With Film in the Can, Film School Grads Are Off to Cannes

Although they are just two hungry young movie makers from Los Angeles, Marni Banack and J.B. Sugar have gotten a taste of what it’s like to bask in the spotlight of the international film world.

For the last two weeks, they’ve made the after-midnight party scene at the exclusive Hotel du Cap, where the only way to pay is cash. They’ve sipped fine French champagne and traded glances with the likes of Harvey Weinstein, George Clooney, Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke.

Banack and Sugar, who are two years out of the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, came to Cannes as a part of a program for up-and-coming filmmakers. They expected to spend much of their time watching movies, and showing their film “John,” the story of a restroom attendant who realizes his profession is fading away.

Since landing on the Riviera, however, Banack and Sugar have mostly skipped the darkened theaters in favor of the sun-splashed Croisette, the beachfront walk where all the big hotels are located.

They’ve wheeled and dealed in the hotel lobbies and schmoozed buyers and distributors on the floor of the Cannes film market. This trip, they say, isn’t really about art. It’s about business.

“You need business to facilitate your art,” said Sugar, 26, who has already founded his own production company, Cubasugar Entertainment.

Sugar, who grew up in Woodland Hills and attended Montclair Prep in the Valley, and Banack, 27, a Toronto transplant to Los Angeles, were awarded a 1999 Student Academy Award for “John.” They say they made the movie because they wanted to focus on a relatively unexplored corner of the working world.

Sugar said he learned his craft largely by going to a lot of movies growing up.

In January, the partners and 20 other emerging filmmakers were selected to screen their work at Cannes under a program sponsored by Eastman Kodak.

Kodak gave each of the participants $1,000 of free film, 2 1/2 weeks of accommodations and carte blanche to attend lectures by distinguished industry veterans and premieres for a slate of international films.

The filmmakers are mostly in their 20s and 30s and a year or two out of film school. Some come prepared to do business; others aren’t aware that Cannes is all about commerce.

“We have students who come with business cards, demo reels, Web sites, and even a student with a CD-ROM of his film that doubled as a business card,” said Michael Kirk, director of Kodak’s emerging filmmaker program. “Others are overwhelmed.”

Sheril D. Antonio, associate dean of New York University’s film and television school, added: “It doesn’t get more serious or market-oriented than this. I think most of the students are shocked.”

The filmmakers themselves concede that it takes some time to adjust to all the hardball marketing. One film company at this year’s festival went as far as to draw publicity beach side by setting a buxom, bikini-clad woman on fire. She survived the stunt unscathed.

Susan Weisshaar, a 34-year-old graduate of Valencia’s California Institute of the Arts, said the entire spectacle of Cannes was foreign to her when she arrived with her experimental, animated film “My Turn” under her arm.

“I was really nervous coming here,” Weisshaar said. “People came up to me before I went and said you have to bring your script, you have to wear a business suit, you have to hustle and fight and claw your way into different parties.”

CalArts graduate Dwight Hwang’s experience at Cannes was equally eye-popping.

“I’m pretty ignorant toward it and shy away from the business end of things. This festival has opened my eyes to the possibilities,” he said.

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Many of the students traveling to Cannes insist the experience will not shake their confidence nor cause them to reevaluate their lifelong goal of being in show business. In fact, many say that Cannes has provided them some new gimmicks, whether it be old-fashioned visibility ploys or new uses for the Internet.

“A lot of emerging filmmakers are reinvigorated by the experience at Cannes,” noted Kirk, who has seen dozens of gawking Cannes newcomers over the program’s three-year history. “It seems tangible to them, and, maybe more importantly, they meet their icons and discover that they are human beings just like them.”

Weisshaar agrees. Living in Southern California, she’s not at all impressed by celebrity, and though she’s found some stars to be standoffish at Cannes, she thinks the best approach is the subtle one.

“I’ve found I can be myself and informal,” Weisshaar said.

Sugar and Banack have become equally comfortable on the French Riviera, basking in the glow of the international star wattage.

“It’s flashbulbs, champagne, partying hard and schmoozing even harder,” Sugar said. “I can get used to this.”