Lost In Cannes (or Filmaking Hell)

After a very unexpected “Can you drive and do you want to come to Cannes?” phone call on Friday afternoon from Matt (who I’d met the previous weekend on another film shoot) I somehow wangled it with work (all those bank holidays I’d worked came in handy in the end!) to leave poor, long-suffering-assistant-Ben to deal with it all and bugger off on the Monday. Always amazing how you can wangle the impossible sometimes!

Anyways, prior to leaving on Monday, I had met Huck Melnick (the director) for about 5 minutes on the Saturday, and no-one else, and had very little idea of what I was getting myself into (a situation that has always appealed to me, and generally works out) except that I was going on a film shoot, in Cannes, during the Cannes Film Festival, and the film was to be a short romantic comedy about an actress and wannabe producer who meet, yes, at the Festival. So all excitement (south of France! Summer! Cannes Film Festival!) I acquired the obligatory business cards, new shoes, hair-cut, dye-job and cover at work, and turned up at Tom Wontner’s flat at 4PM Monday afternoon, ready to jump in the car and leave for France. I hadn’t met Tom before, and only later found out that he was the male lead, and had come on board only a few weeks before. At the time he had noticed a rather large gap in organisation and had offered to produce the film. This rather large gap was a rather large omen of other rather large gaps to come – but this all still lay in the future. For now the organisatory gaps had been filled – by Tom himself (another omen!) and he had been lumped with the task of getting 20 crew members and two van-loads full of camera, sound and lighting gear to France, while Huck and Jeremy (Huck’s buddy and writer of the script, and supposed-to-be-co-director-and-co-funder) swanned off to Cannes by plane to do some ‘pre-production’. [Note for those who don’t know: the pre-production stage is when you do things like (a) find your locations (b) get permission to film in them (c) find sufficient accommodation for your crew (d) get some idea of how much it’s going to cost to feed your crew (e) plan out the shooting schedule (f) consult with your assistant director so she knows what’s going on (g) sort out how you’re going to transport your crew etc etc. As it was we arrived to find (a) most locations had not been found yet (b) the only one they had found, they hadn’t asked permission to film in (c) there were not enough mobile homes organised at the campsite we were staying in, “5 minutes walk” (i.e. 20 minutes drive) from Cannes (d) nobody had bothered to find out how expensive food actually is in the South of France in season (e) there was no shooting schedule, in fact there wasn’t even a story board (f) all Kelly (1st Assistant Director)’s shooting schedules that she had meticulously worked out well in advance had been completely ignored (g) there were not enough vehicles (a situation that continued throughout the shoot) and there were not enough drivers for the existing 2 vehicles.]

Anyway, here follows my diary of events, as experienced from my point of view… So if any inaccuracies exist, I apologise and am to blame…

Day 1: Leaving Las Vegas London

As mentioned previously, I arrived at Tom’s flat in central London around 4PM, all ready to jump in the car and leave for France immediately. Poor little me! How ignorant can you be! In fact, we still had to go to Golders Green (north London) to pick up the fabulous High Density camera (apparently something to be excited about if you’re a camera person) and all the other tons of kit that camera people need, as well as our very small pile of sound gear. Alarm bells started ringing when the second vehicle, that is due to meet us at VMI (the hire place) around 5, is still in the garage at 6PM, with no guarantee of being fixed in time for us to go. Eventually (after Matt, Chris (the boom op) Tom and I have entertained ourselves in the reception area of a gear-hire company (not a very entertaining spot, it must be said) for 3 hours) Ben arrives in what is soon to become known as The Bendabus.

