We were loaded down with bags, and decided on the spur that shelling out 40 euros for a water-taxi to our rental (2290 Fondamente de L’Arzere) might not be a bad idea. Our landlady had told us, I mean, that it would cost 40 euros, but she was wrong. The thugs running the water taxi service told us (a) the price is 60 euros and (b) they would only drop us off at the San Basilio vaporetto stop. It was all I could do to restrain myself from taking a poke. We refused and humped it over on foot. Not easy when you’re lugging all that weight, but I felt good for not submitting. Hundreds of baaahing tourists go along with this extortion every day but not people of character and backbone.

Whether or not Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s Loveless wins the Palme d’Or at the close of tonight’s Cannes Film Festival award ceremony, I’ll always have this gentle moment, which happened at the start of last weekend’s interview with the renowned Russian director. Tatyana, aka “SRO”, is a huge fan of Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan and Elena, and had given me a letter to show to him. I did so and then, in the manner of a typical Hollywood Foreign Press member, asked Zvyagintsev to please reply into my digital recorder. Here’s what he said.

Loveless director Andrey Zvyantsev during last

Rough, abbreviated translation: “Tatyana…thank you so much for your subtle and profound perception of art in general. I feel lucky you watched my films. The despair, hopelessness, desperation, reality and profound tragedy that you felt in the Loveless trailer…is exactly what I wanted to express in my film. You said you felt goosebumps when you watched the trailer. I promise you this will continue when you see the actual film. I wish you all the best and hope to meet you in real life some day.”

gentle moment

Patrick Read Johnson‘s 5-25-77, a flawed nostalgia flick that was shot 13 years ago (actually between ’04 and ’06) but has never been released, screened in 32 theaters last Thursday night to honor the 40th anniversary of the opening of Star Wars. It will likely stream on Filmio before the end of the year, I’m told. A friend who caught a screening at the Laemmle Wilshire shares the following:

“It’s a sweet film, and I obviously respect Johnson’s passion and perseverance. Is it unwatchable? No. But it definitely feels amateurish at times. Like a clever home movie. The Star Wars thing is really only half the movie but the point is that Star Wars could be a stand-in for anything. Whatever you’re passionate about and makes you obsess. Ultimately, the story just isn’t there though. I enjoyed myself [as far as it went], and admire the film as a labor of love, but you didn’t miss anything.”

From a director-screenwriter friend: “Well past the expiration date, just like Kyle Newman‘s Fanboys. Rob Burnett‘s Free Enterprise already nailed this culture. A friend pointed out how the 5-25-77 protagonist’s mother pours through American Cinematographer calling people in Hollywood to get her son a job. But it should’ve been him doing the calling. Too passive a character. That’s the real problem.”

The Sgt. Pepper 50th anniversary cash grab has begun. The actual anniversary is on June 3rd, which was the actual day of release in ’67. The remixed album is available on iTunes, and the six-disc CD package is being delivered to suckers as we speak. My cynical cup runneth over, and yet somehow this instrumental, vocal-free version of “She’s Leaving Home” got to me early this morning. The absence of Paul McCartney‘s vocal track brings Mike Leander‘s instrumentation to the fore, etc. You can say “aaahh, fuck all that and especially fuck the sentimentalists for this relentless Pepper shit,” but this is very nicely done. Really.

The first Allman Brothers album hit on 11.4.69, and right away you had to give it up for vocalist and keyboard player Gregg Allman, who at age 22 had a beautiful bluesy, achey, gin-guzzly, gravel-gut voice that made him sound like some 48 year-old, self-abusing guy who’d lived through more than his share of hard times. That voice carried him for the rest of Allman’s life, and peace be to his soul for that. For that voice, along with brother Duane’s inspired guitar playing and the churning, pumping sound of the band itself, gave birth to Southern rock. As it must to all men death came yesterday to Greg Allman. He might have lived another 15 or 20 years had it not been for years and years of alcohol abuse, which of course led to liver cancer. All party animals pay the price in the end. But if the final measure is “quality, not quantity,” Gregg Allman lived a rich, abundant, at times ecstatic life. Cheers, respect, condolences, salute.

It’s time to once again bid farewell to the Cannes Film Festival and, of course, the city itself. It breaks my heart that I’ll be missing Roman Polanski‘s Based On A True Story, which screens at 8:30 am. But I made a decision to hit the road by 8 am, and I’m sticking to that.

