Afternoon of the Fawn
The Press Corps Here Can Teach D.C.'s a Thing or Two

By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 26, 2007

CANNES, France Let's hear it for the international entertainment press corps, the hardest-working professionals at Cannes (seriously), all that writing and blogging and videotaping and interviewing and crashing the buffet line. You have wine with lunch and try to work. Harder than it looks. Seriously, the Washington press corps has something to learn from my Cannes colleagues.

Fashion tip? Some of the reporters here wear short shorts and high heels. Their questions get answered. Also, today we spotted a guy with a press credential around his neck, and his shirt completely unbuttoned, like Fabio. And it worked for him. Henri Behar, the French journalist and film critic who emcees the official news conferences, favors two earrings, scarves and the occasional headband. And you know what? He rules. Funny, informed, and as fast on his feet as a cobra if a cobra had feet.

And wouldn't it be nice if at news conferences, you reporters in Washington could begin by first telling Hillary or Rudy or Mitt (it's customary to address talent by their first names) how much you admire their work?

Hacks back home: Try it! Here's an example: "Barack, loved the books. Just loved them. That scene where you go back to Kenya . . . on a journey of self-discovery . . . " Here reporter clutches chest and sighs. "Now, we're seeing your health care proposals. They're amazing. Simply amazing." Here all the reporters in the room nod their heads and mouth the word amazing. "So what I'm wondering is, how do you do it?"

Don't believe it? Here's an actual question from the news conference with director Julian Schnabel for his film "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly." Question: "Julian, the film is stunning. So good. I just congratulate you. The images are so amazing, so riveting . . . "

Once you get used to it, it does get easier.

* * *

Speaking of Julian Schnabel: We're interviewing him at a lunchtime "round table" poolside at the Hotel Martinez and he is wearing purple pajamas. Not pajama -like. Pajamas. They are most excellent silk top-and-bottom PJs, designed, we learn, by his wife, actress Olatz Lopez Garmendia, who also stars in Schnabel's aforementioned film, which is based on a memoir by Jean-Dominique Bauby. At Cannes, an artist can wear sleepwear, day or night. If he's a true auteur, and Schnabel is an auteur-auteur, not only a film director ("Basquiat," "Before Night Falls") but a painter whose work can sell for $400,000 a pop.

The Bauby book, published in 1997, was an international bestseller. Bauby was the successful editor of Elle France magazine, with a wife, three children, a mistress and all the trappings of a French life well-lived. Then he had a stroke and suffered from a rare and horrifying medical condition, called "locked-in syndrome." His brain was fine. But his body was completely paralyzed, with the exception of his left eyelid. With the help of dedicated therapists and assistants, Bauby dictated his entire book by blinking once for yes, two for no, one letter at a time. That is amazing. In the film, he originally was to be played by Johnny Depp, but Depp was not available, Schnabel says, "because he was off doing his pirate movies." Instead, Bauby is portrayed by the wonderful French actor Mathieu Amalric.

"I needed to make this movie," Schnabel says. "Death is a big subject for me." He says that only when Bauby was sick -- when he was trapped by his illness -- could Bauby become the person he was destined to be. "It's not really a movie, this is a self-help device," Schnabel says, "that can help you handle your own death."

This is a very Cannes experience. One minute, we're thinking what gives with the outfit, then we're contemplating -- on a sunny patio by the sea -- the ending credits of our own little personal movie.

* * *

You know who else works their skinnier bums off at Cannes? The publicists. God bless 'em. The press likes to whine like toddlers with an empty juice box about them, but it's a hard job, wrangling directors, actors, and journalists -- when you have them all in the same space for only 54 minutes before they run off to the next Big Press Event, and everybody is running late, and everyone has different needs.

When we finished interviewing Michael Moore, a reporter from Chicago was ready to do his one-on-one. But first.

Moore: "Okay, great, I just have to go to the bathroom."

Publicist: "Just do this interview first?"

Moore: "What?"

Publicist: "Can it wait?"

Moore: "Can you believe what you just said?"

Publicist realizes she just asked the Oscar-winning director to . . . hold it.

Moore: "I mean, I don't care. It's just me. But can you believe you just said that in front of other people? A man needs to go to the toilet and it's 'wait'? What if I were a woman?"

Chicago reporter: "Seriously, I can wait. No problem. I just need 10 minutes. Go. Really. Please."

But Moore holds it. He's a pro. And the publicist? She's a pro, too. Somebody has to make these trains run on time. We make a joke that Moore should be outfitted in those special NASA diapers. It is an idea that may catch on.