The Bendabus is a very ancient, battered (and very loveable, Ben!) Space Cruiser, largely silver in colour, dappled with a lovely rust. By this time Tom, who has been on edge for the last several hours, is about to go mad. It’s 8.30PM (we had (HA HA HA HA HA) originally booked for the 8.15 ferry crossing and Ben still has to re-arrange all his own gear that is occupying a lot of the packing space so we can get his share of the camera gear in. Tom is entirely disbelieving that the Bendabus will actually make it, and much time is wasted considering the option of hiring a vehicle from VMI. Eventually Ben convinces Tom that his vehicle WILL make it, and we then discover that we still have to pick up a whole lot of lighting gear from a different hire company. Of course, Ben had actually just driven past the place (in north west London – remember that Dover (from where the ferry departs) is to the south east of London. Also remember that London is a very very big place), but didn’t know to stop (AAAARGHHHH!!). This company also closes at 9.30. It is now 9.00. So Tom, Matt and I jump into Tom’s vehicle (a ford people carrier, in far better condition than the Bendabus, so much so that it never warranted a nickname) and screech off to Arri’s to get the lighting stuff, while Ben and Chris set off straight for Dover.

We pick up the lighting stuff with minutes to spare and then set off on a serious effort to make the 11.15 ferry, debating all the way the possibility of Ben’s vehicle making it, and both of us making the ferry. Text messages and phone calls fly and we establish, only a few miles from Dover, that we are passing the traffic cones that Ben had only just passed. By now it’s 11PM. A few miles further and we’re all but giving up hope of making this crossing, when we come up to the last roundabout before the ferry. And there, believe it or not, is the Bendabus! They had travelled east and south on the ring road to get out of London while we had travelled west, picked up gear and then gone south and east on the ring road, and we’d caught them up, AT the ferry roundabout! A good omen! Hope and cheers erupt from both cars and we screech up to the ferry and are literally the last cars on. We hadn’t even finished walking up the stairs from the parking deck when the ferry pulls away.

PHEW! Something good has happened at last! Elation abounds but we all realise that haring down through France through the night is not really an option now, so we stop for the night about an hour past Calais. I think this was the moment when Tom realised that his credit card was going to be maxed to the limit - already he was paying for three hotel rooms he hadn’t planned on, and we were barely even IN France.

Day 2: The Incredible Journey

A long, slow day. The Bendabus, which, bless, doesn’t even have a speedometer, is not a particularly speedy vehicle. In fact, it is a particularly SLOW vehicle. It is also a not very reliable vehicle, so it is necessary to drive in convoy, just in case it gets stranded with £100,000 worth of camera gear in the back. The ford was just dying to go faster, but we had to follow rather than lead because it was just too difficult to be in front and not go fast. However, accompanied by the Sounds of the Eighties (courtesy Matt), I had a great time just sitting in the back, watching France roll past… I LOVE road trips! And for me it was a bit of trip down memory lane when we got to the south, having worked outside St Tropez for three months 6 (SIX!!!!!!) years ago. And on the way down a comment was passed that Tom felt he’d been lumped with the logistics, and he hoped (in vain, it later proved) that Huck and Jeremy were doing their bit (i.e. pre-production stuff) in Cannes.

We arrived in Pegomas (the town “5 minutes walk” outside Cannes) where we were being accommodated in a caravan park at about 11PM, with no-one to meet us. They were having dinner in Cannes. Fair enough, we’re big kids and plonked ourselves in a mobile home and went in search of beer. We duly found beer, and also found out how bloody expensive beer is in a bar – 3 euros for a half pint. Funnily, beer is extremely cheap if you buy it in a supermarket. At some stage we bought 52 for about 24 euros. (My usual standard for judging the cost of living in a new country is how much a beer costs ya (I’m not really fussed about bread and milk, somehow!))

The theory was that we were going to start shooting the following day, late afternoon, at the caravan park. Hah!

