Four or five days ago I had a late morning chat with Seduced and Abandoned director James Toback in his Carlton hotel room. It went on for 40-something minutes, and was candid and hilarious and insightful as usual. Toabck is always on. He is one of the friendliest, funniest and most intellectually open-to-anything guys I’ve ever known in my life. Listen to this — there’s just no one better at shooting the worldly, been-through-it-all-and-I’m-still-chuckling shit about anything and everything. Jim was just waking up as I came in (he had had trouble sleeping), and then he ordered breakfast. But every minute was choice.

Seduced and Abandoned director James Toback

The big Cannes Film Festival award ceremony happens tonight. Steven Spielberg and his fellow jurors are deliberating the winners as we speak at some hillside retreat. I’m predicting a Palme d’or win for either Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Inside Llewyn Davis or, less likely, Paolo Sorrentino‘s The Great Beauty or Asghar Farhadi‘s The Past. If I was on the jury I’d want to think outside the box and ignore the festival’s bizarre decision to exclude J.C. Chandor‘s All Is Lost from competition (because it’s “too commercial”) and give it some sort of special commendation.

I don’t have any special hunches about which films will win the Grand Prix or the Jury Prize (Like Father, Like Son or The Great Beauty?) except that I know…okay, I strongly suspect that James Gray‘s The Immigrant won’t win anything — it’s just not good enough and Marion Cotillard‘s sensitive-watery-eyes performance could have been phoned in. It’s a boilerplate Cotillard thing — look at how I’m subtly trembling and feeling the pain and the weight of the world behind my beautiful eyes! She was much more compelling last year as a legless women in Jacques Audiard‘s Rust and Bone.

I’ve been coming to Paris in late May (i.e, post-Cannes) off and on for a good 10 or 12 years, and it’s never felt this chilly. Why does it feel like effing mid-October or mid-March? Last night I had to wear a sweater, a scarf and an extra T-shirt for warmth. Two years ago at this time it was a good 15 or 20 degrees warmer. Summery weather, T-shirts, warm all over, gentle balmy evenings. It’s surreal to be experiencing mid-fall or late-winter temperatures.

I’m staying in a nice little third-floor studio flat at 12 rue Popincourt, six or seven blocks northeast of Place Bastille and a block and a half southwest of Place Voltaire. Storied, flavorful, green gardens, inside a gated community. A great neighborhood. Bars and cafes galore, every kind of restaurant, a laundromat, wise guys, pretty girls in groups of three and four. Great wifi in the apartment and a 15″ TV, if that.

I’m sitting in an EasyJet lounge at Nice Airport, waiting for a 7pm flight to Paris. And to borrow a Tom Cruise line from Sydney Pollack‘s The Firm, I feel like I’ve been anally ravaged by an elephant.

I’ve just paid luggage fees to EasyJet to the tune of 182 euros, and that’s after pre-paying baggage fees online when I first bought my Nice-to-Paris Orly ticket. I have two modest-sized bags that weighed too much so I had to pay for the overage — 14 euros per kilo or 82 euros. And then they made me go back and pay for my carry-on bag, which cost another 100 euros. Repeating: 100 euros for a carry-on bag weighing 10 pounds!

I tweeted some reactions to Roman Polanski‘s Venus In Fur, which we all saw this morning, as I sat in the Salle de Presse waiting for Polanski, costars Emmanuelle Seigner and Mathieu Almaric, composer Alexandre Desplat and the Venus producers to walk in and answer questions. I shot some half=decent video but I haven’t loaded it yet. But I had to split early in order to pack for the airport, which I’ve now done. My bus leaves in about an hour.

Three days ago I was given a red-carpet, black-tie ticket to J.C. Chandor‘s All Is Lost. Just after I walked through the gauntlet I texted the following to a friend: “Just climbed the red-carpet stairs in a tux and a 40 euro bow tie, and now mingling with the swells. There was something bracing about walking past 150 photographers on either side down below, and then reaching the top of the stairs and looking down. Men of power and some consequence, pretty women in beautiful silky gowns. All the concentrated glamour of the world…right here, this place, right now. Pleasing.”

Earlier this afternoon I took part in a Carlton Hotel round-table chat with Nebraska costars Bruce Dern, Will Forte and June Squibb. Dern was the life of the party, going on about everyone and everything, a totally crackerjack raconteur telling the greatest stories about John Wayne, Alexander Payne, Walter Hill, etc. Sharp as a tack and a naturally affable charmer. The Cowboys, The Driver, Drive He Said, Castle Keep, The Laughing Policeman…the publicist had to drag him out of the room.

Nebraska costar and likely Best Supporting Actor contender Bruce Dern, especially if Dern works the circuit. The guy’s a natural and he’s been humping it since the mid ’60s…almost 50 years.

Nebraska costar Will Forte — Friday, 5.24, Carlton Hotel, 2:55 pm.

Nebraska costar June Squibb.

James Gray‘s The Immigrant is a respectably authentic period drama, set in 1921 Manhattan, about a beautiful Polish immigrant named Ewa (Marion Cotillard) and her struggle to survive the cruel, slimy exploitations of Bruno (Joaquin Phoenix), a pimp who doubles as a low-level theatrical showman. Darius Khondji‘s Godfather, Part II-like photography and the general production values are top of the line, but the pace is slow and the story is a ho-hummer.

Maton Cotillard, star of The Immigrant. of

(l. to. r.) Jeremy Renner, director-writer James Gray, Marion Cotillard — Friday, 5.24, 11:15 am.

The Immigrant costar Jeremy Renner.

It’s one thing to doze off during a print or radio interview, but on camera? It’s too blatant — it must be a form of subtle commentary. On some deep-down, perhaps-repressed level Morgan Freeman allowed himself to doze off during this Now You See Me chat because (again, I’m talking about deeply submerged feelings) he thinks the film is basically another negligible programmer and a paycheck job. If he were being interviewed for a major James Cameron or Alfonso Curaon film, do you think he’d allow himself to nod off? Nothing is accidental. Everything we do is intentional self-expression.

(Tip of the hat to Vulture‘s Amanda Dobbins.)