King of Cannes: Madness, Mayhem, and the Movies

by Stephen Walker

Book Overview

Stephen Walker is a neurotic British filmmaker with a mixed track record. His last documentary was a flop. Everyone hated it, and for a while Walker had fantasies of murdering the lot of them. But... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 014100147X
• ISBN13: 9780141001470
• Release Date: May 2001
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Length: 262 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.0" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

LUSTY, OUTRAGEOUS AND THOROUGHLY AMUSING

If you're a film buff with a "Saturday Night Live" kind of humor, King of Cannes is the book for you. This lusty tale of an outrageous wannabe film maker fairly explodes with wisecracks, double entendres, and anatomical references. Related in diary form, these are the angst loaded revelations of Stephen Walker, a British film maker who gives added meaning to neuroses and is obsessed with not only going to but making a splash at the Cannes Film Festival. Walker wants to make it big with a documentary. He attributes this drive to his "mum," a mother who "brought him up in a house of locked doors. The downstairs loo was always locked. If my mother was in the kitchen, she'd lock the door to her bedroom." Well, you get the picture. Just why restricted access to the rooms in his house spawned an interest in documentaries remains unexplained. There is much in King Of Cannes that remains unexplained, but it is often hilarious as Walker bamboozles a backer into investing cash in a proposed film. Walker's intention is to document the experiences of four unknown but ambitious film makers who will stop at nothing to succeed at Cannes. He wants "the most dangerous, the most unhinged, the most daring, the ones who kill their grannies to get their movies made or sold." With no performers, no story and 74 days until Cannes, Walker's quest for inspiration and cast members takes him to the Berlin Film Festival, which he finds as appealing as a brick shopping center and the films shown less than interesting - bizarre but uninteresting. Dublin's Film Festival is also unrewarding, but the pubs are warm and friendly. Walker's road to Cannes is more than rocky, but once there he is surrounded by total lunacy. He participates in meetings that resemble The Mad Hatter's Tea Party, discovers which pavilions have free booze or gratis Ray-Bans, and finds an indescribable cast of characters. There is Zonca, a French director, the "next Truffaut," who takes ten minutes to mount the twenty-two red carpeted steps to the entrance of the Palais as he savors his "orgy of adulation." Of course, there are Brits, such as the creative group who motor to Cannes in a van decorated with a mammoth marijuana leaf. Their hope is to find funding for a film titled "Amsterdam." Another Englishman commandeers a vacant phone booth for his office. An Oxford graduate and film director, Walker lives in London. In reality, he has just completed a documentary on Cannes, "Waiting For Harvey." He writes, "I'm waiting for Harvey Weinstein to buy the rights so I can make the movie of the book of the movie. Who knows? Maybe I'll get to Cannes." If he does, it is hoped that he'll keep a diary.

Hilarious and Insightful

I found this book randomly in my local library, and being fascinated by the film industry I decided to give it a go. So glad I did. Clever and colorful, this book details the logistics and lunacy of aspiring filmakers running the gauntlet that is Cannes. I was inspired and touched by the subjects, awed and entertained by their tenacity and turmoil, and laughing throughout. A great read for anyone even remotely interested in the movie biz

King of the Cannes a gem of a book

This book was fabuously written. It brings together the work and comedy element of the Cannesfilm festival and the characters portrayed within. I laughed all the way through.

Warning: this book is not canned!

A lot of supposedly funny books are tiresome because their authors are trying so hard to be funny, but this book is not one of them. Stephen Walker has written a really funny book because he knows how to put what's funny in front of you and then get out of the way. He has a great sense of timing and an ear for the spoken word but his book isn't just about all the wild stuff that happens during the making of his documentary. Walker is willing to show you himself making a fool of himself, the traditional soul of comedy, but he does more than play the clown. You see the drive of the documentary filmmaker in his need to understand what's going on inside the heads of the filmmakers he's filming. His connection to his filmmaker-subjects is a tilt-a-whirl checkerboard of empathy and distance. The troubles he runs into are funny, awful, pathetic, outrageous, goofy, tragic, stupid, dumb, hilarious. I like Walker because he doesn't force anything. The things he finally doesn't understand are allowed to remain as rough and puzzling as they really are. It's definitely a funny book, a really funny book--because the tears are as real as the laughs. So what I'm saying already is buy the book, Walker should laugh all the way to the bank.

King of Cannes

This is a great book. It accomplishes what it sets out to do: to give the reader a look at the "behind the scenes" happenings of the biggest film festival in the world! The narrative voice is very strong and the dry british wit makes it quite a page-turner! You do laugh out loud...and you just want to keep reading and reading. Another thing that also made this book very interesting, was the fact that it didn't merely focus on the "star-gazing" aspect of the industry, rather it mentions some important personalities in indie cinema and allows the readers to see the difficulties that independent filmakers face -- all this is juxtaposed to the glamorous stars and personalities of Hollywood who attend Cannes and are actually welcomed there (as opposed to our narrator here!)A great read!