Day 3: The Long and Winding Road

Indeed it is a long and winding road to Cannes from Pegomas. Typical southern French road – one (narrow) lane in either direction, and my heart begins to sink at the prospect of being one of the drivers. At this stage I still held out hope that there would be another, and so was somewhat comforted by the idea that I would not be alone in the drear of having to cart loads of people around all over the place. Nevertheless I am occupied by the need to remember the route (Tom didn’t know it either) and we drive round and about Cannes for some time trying to find the hotel where Huck, Jeremy and Tom will be staying (the Hotel Shilla, run by the truly lovely and kind Madame l’Amour), as well as the actresses Berry and Anna, and Miriam, officially 2nd AD, but quickly becoming the person who has to do all the shitty jobs by virtue of the fact that she is our only French speaker (she is Swiss).

The day is spent watching Jeremy, Huck and Tom argue over logistics of transport (the hotel lot don’t have a vehicle – the two we have are going to be campsite based) and Kelly (1st AD, who has by this time arrived) trying to bring some direction into the arguments, as she soon realises she can’t actually stop them. The transport issue was quite insane. Several people had arrived by the same flight, but none of them knew each other, so Vanessa (make up artist) was eventually left stranded at the airport and had to get a bus into Cannes after waiting hours to be fetched at the airport (as arranged). She then was left stranded at the Cannes bus station for another one and a half (bladder impaired) hours until someone finally fetched her. Another several timespans were wasted on the issue of fetching the actresses and Agatha (one of the 3 documentary makers who were to make documentaries on the real Cannes blaggers, as juxtaposition to the film itself) who’s trains were cancelled then (happily) re-instated. At this stage I am still excited that I may be able to see some films. Even being stuck on my first car-guarding duty in a particularly ugly car park – perfect view of the rail tracks and the flyover that flies over them – hasn’t dampened my hopes of seeing something of the festival while I’m here. If not in the actual festival (you have to have a pass) at least the free films that are shown on the beach every night at 10.30 (surely we will be finished work by that time on most nights???), and still think Huck is a man to be trusted.

The camera crew have also, in the course of inspecting all their equipment, found out that although they have this super-hot-shit camera, they do not have the super-hot-shit lens that contributes much to the super-hot-shitness of the camera. They hotfooted it to the Sony Yacht (everyone who’s anyone has a yacht in Cannes, with which to try to be more pretentious than the other people trying to be pretentious) to try persuade them to let us borrow a lens, but they failed – I know not why. So now we’re using the super-hot-shit camera minus the hot-shit, and everyone’s somewhat disappointed – not the least me as I’ve been stuck with the car for over an hour while there’s a lovely sunny day going on and the Bullshitter of the Day - one of the documentary makers, who from the start had no intention of actually making a documentary but was there to name drop and tell all about his amazing, unbelievable (literally, on my part) deals with Disney, Miramax and the “Die Hard 4” producers. Each to his own, I suppose. He did end up being a recurring extra in our film at least, and turned out to be pleasant enough when he forgot he was in Cannes! I also got into much trouble for deserting my post in search of a bottle of water, exactly around the time the car needed moving from it’s illegal parking space and someone climbed in through the sunroof (that I’d left open, gulp!) to try and move it, setting off all kinds of alarms. Of course I had responsibly taken the key with me. Still, the neighbours could hardly complain of the horrible alarm sounds – the flyover was still much louder!

The last person to arrive is George (part of the camera crew) and Huck says it’s a “5 minute walk” to the bus station (had I not already learned my lesson???) to pick George up, no need to take the car. It is, fact, a 25 minute walk, and the sensible thing (considering it is now 11.30 at night) would have been to load everyone into the car and drive to pick up George, as the bus station is also directly on the route out of town to Pegomas. So another hour passes in wastedness and poor George has to carry all his gear all the way to the car. Although that probably wasn’t too much of a problem: George is rather a big chap and, incidentally, probably the best car packer I’ve ever met. Not a talent to be sneered at! His other talents include a very convincing Bavarian gay accent.


