Eye on Cannes

Big bucks await festival winners

Web posted on: Thursday, May 14, 1998 8:10:38 PM EDT

From Correspondent Michael Okwu

CANNES, France (CNN) -- Sure, fans flock to this Riviera paradise each year to ogle their favorite celebrities. And sure, the celebrities come to town to see and be seen.

But there's more to the Annual Cannes Film Festival than a lot of looking around. There's awards to be won, including the Palme D'Or for best film, and there's plenty of money to be made, now more than ever.

Heading for 'another orbit'

International film festivals themselves have become a booming business lately, currently numbering some 240 in cities as far-flung as Berlin and Beijing. Yet Cannes remains the Mother of All Film Events, attracting some 4,000 journalists and 30,000 industry professionals each year.

"It's the only place in the world where you have such an accumulation of writers, photographers, and press," Rolf Mittweg of New Line Cinema said. "To win the Palme D'Or is the key to success here, which will then elevate the films into another orbit."

For instance, "Pulp Fiction" started its run here in 1994, going on to gross $213 million internationally.

Such high box-office takes are not soon forgotten by industry execs as they descend on Cannes.

The international player

"Today, Cannes has become even more important," said James Miegs of Premier Magazine, "because international box office is becoming a bigger and bigger part of every movie."

Nearly half of all box office receipts reaped by films today come from outside of the United States, according to the Motion Picture Association of America.

Between 2,000 and 3,000 films are expected to be shown during Cannes this year (although only 22 are part of the actual festival). It's a wall-to-wall big screen bonanza, a frenzy of deal-making and a lifeline for the independent filmmaker.

Cannes 'changes your life'

"It just changes your life," said Henry Jaglom, who took his first film, "A Safe Place," to Cannes in 1971. "The result for me was I could avoid what happened to my friend Orson Welles in life. I could avoid depending on Hollywood for financing."

Paul Auster is hoping it will change his life as well, as the writer-director premieres his film "Lulu on the Bridge."

"Cannes is probably the best place to unveil an film in the world because I think it's a festival in which films are cherished and they have a history of promoting and being enthusiastic about all kinds of work," Auster said.

Among some of the notable pictures to be seen at Cannes: "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" from Universal Pictures, "Henry Fool" from Sony Pictures, and "The Imposters" from Fox Searchlight.

Related sites:

• 51st Annual Cannes Film Festival

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