Cannes ‘08: Pete Hammond’s Notes on a Season: Charlie Kaufman, Walter Salles films in hunt for distribution as Cannes heats up
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Top executives for all or most of the major specialty distribution companies were up bright and early today (Saturday) in Cannes.
Many hit the first 8:30 a.m. press screening of director Walter Salles’ much-awaited competition entry, ‘Linha de Passe,’ a return to his Brazilian roots in the searing story of four brothers trying to make their way in the tough city of Sao Paulo.
Salles, whose previous films include the Oscar-nominated ‘Central Station’ and much acclaimed ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’ (an Oscar winner for best song), is at the top of his game and clearly in his comfort zone with his latest. A couple of studio execs we talked to afterward were impressed but not playing their hand as U.S. rights are still up for grabs as of this writing.
In a more exclusive setting, the same group of execs were later seen rushing down the Rue D’Antibes to catch a 2 p.m. invitation-only hush-hush screening of Charlie Kaufman‘s competition entry, ‘Synecdoche, New York’ at the Olympia Theatre.
Kaufman’s hotly anticipated directorial debut -- he’s already an Oscar-winning writer (‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,’ ‘Being John Malkovich’ -- is one of the more attractive potential buys for distributors at this Cannes.
The problem for the new film’s sellers, Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, is that it isn’t being premiered until Friday the 23rd and the first press screening won’t be until that morning.
Most of the top American buyers will be out of Cannes by then, so this screening has been set up to get the ball rolling.
Whether it makes a sale before its big debut on Friday is anyone’s guess as it promises to be another quirky Kaufman comedy -- here, Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a Schenectady, N.Y., theater director who creates an indoor mockup of the city outside. Or something like that. The great supporting cast includes Samantha Morton, Dianne Wiest, Michelle Williams, Catherine Keener and Emily Watson.
With a pedigree like that, ‘Synecdoche, New York’ sounds like a dream pickup for the Fox Searchlights, LionsGates, Focuses, Weinsteins, Overtures, Vantages and just about anyone else still in the indie business.
Expect word on the street about the film to start spreading quickly, as a screening in Cannes nearly a week ahead of a competition debut that’s also up for sale is a highly unusual -- and gutsy -- move.
But one thing is for certain. Don’t expect either ‘Linha de Passe’ or ‘Synecdoche, New York’ to sell on the commercial appeal of the current titles.
-- Pete Hammond