A fine portrait of George

Anyways, finally I get everyone into the car and head to Pegomas. Naturally I have no real idea where I’m going and I actually head for Nice (in the opposite direction). Much map-and-George consultation later and we finally make it back to camp, where Chris, Matt, Ag and I polish the last of Matt’s weed and get rather drunk. An important indication of things to come. We also set up the first of several sandwich production lines for lunch tomorrow – it is to be a disappointing affair as we don’t have very much in the way of bread. (Matt’s job is to feed us all on a very tight budget…)

So, by the end of the first day’s shooting, we have shot nothing, Matt has not actually left the campsite since arriving and none of us have seen much of Cannes apart from parking lots and The Hotel Shilla – except the camera crew who’ve already been on a yacht. Bastards! Another important indication of likely future events…

The hoped-for, and really-should-have-happened ‘group-hug, team-building’ dinner at the campsite, supposed to have been attended by all the hotel lot, in particular the director and writer, never happened. Yet another tinkle of the little alarm bells that have been going off all day.

Day 4: Location, Location, Location!

Today we shoot. At last something constructive is happening. I am not actually doing anything to do with filming – Chris is still here to boom op – but am happy enough at the prospect running errands and getting to know Cannes a bit.

Location: the Hotel Shilla.
Reason for location: last year Huck and Jeremy had stayed there and it was a shithole. The two girls in the film are broke and need to be staying in a shithole.

So, we happily move in, take over the entire lobby with stuff, dumping toolboxes on Korean antique rosewood tables, piling sharp-edged metal objects all over the newly laid (luckily NOT rosewood) floor, leaving handprints all over the freshly (as in yesterday) painted walls…

We then become aware of two facts:

(1) There are workmen rewiring the entire building (er... a somewhat noisy activity involving hammers, drills and saws – you can see how Miriam’s French speaking job was already going to be hell) and
(2) Nobody had actually ASKED Madame l’Amour if it was ok to film in her hotel – she was paying these workmen for a day’s work that wasn’t done in the end ‘cos we kept asking them to be quiet.

It’s not just alarm bells ringing by now, but the whole bloody town’s church bells have chimed in too.

Somehow, against the odds, we get some filming done. Come lunchtime and the pitiful pile of sandwiches puts us to shame, and we have to buy more in. Isn’t it funny, in hindsight, how the whole future of a project can be predicted in a day? Pissing off the location, not enough food, and a clear indication by lunchtime that Huck, our illustrious leader and director, has not got a clue what he’s doing and is an arrogant arse to boot. Although no-one really wants to say it openly yet, and certainly not to his face (we’ve only known each other a couple of days by this time), the foreboding sense of lack of direction/control/leadership is becoming a slightly embarrassing fog hanging around the Hotel Shilla, that is not being burned away by the gorgeous Cannes sunshine.

Anyway, we get the day’s work done, somehow, taking much much longer than necessary and I do my one run back to the campsite, with all the kids scrunched in somehow. By now it’s been established that they do not want to insure another driver on the ford, and I am it’s official driver. Never will I offer to be The Driver again! Ferrying 12 people and gear round and about Cannes is like taking 20 primary school kids on tour. It’s not fun! There’s always someone who:
• has left something behind
• needs the loo
• doesn’t want to leave yet
• is impatient to leave NOW (usually me!)
• wants to stop for fags
• HAS to get to town to check emails exactly when I’m on my way to the pool

Halfway back to Pegomas, on my one run of the evening, I get a phone call. Come back into town and fetch Miriam. Furiously (I want a swim and dinner as well) I ask why she didn’t get in in the first place – it seems Huck hadn’t thought of that, and hadn’t told her what he wanted her to do.

So I go back and fetch her: she is to be taken to a rather lovely field full of freshly planted strawberries and red poppies, on the same road as the campsite, and tell the farmer that we would like to shoot in his field the next morning (I suppose we should be grateful that we didn’t just turn up and dump our gear on the 5 day old strawberry plants…) It is now about 7PM. We want to shoot there at 9AM the next day. So we put on our best smiles and go ask the farmer. Of course it is a totally futile mission: these are the man’s crops we are talking about! But they kindly send us to another field they know of, where they have seen people filming before.