Yesterday nearly every Cannes critic went apeshit over Benny and Josh Safdie‘s Good Time, a visceral, high-crank crime drama about a couple of low-life, bank-robbing brothers, Robert Pattinson‘s Connie and Benny Safdie‘s Nick, running around Queens. Nick is basically Lenny from Of Mice and Men, and right away I was going “oh, Jesus, I have to hang out with some stammering…I’m sorry, challenged guy for the next 100 minutes? This guy can’t put two sentences together without sweating from the mental strain.” Then it turned I didn’t have to — fine. But I was definitely stuck with Pattinson’s Connie, whose brain cell count obviously is only slightly higher than his brother’s.

The Safdie brothers know how to whip action into a lather and keep the kettle boiling, and there’s no doubt that Good Time felt like the punchiest and craziest film to play during the festival, which is why so many critics, feeling underwhelmed by a relatively weak lineup, responded with such fervor. But I can’t abide stupidity, and after 40 minutes of watching these simpletons hold up a bank and run around and ruthlessly use people to duck the heat I was praying that at least one of them would get shot or arrested. I can roll with scumbags and sociopaths, but I need a little something I can relate to or identify with. If the repulsion factor is too strong, I check out. And that’s what I did in this instance. And good riddance.

I’m sorry but I have to catch an 11:30 am bus to Nice Airport to rent a car and meet the SRO. Given this commitment, I felt it was more important to file what I could this morning rather than attend the 8:30 am of Fatih Akin‘s In The Fade, which I can see this evening at 8 pm if it’s really all that good. I can also catch Francois Ozon‘s L’amant double, which I’ve been told is somewhat similar to Swimming Pool, this evening at 7 pm. Jacqueline Bisset, Marine Vacth and Jeremie Renier costar. If that falls away there’s also a Patty Cakes screening at 7 pm. This is my tenth day of this festival, and the eleventh if you count the 5.16 train trip from Paris + the La Pizza journo gathering. I’d be lying if I said I’m not feeling an urge to disengage.

Cannes-to-Nice Airport bus schedule, departure times.

On behalf of Sony Classics honchos Michael Barker and Tom Bernard, publicist Jeff Hill invited top-dog Cannes journos to a Thursday luncheon at Silencio (5 rue des Belges) honoring Brigsby Bear. Star-cowriter Kyle Mooney, director Dave McCary, costar Greg Kinnear, cowriter Kevin Costello and costar Kate Lyn Sheil were the headliners. Incidentally: I’ve been told by Loveless music composer Evgueni Galperine to visit Club Silencio in Paris (142 Rue Montmartre) — open since ’11, designed by David Lynch.

I didn’t come to the Cote d’Azur with any expectation of becoming a Brigsby Bear convert, but converted I now am. Last night I saw this gently comic tribute to geeky childhood obsessions at the Espace Miramar, and as much as I tend to resist if not despise this kind of thing Brigsby Bear has an emotional scheme and even a theology that adds up in the end. It didn’t make me overjoyed, but I felt genuine respect.

For this is a little film, made by three childhood pals (director Dave McCary, co-writer and star Kyle Mooney, co-writer Kevin Costello), that really believes in its own alchemy, and particularly in dorkiness, hip-pocket filmmaking, piles of VHS tapes, geek dreams and deliriously cheesy visual effects.

Brigsby Bear develops its own realm and attitude, but influence-wise is basically a mixture of Room, Michael Gondry‘s Be Kind Rewind, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and the twee sensibility of Wes Anderson (and particularly that of Moonrise Kingdom).

Sony Classics is opening Brigsby Bear stateside on 7.28. The costars are Mark Hamill, Claire Danes, Greg Kinnear, Andy Samberg, Matt Walsh, Michaela Watkins and SNL‘s Beck Bennett (i.e., Vladimir Putin).

Do I have to fucking recite the plot? Mooney’s James was kidnapped as an infant by a pair of creative-imaginative weirdo shut-ins (Hamill, Jane Adams). They raised him according to their own insular reality while diverting or brainwashing him with home-crafted episodes of “Brigsby Bear”, a kindly Smokey the Bear-type character invented by Hamill. At the tender age of 30 (older?), James is rescued by a Detective Vogel (Kinnear) and reunited with his real parents (Walsh, Watkins). He tries to adapt himself to the real world, but when he discovers that YouTube-y films can be made by anyone and be about anything, he decides to make a Brigsby Bear feature. Better to recreate what matters to him most in terms of core emotional values than adapt to the pitfalls of 21st Century normality.