I was standing at the front of the security line for the premiere of The French Dispatch when I saw, on a jumbo celebrity monitor overlooking the red carpet, the outline of that unmistakable grin below a golden mask and white broad-brimmed panama hat. It was then that I decided I wasn’t allowed to leave Cannes without meeting Bill Murray.
The fortress element registered with Alexandra Milic, who is from Cannes originally, and was attending the festival for the first time. “I wanted to see from inside how it is,” Alexandra said. “I spent my childhood here. I would say the festival, Cannes, the city, the Croisette, everything, it’s very special to me. But even still, I’m a bit like an outsider.”
That seemed too absurd to be true, but the situation amounted to a crisis of access. Cannes wouldn’t be Cannes if its barriers and restrictions were set any lower, but the only thing worse than letting the under-credentialed riff-raff into your royal ballroom would be a half-empty ballroom. Turns out, it worked. I gave the last-minute line a whirl, then another, then another, and got into every movie.
He didn’t say which bar the young night would be getting old at, if there was one. Twirling his rose between my fingers, I poked my head into a couple of hotels along the beach walk. No sign of the Murray party. Oh well. Yachts shimmered in the middle distance, all illuminated for night cruising. Private beach bars spread their umbrellas; searchlights pillared the warm air above Hotel Martinez. In three days of fevered ruminating, I hadn’t thought of a single actual question for Murray. Access and aura had put a spell on me. I could finally admit that I’d been living a rookie’s fairy tale. I wasn’t a star, or a reporter to the stars, but I wasn’t about to take pictures of the vacant red carpet either. My place was in between. I was a movie critic with a hot tip on how to finesse the last-minute line at Cannes and 11 days in the dead center of world cinema under my belt that I will be thinking about all year. The next morning, I saw another film, swam in the bay (for research), hightailed it to the train station with salt still in my hair, and bid the fortress goodbye. v
