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At the
Cannes Film Festival, there are tales of cat burglars,
violent street fights, car robberies and even a
pepper-sprayed mogul. But instead of events experienced
on the big screen, they are real-life assaults on
festival goers, who often find themselves pressed to
keep it all very hush-hush.
The
11-day international cinema showcase opening Wednesday
is known for its star-jammed red carpets and black-tie
premieres. Private jets offload the Hollywood elite,
luxury yachts fill the bay, and stars and movie
financiers party until dawn, drawing bandits like moths
to a flame.
“It's a
convention of thieves,” says Tom Luddy, a co-founder of
the Telluride Film Festival. He is speaking from
personal experience, having had his Cannes hotel room
and its safe cleaned out several years ago. “The
pickpockets know it's perfect hunting grounds. They must
come from all over the world.”
“Every
villain who's worth his salt comes,” adds Trevor Wright,
a sales representative at the Swiss-based Omega
Entertainment who was robbed at last year's festival.
“The police told me that (criminals) just come in droves
. . . (that) there's a massive spike in crime” during
the festival.
Because
they often travel with personal body guards, celebrities
visiting Cannes are much harder targets. Those in
attendance not fortunate enough to have their own
security teams are much more likely to be victimized.
Although
one local law enforcement commander says crime during
the festival is actually on the decline, half a dozen
recent victims contend otherwise. Their stories are
largely unique to
Cannes,
which during the rest of the year is a relatively
tranquil resort town. But you don't hear much about the
crime blotter at the Sundance,
Toronto
or Telluride festivals. Some of those who have been
robbed at Cannes say they are encouraged by their hotels
not to publicize their losses.
Emilie
Georges, managing director of French sales company
Memento Films International, believes that the crime
stories are downplayed because there is an effort “to
stifle all sense of any criminal doings during the
festival in order to protect its image.”
While
some of the
Cannes incidents were relatively minor—a stolen purse, a lifted
wallet—several other festival goers endured terrifying
confrontations with intruders breaking into their hotel
rooms in the dark of night.
At last
year's festival, Graham King, the Oscar-winning producer
of The Departed, returned to his villa on the
grounds of the ultra-luxurious Hotel du Cap, the favored
beachfront lodging of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. But
rather than find a maid turning down his sheets, King
discovered burglars in the midst of a break-in. The
thieves fled, but not before blasting King with pepper
spray and grabbing the purse of one of his colleagues as
they ran out. The hotel says it no longer rents King's
villa but declined to further comment.
Nikki
Parker, who heads up international film publicity at the
public relations giant Rogers & Cowan, has been robbed
not once but twice at recent Cannes festivals. In the
first instance, about 10 years ago, a cat burglar
apparently scaled her hotel's walls, climbed through her
third-floor balcony doors and cleaned Parker out while
she was sleeping. Parker had recently visited the bank
to pay the employees of the marketing company she then
ran, and the intruder made off with about $9,000.
Years
later, Parker awoke when an intruder was trying to break
into her first-floor room at Cannes' Sun Riviera hotel.
“I saw this figure at my French door with a mask on,”
Parker says. “He was outside on my balcony, trying to
pick the lock and get into the room. I screamed my head
off, but it didn't deter him. He came in, and we
actually had a fight.”
As she
wrestled with the robber over her purse, Parker wondered
if her possessions were worth her life. “I suddenly
pictured him perhaps having a knife, and I backed down.”
She lost the purse, and the hotel lost a customer.
Producer King, who was Parker's client at the time,
found her a room at the Carlton Hotel, where she
continues to stay, but still asks for a room on a high
floor.
“There's
no other (festival) that I've heard of that has this
problem,” Parker says.
The
manager of the Sun Riviera Hotel, Marie-Pierre Aymard,
who has been at the hotel for the past three months,
says that she's aware of an incident about four years
ago involving a guest (she couldn't say if it was Parker
or not), but that, to her knowledge, nothing nefarious
has happened since. There is also full-time security at
the hotel now.