Buoyed, we head there only to find the property locked up. We manage to get a phone number and Miriam makes the call. The succinct reply was something like: bugger off, I’m never having another film crew on my property again! (has Huck been here before? See, for me, the problem with film crews messing location owners around, is that eventually the world is going to run out of locations! It’s only people who have not been done before that say yes…) Miriam and I then feel obliged to find a field. Luckily we were together as if either of us had been alone we’d have given up at this point. As it was we spent another 2 hours driving around the environs of Pegomas (at least it is a pretty place to drive around) talking to various people until we finally found a lovely sloping hillside and some suckers who hadn’t been done by a film crew yet, and they said fine, we can shoot there. Pretty damn lucky as it was dusk and we were pissed off enough to say fuck it, this should have been organised AGES ago.

Back to the campsite, triumphant in our success, only to have the wind taken out of our sails by the camera crew (how do you know the director will like it? It’s on a HILL? How’s the steady-cam guy, Jose, going to work on a hillside? I think this was about the last time that the director’s wishes were seriously taken into account…) [Note: a steady-cam is a contraption whereby the camera is attached on a harness to the body and then on a hinged mechanical arm so that it can be moved about smoothly by the operator. It is very heavy and the operator cannot really watch his feet as he has to watch the monitor.]


Some steady-cam action

Luckily it turned out to be the perfect location by most people’s opinions, and just as well as we’d otherwise have spent the day driving around the area in great futility trying to find a field to ruin.


Day 5: Field of Dreams



The Bendabus, the field and the camera crew’s bums.

So we duly all turn up at the field, and everyone seems happy. Except for the lack of poppies. The director wants poppies. And since we are still vaguely concerned with the directors ideas (amazing how we are so conditioned to respect a pecking order! Even if it is only there by name, and not earned) poppy wranglers are appointed and on one of my many driving runs later we assault a roadside poppy community and steal them all. This idea was as short-lived as the poppies – YOU try keeping picked poppies alive in scorching Mediterranean heat, on a baking hillside! I did feel rather bad about picking them all, since we didn’t even use them, but this is how things were on this shoot…

After some time I was not actively needed so I managed to escape to Cannes for a bit (one good thing about being the driver) and spend a whole 5 minutes on the beach before rounding up the kids (some of whom had been spending their time in fledgling romances) and taking some back to camp to sort dinner, and the others to the hillside, by now no longer baking and the light failing.

As it turns out, everyone seemed happy enough with the day’s achievements, achieved largely in spite of the evident leadership gap – our director(s) [the “s” in brackets ‘cos Jeremy’s attempts at directing are hardly worth mentioning] still and confirmedly unable to make their vision clear to the people who need to share that vision. We are all starting to suspect that that vision doesn’t actually exist in Huck’s mind at all. Still, not a bad day’s work and the BBQ for dinner went down a treat.

Catch-phrases are starting to set in: “For Huck’s sake, hurry up!”, “Hucking, hell! Get a move on!” but we are still polite enough to not say these things in front of the man himself. This will change.

Huck is starting to be known as “Yuck” (his sense of personal hygiene doesn’t quite meet general modern society standards).

Day 6: Cruising the Croisette


The number of fingers held in the air indicates a how-many-star-fuck-up is taking place. This is a 5 star fuck up

After some “discussion” (i.e. full blown argument) last night, we agree a 9.30AM call time, on the Croisette (the Croisette is the esplanade bit that runs along the beach front). NO problem, we’re up and ready. I accompany the camera crew on the Bendabus to show Ben where to park (already I have an intimate knowledge of Cannes parking lots –very similar, it may or may not surprise you, to parking lots the world over. Except in one point: many seem to have a sound system rigged and they play radio at you. Nice idea, I suppose, but does anyone ever spend more time than absolutely necessary in a car park? Do the French feel the need to escape the sun, perhaps?)

