My first couple of nights in Cannes, I was in screenings until almost midnight, and then I’d go to meet the people I’m staying with at the Grand Hotel, where we’d have drinks and then eventually share a long cab ride back to our place. The Grand is, apparently, Where Everyone Goes, which has it’s charms, but it also inevitably results in 30 minute waits amongst a partially-tuxedoed mob around the bar in order to have the privilege of paying 10 Euros (about $17, I think) for a single cocktail. Apparently, it wasn’t always like this. “Where’s the Cannes dive bar?” I wondered aloud to a group of veterans. The answer: “The Grand WAS the dive bar.” Whoops.
So when I heard that Alamo Drafthouse and Fantastic Fest founder Tim League was planning on throwing a renegade karaoke party in Cannes last night, I really, really wanted to see him pull it off. But it seemed impossible. So what if he had brought his portable karaoke system all the way from Austin? Where was he going to find a bar––in Cannes, during Cannes––that would be amenable and available to a bunch of scrappy Americans looking to scratch a drunken irony itch? And with the exchange rate being what it is, how would any of us be able to afford the amount of alcohol necessary to fuel such an endeavor?
But he pulled it off.
It was a triumph of collaboration. Instead of a bar, Tim set up shop in a falafel place called Twins, which agreed to stay open until 2 and sell wine and cans of beer for 2 Euros. He borrowed a microphone from Salon.com’s Andrew O’Hehir––the same tiny, directional mic that Andrew uses to record podcasts. I don’t remember where they said they got the P.A., but I think I remember someone saying it had to be returned to someone at the Finish Film Society at the end of the night. And filmmaker and sometime Spout blogger Michael Lerman sent out emails to spread the word.
The crowd spilled out of the tiny Twins and filled the cobblestone street, blending with the throngs pouring out of the Petit Mejestic at the end of the block. Eventually, someone from that hotel came around and huffily stacked their tables and chairs adjacent to Twins. No one left just because they couldn’t sit down. Brit Withey of the Denver Film Society shot an iPhone video of me performing “Love is a Battlefield,” which I sincerely hope never sees the light of day. Lloyd Kaufman showed up at one point, and Tim grabbed the microphone and begged the Troma genius to sing. I tried to stop him as he made his escape, and he promised me he was just going to an ATM and would be right back. Lloyd Kaufman lied to me.
Sometime around 1:30, just as Glenn Kenny was gearing up to sing “Mack the Knife,” the cops arrived. Something about noise complaints. They said we could have one more song, and Tim tried to get the whole crew to join in on a mass sing-a-long of “We Are the World.” No one was into it––at the end of the day, no one really ever wants to sing “We Are the World.” Of course, it didn’t matter––any party broken up by uniformed officials counts as an unqualified success.
My camera is broken, so I didn’t get any pictures of the festivities (hence the above graphic). If you’ve got any or have seen any (preferably less incriminating for Your Blogger than that iPhone video), let us know in the comments.
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