A little Industry Networking 101
They are here to be aggressive but not pushy. They are here to figure out what they want to do and how to do it. They are here to polish their French, perhaps, but mostly to present their eager young selves to people in the industry -- to, you know, network.
They are film students working at the American Pavilion in Cannes, and they are all excited to be here.
“It’s my first time in Cannes,” says Natalie Lopez, a senior at UC Santa Barbara who staffs the hospitality suite’s coffee bar. “But it won’t be my last.”
Lopez isn’t quite sure which aspect of the film industry she wants to work in -- after hearing a presentation by the president of Transpacific, she is thinking maybe pre-production -- but she knows why she applied to be part of the pavilion’s student program.
“Film school is about how to make film, about history and theory,” she says. “This is about how it works.”
“Here I can learn about the industry,” adds Claire Ripsteen, who works alongside Lopez at the coffee bar.
“I can see how producers sell their films, how the marketing works.”
Ripsteen is a junior at Washington University in St. Louis, but her business card reads “production assistant.”
That’s not unusual, says Julie Sisk, director and founder of the pavilion.
“Our students are very aggressive,” she says. “You go to any elite party here, and at least one of them will have managed to get themselves in.”
One industry executive, she adds, told her of a time he was on a yacht and a student swam out “with a script in a Ziploc bag.” Says Sisk, “I don’t know whether to believe that or not, but they are definitely creative about making contacts.”
The American Pavilion is part of the International Village, which is strung along half a mile or so of beach. From virtually every street leading to the Croisette, white-tented tops gleam like an elegant circus. South Africa to Croatia, Canada to the Netherlands, virtually every film-producing country has representatives here, offering information about their cinematic wares as well as a place for countrymen and friends to relax in a string of tented but well-appointed rooms edging the coast.
At the American Pavilion, registered guests (entrance fee is 20 euros) can listen to the Talking Heads and Bruce Springsteen, get copies of the Los Angeles Times and the Hollywood Reporter (but not Variety, which used to be a sponsor but defected to start its own hospitality center), and find people for whom English is a first, and often, only language.
The Americans occupy the largest and best-situated of the pavilion’s thematic rooms -- right in the curve of the beach just behind the Palais -- because, Sisk says, they pay more and were one of the first here.
Sisk has overseen the pavilion since its inception 17 years ago. The student program happened by chance; she needed cheap labor, and a friend suggested using film students from the Paris Center of Critical Studies.
What began with a dozen has now grown to 160 -- 140 film students from around the U.S. as well as 20 culinary students who prepare all the meals served in the pavilion. No mean feat; they can serve up to 600 lunches a day as well as prepare food for a continual lineup of parties thrown by studios and corporate sponsors of the pavilion (including The Times).
On Thursday, they will host 300 at a party for DreamWorks, for “Wallace & Gromit Go to Cannes.”
“The culinary program came about out of desperation,” says Sisk. “We had the film students working the kitchen, and the food was just terrible. We get a mix of professionals -- one year we had the pastry chef from the Venetian -- and students, which works out well.”
American students arrive five days before the festival opens. They pay their own way over as well as a $1,950 fee. They get room and board in exchange for working six hours a day in the pavilion or for one of the sponsors.
“There’s five of us sharing a room,” says Lana Thyfault, a senior from the University of Texas at Austin. “Which is actually good. We all get along, but it forces us to get out early and stay out late.”
Their first few days are spent getting acquainted with Cannes and participating in a variety of round-table discussions with industry people.
Director Stephen Frears is a regular speaker, says Sisk, but many of the filmmakers in town for each year’s festival will also participate.
Last year, Tim Roth and Michael Moore spent time with the students; Moore even had a special student screening of “Fahrenheit 9/11.”
This kind of face time is exactly why competition for the student program, which is sponsored by Kodak, is so fierce -- applicants must submit several letters of recommendation, answer five essay questions and give a long telephone interview. Academics are not as important, says Sisk, “because good grades don’t necessarily indicate a good filmmaker.”
Matt Honovic entered New York University’s film school, figuring that his previous major, communications, would leave him unemployed after graduation so he might as well specialize in something he loved. Like many students here, he hopes his time at Cannes will help him focus his career path.
“First I wanted to direct, but then I realized to do that you should really write,” he says. “Now I am writing, but really I’m interested in any position that will put me close to the industry. I’m here to ask people what I should do, what it’s like, what are my options.”
Sisk says that among other orientation points, she and pavilion managers try to point out the fine line -- not always well demarcated in the entertainment industry -- between being ambitious and being annoying. “We tell them never to interrupt a meeting, always be polite, but it’s OK to be friendly,” she says.
“They told us to act as if we have met someone we’re interested in dating,” says Thyfault. “I’m just hoping people will tell me how they got where they are now.”