So: we unload the camera gear (they do NOT travel light, unlike us soundies with 3 bags, a boom and a mic – give me sound anyday!) on the pavement, bury the car 3 floors underground, and wait for the others. Now, we know we are shooting on the Croisette, but as the Croisette runs the entire length of the town, this is a pretty vague destination.

I then spent the following hour and a half learning important camera crew jargon:
• Helmet (an attractive girl – I’ll leave you to figure it out… ICK!)
• HCH (High Class Helmet)
• MILF (Mother I’d Like to Fuck)
• GILF (Granny I’d Like to Fuck)
• And we added, for my benefit, BILF (Bloke I’d Like to Fuck)

As they say, you learn something new every day!!!!!

This educational experience was interspersed by trying to call any one of our three leaders to find out what the HUCK was going on. We could still be in bed! It was a nice street corner, but we’d finished admiring it’s full potential after the first 10 minutes. Watching the copper on the corner agreeing with all the cries of ‘helmet!’ was doing wonders for Anglo-French relations, but that wasn’t really the point. Nice fountain, too, but really, an answered phone call would have been nicer. Especially as we had stuck to the arrangement and were where we were supposed to be. And Yuck had actually walked past us after the first half hour, but had not even acknowledged us, never mind said, sorry, we’re gonna be some time yet. And the French, great coffee lovers that they are, are a bit too serious about coffee in that take away coffee is an abhorrent idea. Coffee should be sat down and drunk at a coffee shop, properly. Of course, with all our gear, and always believing that departure was imminent, we couldn’t go sit in a coffee shop. I’ve never before wished for a Starbucks!

When everyone else finally arrives at 11AM, the delay is explained, and almost seems forgivable. Huck (who is not only not directing, but also acting) was being persuaded to, and having, his hair cut.

Now let me take a minute to describe our director. He’s small and wiry (about my height and half my size) and, well, very very hairy – normally not a problem in a man of hygiene. He has severe duck feet that are always clumping around in little gnome boots and wears a series of odd-coloured baggy linen trousers (you know what linen looks like after a couple of wears – Huck wore his more than a couple of times!) with pockets bulging (this is something that all men do: do they not realise bulging pockets in no way emphasize other bulges and simply ruin their figure?) and a new, brightly coloured, not always matching, shirt almost every day. We know this ‘cos the creases from being in the packet were still perfectly in evidence. His greatest distinguishing feature, however, was the mass of hair on his head. He is balding on top, but has a HEAP of long, matted, dark hair hanging off the back of his head. It looks like it really has been neither washed nor combed since he left school. It’s long and the bits that are not matted up into one great big dreadlock are stringy and wispy and fly all over the place. So much so that we had several giggles about what poor Vanessa (make-up) was going to do with it – rather her than me, anyday!

So, the late start of the day was due to Tom taking a stand and gleefully cutting the mat off. Vanessa was left with only the ear hairs to do…


Huck, pre haircut


Huck, post haircut

Right, so now it’s 11AM and according the Kelly’s painstakingly worked out shooting schedule, we should be finishing up the second shot. We’re still hanging on a street corner discussing GILFs, MILFs and BILFs while Tom circles the block to come pick up the camera gear (why on earth we did this ridiculous vehicle swop, I don’t know!). Eventually we move everything and everyone to the far end of the Croisette and finally start shooting. It’s now 12.30. Hmmm… Only 3 hours late.

Nevermind. As Chris is still around to boom, I think I’ve got it easy and can spend the day checking out Cannes. Ooooooh noooooooo! It’s not that easy! The car is full of £100,000 worth of camera bits that are only insured if it’s car is alarmed. It isn’t. So as they all move further and further away from where the car is parked, I get stuck with car guarding duty. I sat with that damn car for FIVE AND A HALF HOURS! With the beach in sight! With Cannes to be explored! Goddamnit!

