By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 18, 2007

CANNES, France, May 17

For his art, Jerry Seinfeld took the elevator to the top of the Carlton hotel on Thursday noon, donned a fuzzy yellow-and-black bee costume, was affixed by highly trained professionals to a series of wires and cables, and then, with great ceremony and to sustained applause, was thrown off the roof.

And down he went, like a high lob of a giant tennis ball with antennae, wiggling his legs and waving his hands as he descended from eight stories, across the fabled boulevard called the Croisette and over the sea, where he alighted dockside before a huge poster for "Bee Movie," his own little honey pot, the animated DreamWorks film that he wrote, produced and stars in, as the voice of Barry B. Benson, the nebbishy rebel from New Hive City. The film opens this fall.

"What I hate is any kind of movie promotion that smacks of desperation," Seinfeld deadpanned before his great leap. Below, Chris Rock, who performs the voice of a blood-crazy mosquito in the film, asked him, "Jerry, what are you doing?" And Seinfeld answered, "I'm selling the movie!" Rock told him that "most people just go on talk shows."

The stunt was the worst-kept secret at the Cannes Film Festival as hundreds of reporters and photographers gathered for the flight of the bumbling bee. It was dumb and it was fun and it displayed a certain genius. Jeffrey Katzenberg, the co-founder of DreamWorks, later confessed the studio had been planning the aerial performance for a year, explaining that it needed the permission of local authorities and insurance underwriters, "and, of course, Jerry's wife." (Two nights earlier, they practiced the stunt with Seinfeld at 4 in the morning.)

The annual 10-day film festival here may be a celebration of art and international cinema, but it is foremost a huckster's paradise, and the Cannes stunt is a well-worn gimmick as the studios and stars push and shove themselves into the spotlights provided by 4,000 media representatives.

There is a long history to this stuff. In 1954, the paparazzi went nuts when B-movie actress Simone Silva removed her top for Robert Mitchum. In 1978, producer Ilya Salkind had a squadron of biplanes buzz the city to promote Christopher Reeve in "Superman." The year before that, Mr. Universe, a.k.a. the current governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, oiled up his pecs and flexed on the beach in a Speedo to promote the documentary "Pumping Iron." In 2004, Angelina Jolie, Jack Black and Will Smith rode around on an inflatable shark raft to pimp "Shark Tale." Last year, there was Borat in the thong thing. This week there will be more antics -- Jessica Simpson on the Budweiser yacht, the cast of "Entourage" in town to film a segment for the HBO series. Apparently, just showing your film is for the rubes.

As Rock explained it, "They don't pay you to do movies, they pay you to sell them." The stand-up comedian and actor guessed that he spent five days doing voice work for "Bee Movie" but will spend weeks and weeks marketing it.

DreamWorks put on a show, literally. In the morning, it filled an auditorium with the media and screened about 30 minutes of "Bee Movie," some of the animation still rough and unfinished. Katzenberg stiffly read from some dull notes, but Seinfeld owned the room, introducing clips and explaining that he couldn't let an anti-bee movie like "The Swarm" be the last word on nature's most diligent pollinators. No, actually, he was having dinner with director Steven Spielberg when he joked, "Wouldn't it be funny to make movie about bees and call it 'Bee Movie'?" Spielberg said, wow, that is a great idea, Jerry, and from the table, he called Katzenberg. That was four years and millions of dollars ago. (No price tag has been announced for "Bee Movie," but DreamWorks' recent "Flushed Away" cost an estimated $150 million.)

In the film, Barry B. Benson is a recent college graduate, whose parents hope he'll settle down and marry a nice "beeish" girl. Bees do one job and one job only their whole lives, working for Honex making honey -- but, alas, Barry is a dreamer. On a pollen run from the hive, he is saved by a bugaphilic florist (Renee Zellweger), breaking a major bee law by speaking to her. He then discovers that humans are stealing honey, and so, naturally, he sues and wins. (People, it's a cartoon. With cameos from Oprah, Larry King, Sting and Ray Liotta.)

The media just plunged their proboscises into this and sucked. During a Q&A, one reporter said, "The question is whether this movie is to be or not to be." Groans. Seinfeld said, "Yeah, we tried that joke, too, and got about the same reaction." Not knowing when to quit, another journalist asked, "Will there be a C movie and a D movie?" More groans. Seinfeld said, "Let us handle the humor, okay?" Finally. Seriously. Someone asked if, in preparing for the role, did he "live as a bee?" Seinfeld: "What's going on in this room?"

On the way out, everyone was offered a yellow "Bee Movie" swag bag, worth about 50 cents, which the press snapped up like life preservers on the Titanic. Then the pack decamped from the theater to watch Seinfeld fly from the hotel rooftop. Then they were fed from down-market steel chafing dishes filled with some kind of spaghetti with meat flecks. We asked the film's co-director, Steve Hickner, if the marketing push for "Bee Movie" will continue on in high gear. He waved his arm around at the paparazzi and press gang chowing down and said, "This is just the beginning."

Afterward, Seinfeld (who swapped the bee suit for a denim shirt), Rock and Katzenberg stopped by some of the tables for a chat. Katzenberg said that there are really two Cannes. The elegant one, with the Red Stairs and the Palme d'Or, which, along with the Academy Awards, are the most prestigious events in the cinema calendar. But there is the other Cannes, "the place for showmanship," he said. For biplanes and shark boats and flying Seinfelds. Katzenberg suggested that while Seinfeld is a household name in the United States, he may be less known abroad. But not now, he said, not after he flew. Noted Katzenberg: Cannes "is an opportunity to introduce to the world media your films; you use this as a gathering place."

For his part, Seinfeld said he was creatively invigorated by the process of writing and making an animated movie, because anything he could imagine, the animators could create. It's his first time directing a feature film and he's still fiddling with the unfinished movie, playing with the jokes, the transitions. "One week out" from release, he said, "you can still add a new line and they'll just change the lips." He said (again) that he won't return to TV, because "the ride I had, it was the ultimate ride," a show he did his way, on his own terms, that was successful critically, financially and with the public.

"I'm not going to spend my life chasing that," he said. "I'm 53 years old. My second act is my family." He seems infinitely sane for someone who just jumped off a building. (And he did it twice.)