Francois
Yon, co-founder of the French sales company Films
Distribution, says that the areas closest to one of the
town's fanciest shopping streets and Cannes' famous
beachfront boulevard are out of harm's way.
“Cannes
is less dangerous than it was, thanks to a very strong
police presence, as long as you stay between Rue
d'Antibes and the Croisette,” Yon says. “Beyond the
highway, it is a jungle.”
But even
the fanciest hotels along the Croisette can be
dangerous. Attending the 2001 festival to present
Moulin Rouge, Robin Davids of 20th Century Fox
publicity had her purse (and passport) stolen from
underneath an outdoor restaurant table while she had
lunch at the swank Hotel Martinez. Working for Universal
Pictures in Cannes several years ago, film publicist
Thomas Castañeda (now part of the publicity firm Nadia
Bronson & Associates) lost his possessions when his
Carlton room was burglarized.
Bill
Pence, director of Dartmouth's film school and a
co-founder of the Telluride festival, was queuing up for
a Cannes screening in the early 1990s on the Rue
d'Antibes with his wife, Stella, when he felt a light
touch on his buttocks. “I said, ‘Stella, will you stop
that!’ And she said, ‘I'm not touching you.’” A
pickpocket was, and Pence's wallet was gone.
A few
days before the 2000 festival commenced, the Pences
rented a car at the Nice airport to visit the French
Riviera on their way to the festival. While the couple
paused at a stop sign, thieves opened the unlocked
trunk, grabbed Stella's backpack and took off on a
motorcycle—with the Pences' passports and “lots of
money,” Bill Pence says.
A.O.
Scott, a film critic for The New York Times, experienced
a similarly distressing incident at the same hotel
during the 2004 festival. Late one night, Scott went to
bed around
4 a.m., leaving his window open “just a crack.” When he awoke in
the morning, Scott discovered that someone had entered
his room and made off with his wallet and laptop
computer. “I slept through it,” he says. “But what would
have happened had I woken up? That was what really
freaked me out.”
He says
the hotel argued he wasn't actually robbed, refusing to
call the police. “The managers could not have been less
sympathetic,” says Scott, who hasn't stayed at the
Sofitel since. “I now stay a block away from the police
station, but I don't keep the windows open.” The Sofitel
declined to comment.
John
Anderson, a freelance reviewer for The Washington Post,
says proximity to law enforcement doesn't necessarily
guarantee safety. Returning from a black-tie Cannes
benefit a few years ago, Anderson and critic Howard
Feinstein ended up in a fistfight with a stranger after
Feinstein was cold-cocked near a police station. “The
guy was really deranged and he was screaming in French
so I had no idea what he was talking about,” Anderson
says.
Even
though the station was nearby, “it must have taken the
cops 20 minutes to come out,” he says. “They let us go
without asking us any questions and seemed chummy enough
with (the assailant). There was no follow-up.”
Gilbert
Morandi, the chief commissioner of police in Cannes,
says “there have been different incidents” but “things
have gotten much better because we have more officers
who are deployed at different times of day and we are
better coordinated. In the past two or three years we
have really adapted to the issue.”
Video
surveillance cameras have been added in the streets
surrounding the Palais des Festivals, and a team of
municipal police monitors a wall of screens around the
clock, sending officers out when something suspicious
arises.
John
Gentzbourger, a retired
Cognac
distributor who's a Cannes resident, says the new mayor,
Bernard Brochand, has helped increase area security.
“There
have always been pickpockets but that's true in all big
events,” Gentzbourger says. “There are fewer muggings,
and really, all important stars have their own security.
What's more, the festival takes place in a confined
space which is easy to watch over. Then again, if
ostentatious people walk around with a Rolex watch and a
chinchilla coat,” they are an easy target.
But
Vincent Maraval, co-head of France's film finance, sales
and distributor company Wild Bunch, says, “I don't find
Cannes dangerous enough. It's a bit boring.”
(Freelancer Nancy Tartaglione-Vialatte contributed to
this report from Paris.) |
