France Cannes

La Croisette hotels such as Le Grand, J.W. Marriott, Carlton and Grand Hyatt Martinez all have their private beaches. Sculpted bodies, a few even without surgery, lie poleaxed on white-cushioned lanais chairs atop man-made wooden jetties 50 meters into the sea. In between the hotels are the brand names of every overpriced luxury clothes and accessory store on a woman’s wish list. Prada. Salvatore Ferragamo. Jimmy Choo. Yves Saint Laurent. Hugo Boss. Ralph Lauren. Every window display is presented like art in the Louvre. Can you justify charging 1,000 euros for a handbag just because it’s backlit?
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I had a dream last night. I was in the bathroom of the Carlton Cannes Hotel and Jack Nicholson came up next to me and took a pee.

You don’t have to dream that here. That can actually happen — in late May, of course. That’s when 30,000 people in the movie biz and 4,000 journalists descend on this Mediterranean beach town and give the world a preview of what they’ll see in the theaters that year. I never covered the Cannes Film Festival. I haven’t written a movie review since a movie lit class my junior year in high school. (I barbecued an awful French film called “Le Bucher,” a, believe it or not, “sympathetic” look at a French serial killer. I got a C-minus. The only good my last review did was show me ways to disembowel my obviously illiterate lit teacher and it gave me a voice for how I’d later cover sports for 40 years.)

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