At 5.30 I manage to lumber Matt with the car and my day improves. I go find the rest of the crew, by now back at the other end of the Croisette, and next to where they are filming, I see a rather delicious Swede (BILF!!!) giving ‘energy massages’. I decide I deserve one and WOW, it really was energising! Buoyed by this, and by my previous success as a location scout, I join Agatha in the search for a party invite, so we can film at a posh do. Now Cannes during the festival is a place of parties. Getting an invite shouldn’t be too difficult, if you blag well enough. To do the blagging, you need a photo-ID festival pass so you can get into the hotels, where all the film companies have suites to do their business in. Agatha has a pass. Miriam has a pass. I do not. So I borrow Miriam’s. I manage to get past security at the Majestic Hotel. Agatha has her DV camera on all the time (she’s here to shoot a documentary, remember). We go blagging. We fail hopelessly, but do manage to steal a muffin each and get bust filming people without their permission. We do, however, eventually get ONE lead on a potential party, and have to go to another section of the official festival office site to continue blagging there.

More security to deal with. I am ever confident, and try my old “speak to the bus conductor/ticket inspector/security bloke, and look them in the eye. This way they won’t look at your ticket/pass” trick. This always works. And so it did this time, except that there are TWO security blokes, and while I hold the first one transfixed with my eyes and several difficult questions, security bloke #2 reaches round from behind me and checks the picture on the pass. Which is blatantly not me.

The pass is duly removed from my person (with well practised French snootiness and disdain) and, apparently (Miriam found out later when she went back to try and get it) handed over to the police. They take this pass thing seriously, the French do! So now I have to tell Miriam that I’ve lost her pass that she has only had for less than 24 hours (foolishly she still hopes to see some films HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!)

Fortunately for me the pass issue was completely overshadowed in importance by Miriam’s pissed-offness with Yuck (his name has by now mutated to “Muck”). As the official French Speaker, she is charged with keeping the crowds at bay – we are filming VERY publicly, and a scene involving a performance art thing by the lead actress, so everyone’s watching, and looking into the camera and being curious and generally not helping everyone’s mood. It’s hot and the sea is just there! So near and yet so far away! Muck has been unable to tell the camera crew what he wants and mutiny is at hand. Frustration levels have not lowered since the pavement this morning. The focus of Agatha’s documentary has shifted today – she’s started interviewing crew, and realises that there’s far more of a story here than just documenting the festival!


Anna with the flower that she emerges from on the Croisette. Performance art stuff.

Late back to camp, and there is general consensus that we have to go out on the town and get blasted. We all need it! Tom, bless him, who has decided to stay sober the whole time (sensible, as he’s the only one trying to hold it all together, and play the lead role at the same time), agrees to drive us all back in two runs – one at 1AM the next at 2. These turn into a 3.30 and 5AM run – everyone really did get well and truly smashed! A record amount of vomiting was recorded the following morning, Miriam had to be rescued from falling asleep in the toilet bowl, Matt (all of 22, and from Blackpool) was waxing lyrical about how to treat women “show them who’s boss”, Agatha was found on the side of the road, WALKING home, and Chris (who missed his 8AM flight from Nice the next morning) was last heard from saying ‘hey, let’s go to the casino!’. Tom had to baby us all home and to bed, but at least he had the comfort of everyone saying ‘I LOOOOVE you, man! You’re the GREEAAAtesht!”

A mad mad night (how come the only European country that sticks to EU directives about alcohol measures in Britain? Hmmm? In Europe they just pour half the damn bottle in your glass!) but much needed. Nothing like a bit of booze and a common enemy for team building!










Day 7: Happy Campers



The manky caravan

In the light of last night’s immense piss-up/blow-out, today’s call is for 3PM, at the campsite – we’re filming in and around a really manky caravan, about 50m away from our (much nicer) ones, so it’s a pretty stress free day. I am finally booming (Chris did manage to get a later flight – he had to be back in the UK on Monday morning to start work on something called ‘the sex lives of the potato men’. I can’t wait.) but am struggling to keep my balance as it is, nevermind with the addition of a long pole with a dead weight on the end of it.

