The Cannes Golden ticket

Never been here before.  Never wanted to without a reason, without a film that would generate a little buzz.  Thankfully Kane is doing just that so it’s been worth the trip. Spent the day strolling the grey and drizzly croisette. Finally find a nice spot to sit and watch the world go by. 

The most interesting part of the festival is not the public front-end but the behind the scenes but with all the buyers and sellers deciding the fates of movies people have slaved over for years or are so desperate to get made.  Movies are treated like any other product here; there’s only one real question – will it make money?  Very occasionally something that just sparks an interest will make it through because people have faith that the audience will come if they just try hard enough.  But that’s pretty rare.

Thankfully, the market screening for Kane was jam packed with buyers from all over the world.  We’ve kept this so under the raider that everyone is totally jazzed to see what we’ve been up to.  A room full of buyers is probably the world’s hardest, most cynical audience . These men and women are seeing at least three movies a day and have to decide where their increasingly diminished funds are heading.  I’d been warned that people will just get up and walk out without a care.  They’ll know within minutes if a film fits their profile or if they can afford it.  I’d braced myself for an ego bruising of quite monumental proportions but as it turned out I lost just four people out of two hundred and that was only because we started the film late and they had to go.  They sat, seemingly riveted throughout and very into the whole thing.  Were they Kane fans before? Probably not  but were they Kane fans after? You know, I think there are a few converts today.  Certainly, I don’t think James Purefoy ever has to worry about getting a job again.

Some of the biggest hitters in the film world came out of the screening seeming almost astounded, the major comments revolved around; ”Purefoy is awesome.”,  ”It is just so intense” and “it’s just so big”.  I can tell, you I paced the sidewalk outside the screening for the whole running time but at the end, it seems to have worked.

Now the work of the producers and sales people really begins; every territory in the world needs to be covered.  Every distributor has to come online and make sure it gets seen.  Many, many are still in process but I’m so confident now that everyone, everywhere is going to get to see this on the big screen.  I know the Americans liked it and I’m pretty sure that’s all going to get done – so you can begin to relax.  Of course, the question now is when it’s coming out and sadly, that is all still to be decided.  Releasing a film is a titanic and expensive business for the distributor and they have to be certain it’s done in the right way at the right time.  Whatever dates are out their now, I wouldn’t have any faith in because there will probably be some kind of consensus to try and make the release as universal and synchronised as possible.  I have to trust that they’re going to make the right decisions but you can be sure that even though I have absolutely no power or control over this, I’ll be keeping an eye on it all and when there’s thing worth sharing, I’ll be posting info here.

~ by michaeljbassett on May 16, 2009.