Film Festival

I wrote this post yesterday. Unfortunately blogspot was freaking out on me and wouldn't let me post until now.
____

Today I got the lay of the land in Cannes. I went with 2 other kids from our program to check out the Film Festival. It was a strange experience, from the never ending bus ride there to the conflicting instructions we received about how to get invitations to screenings. In the end we figured it out and are planning to spend all day there tomorrow.

First the bus ride:

Should have known it would be interesting, since when we got to the stop we found a crazy man ranting at someone for asking him if he was American. Since he was loud and definitely had the accent, I couldn’t understand why the guy was all worked up about it. He even said he was from New York. Apparently there’s a big difference between asking whether someone is American or “an English-speaking resident of the United States.” Who knew?

Since everyone and their mothers were on their way to Cannes, the bus filled up pretty fast. Fortunately Nice was the very first stop, so we all got seats. Unfortunately people ended up packed around us like sardines. This teenager standing in the aisle beside me kept whipping her hair in my face. For a while there was also a woman resting her butt against my leg. For some reason, my friends and I were all under the impression that the bus ride was only an hour, but it turned out to be closer to 2. That’s a lot of time supporting a grown woman’s rump on your knee.

Finally we got there. I’m so thankful to have the pass…seriously. Without it, you can’t see anything except for the beach screening at night. We spent the afternoon running around getting schedules and figuring out how the tickets and invitations work. Tomorrow’s going to be a full day. We’re kicking it off with The Slut, followed by a picnic lunch and a couple other films that we should be guaranteed admission to. Then we’ll scope out the ticket booth, which is where they give out leftover invitations for the big movies. None of those are guaranteed, so we really don’t know what we’ll end up with. Basically it sounds like you have to just go by the booth every hour or two and pester them about what tickets they have at the moment.

I would hate that job. 

Unfortunately I didn’t see Johnny Depp or Robert DeNiro. Maybe tomorrow.