Other campsite residents find us fascinating – one woman even videoed the whole procedure (I bet her holiday video makes great viewing! Her poor poor mates!) and we generally take it easy. Highlight of the day is Muck (sans shirt! EEEEUUUUWWWWWW! Yuckity muckity huck! Lying in the caravan, apparently half asleep, saying his one line: “she doesn’t want to see you” over and over and over again, in close up. He must have done it 25 times until we collectively decided to cut. The little man is ridiculous and completely egotistical. I’m surprised he didn’t cast himself as the lead, the number of close-ups we did of him by the end of the shoot!


Getting ready for Muck’s marathon close-up

Jeremy (writer) has also started showing an ugly side, not mere incompetence. The way he speaks to the actors is totally unconstructive and his meanness is shining through. He REALLY doesn’t want to hand over any money for crew welfare! Little does he realise that when people work for you for free, as everyone was, all it takes is a decent meal and a case of beer at the end of the day and everyone will do anything for you. Be stingy on the food and beer, though, and resentment just builds.

Anyways, short day and quiet night… We all need this as much as we needed the blowout the day before!

Day 8: MY Yacht


Kelly and Samantha on the Sony Yacht

The premise of the film (called “My Yacht”, by the way) is a wannabe producer meets a wannabe actress, and although he’s really a nice ordinary bloke, he feels he has to impress her by being The Big Producer, and so goes on the blag and pretends to be someone he’s not and pretends he owns a yacht and gets himself invited to parties on other yachts etc etc. He gets found out, she dumps him, he learns his lesson, they get together in the end.

So this is why we need to blag into a party on a yacht (talk about life imitating art…). Sony have been kind enough, in the light of us using there super-hot-shit new camera (minus the hot-shit lens), to let us shoot on their yacht BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 7 AND 9PM ONLY. Only between 7 and 9. That’s 19h00 to 21h00. What part of this Muck didn’t understand, I don’t know. Of course the 6.30PM call to prepare for a hurried shoot at 7 was probably ill-advised and all excitement drained rapidly from my being when we finally did get into the Yacht-owners-only car park (Miriam doing the French thing again) and we were only allowed a skeleton crew on board. i.e. one sound person only. So Lee (sound recordist, and a damn fine one at that) got to hang out on a yacht, while the “non-essential” (hmpff) crew hung out on the dockside, watching impossibly thin wannabe actresses trying to impress expensively (but invariably badly) dressed producer types, all heading for one or the other (s)wanky yacht party. New Camera Crew Jargon word: LAM (a Look At Me). There are bazillions of LAM’s in Cannes!

The second Yacht scene involved filming Huck and Berry (the other actress) trying to get into a (s)wanky boat party, and being turned away. So we gather round and block the entrance to the Sony Yacht. The Sony party is due to start at 9. We are supposed to finish at 9. It is now 9.15. The captain and Sony guy are getting impatient. Potential Sony guests are not bothering and are heading for other parties. We, the crew, are embarrassed, and try to hurry things along (I think this was the first time we used the phrase ‘for Huck’s sake, hurry up” within Muck’s hearing range). I do my best boom action so far – lying face down in the gutter between the pavement and the sea, underneath the gang plank, with my arm twisted backwards. It did entertain the rather BILFy deckhand on the next yacht, but was not enough to secure an invitation on board. Perhaps I was a bit grubby?


Huck and Berry fail to blag into a party. Berry just LOVES her role as Yuck’s love interest! Fortunately there are no snogging scenes…

French shops are shit. They close for three hours over lunch (when else are you supposed to go to the shops?) and are shut again by 7.30. After the trying day on (or near, for some of us) the yacht we were pretty desperate for a beer. Even the campsite bar was closed and we were forced to resort to knocking on neighbouring camper’s doors to try borrow some, which we did manage in the end. What a weird night…

Catch phrase of the day:

I’m a Professional! Get me out of here!



To Be Continued….