All the World Disappears on This Stage

Veterans of the Cannes International Film Festival like to talk about how cut off it is from the rest of the planet.

“India just detonated not one, not two, but three atomic bombs. But does anybody here care?” one studio acquisitions executive said the other day. No one within earshot appeared to.

Similarly, the news of Frank Sinatra’s death did not dominate discussion here as it did in other parts of the world. Upon hearing of it, people expressed regret. But without a direct movie tie-in, the loss did not hold people’s attention for long.

“When you’re in Cannes, you forget the day and what time it is,” said Anne Lara, a Paris-based press manager who works for Columbia TriStar Films and is attending her 10th festival. “Then you talk to a family member and hear about the massacre in Algeria and you say, ‘Oh!’ And then you go back to your cocoon. We are in another world.”

Which may partly excuse the reaction of one festival-goer when she first spied United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan. As Annan, who presided over the festival’s opening ceremony, stressed the importance of protecting human rights, this woman focused on more superficial concerns.

“He looks just like Morgan Freeman,” she said.

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John Travolta, in town to promote the Mike Nichols film “Primary Colors,” revealed that he recently received a compliment from President Clinton: The commander in chief asked the actor, whose character in the film is modeled on Clinton, to appear at his side at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

“I was invited to come . . . as the president and to do a speech with him,” said Travolta, who said he was tempted to accept. “I was very close to hopping on the plane and going. But [it takes] an hour and a half to get in gray hair and I’d have had to get fat again for a moment.”

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If you’re famous and in Cannes, chances are you’re staying at the Hotel du Cap (Travolta, Mick Jagger and Kate Moss are among the celebs there this year, not to mention Sony studio chief John Calley, Universal Pictures Chairman Casey Silver and indie super-agent Cassian Elwes of William Morris).

No matter where you’re staying, if you’re famous and thirsty chances are you’ll end up at the hotel’s elegant bar. Thanks to Miramax co-Chairman Harvey Weinstein, who began holding court there a few years ago, the bar has become the official A-list after-hours spot. The drink of choice: Bellinis, a mixture of peach juice and champagne. Price: 150 francs apiece, or about $25.

The other night, Nichols, Travolta and his wife--actress Kelly Preston--and co-star Emma Thompson were there, as was Mira Sorvino, who stars in director Paul Auster’s new film “Lulu on the Bridge.” Sorvino brought her mother, she said, “to show her the quintessential Cannes.”

The place has been known to get raucous, like the year Miramax brought “Pulp Fiction” to Cannes. “Bruce Willis brought down a boombox and we all danced till 5 a.m.,” said Preston. “I heard that on Harvey’s bill were 850 Bellinis because everyone said, ‘Charge it to my friend Harvey.’ ”

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Anything for attention: Ann Boehlke, the producer and star of “The Scottish Tale,” a comedy loosely based on “Macbeth” that is seeking distribution here, strolled along the Croissette wearing what she claimed is the world’s longest wedding train. Boehlke said the 417-foot, 11-inch train, which she got married in and which appears in her film, is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records and “is longer than Godzilla’s tail.”

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Anything for an invitation: Stephen Nemeth, a producer of Terry Gilliam’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” received this plea Friday from a journalist seeking to be admitted to the film’s midnight bash: “If you could shoehorn me into the ‘Fear and Loathing’ party, I’d start a religion in your name.”

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B-movie king Lloyd Kaufman, co-founder of the 25-year-old New York-based guerrilla film studio Troma, introduced one of his newest discoveries here Friday: India Allen Rose, an Amazon-like filmmaker whom Kaufman described as “probably the first Playboy centerfold of the millennium to become a producer.”

Rose, who was Playmate of the Year in 1988, is here promoting “The Chosen One: Legend of the Raven,” a Troma Team release starring “Baywatch” star Carmen Electra. Speaking at a panel on “Auteurism in the Trenches,” Rose--who recently sold her tale of a female superhero to Blockbuster for video release--revealed her casting secrets.

“If I’m looking for a woman, she doesn’t necessarily have to be a great actress, but she has to have charisma,” she said. “For men, I look for what I like: dark hair, blue eyes, big chest. It’s the reverse of the casting couch with me.”

Kaufman, meanwhile, who discovered Trey Parker and Matt Stone (the creators of the animated cable hit “South Park”) and who claims to be the first to reject Madonna for a part, told the panel his next projects include “Terror Firmer,” a serial-killing movie with “a Frank Capra feel to it,” and “Shlock and Shlockability,” Troma’s tribute to Jane Austen.

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Actor Adam Goldberg, a familiar face in films (“Dazed and Confused” and “Higher Learning”) and TV shows (“Relativity” and “Friends”), is here to draw attention to “Scotch and Milk,” a film he wrote and directed.

The film premiered at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival, but Goldberg brought it to Cannes, he said, because “it’s more European in tone.” Which means? “It’s black-and-white and really slow.”

While the studios are shelling out tens of thousands of dollars to rent billboard space to publicize their films on the sides of buildings, Goldberg is armed only with a stack of posters and some glue.

“We plan to plaster over the ‘Armageddon’ signs,” he said. Then, remembering how huge those billboards are, he added: “Maybe we’ll just cover over the ‘A.’ ”