How To Do Various Things At Cannes

1. How To Hail A Taxi
This cannot be done, no matter how many times you point at the road, while casually looking away (see example below), to make out you're nonchalant about the whole thing. These people will not stop, under any circumstances. It's very likely that, come 2am, you'll be drenched by rain and standing in a taxi rank a mile long, with the added insult of the occasional sly old crone brazenly jumping the queue and commandeering an eight-person people carrier.


2. How To Look Very Important
At all times, it is vital to have as many portable media/communication/organisation devices on the table in front of you as possible (see below). Onlookers will see these and think, "Dear God, these men must be behemoths in the film world. Behemoths, do you hear me?". And clearly, they will hear themselves, because they're only thinking inside their own minds.


3. How To Stop And Admire The View
Step One: cease moving. Step Two: open eyes. Step Three: usher images into your brain. Repeat these steps as often as possible. Ideally, concentrate on Step Three for several hours at a time by the shore at the Cannes Century club, with a cold beverage to lubricate your throat. After all, you'll be needing that throat to babble nonsense through, rather a lot.


4. How To Freak Yourself The Hell Out
Spend a few hours discussing one of your favourite scary movies, and the creepy performance of one of its stars: for instance Lost Highway and Bill Pullman. Then spend even more hours with your mouth flapping like a fish, after the star - Bill Pullman, for instance - walks up, politely asks if a chair at your table is taken, then sits down with a large dinner party at the adjacent table.

5. How To Make Your Arms Look Very Long
This is simply a matter of maximising the distance between your fingertips and shoulders (see Dan Turner's exemplary demonstration below). Not only does this shriek, "Cannes is mine!", but it makes film industry people want to deal with you, for two reasons. Firstly, they realise that you'll give the finest end-of-meeting hugs available to humanity. Secondly, they fear that when provoked, you'll be able to lash out like some kind of hand-faced cobra.


6. How To Avoid A Heart Attack
If you encounter Rob Sprackling, the man who wrote Mike Bassett: England Manager, then at all costs give him a wide berth. Sprackling is a dangerous man. He will talk and talk until you can laugh no more, and are reduced to crying into hands cupped over your unattractively red face. You have been warned.



7. How To Avoid Seeing Any Films
This, you'll find to be surprisingly straightforward. It's best achieved by only hitting Cannes for an intense 48 hours of meetings and Admiring The View. Even if there's a film you genuinely want to see, such as fellow Brit Chris Jones' stylish short Gone Fishing, chances are that a meeting will over-run and scupper such an idea. If staying at Cannes for longer than 48 hours, simply endeavour to avoid any dark spaces - chances are, they'll have a film showing in them.

8. How To Drink Champagne Responsibly
This is notoriously difficult to achieve. The first glass feels fine, as does the 15th. But before you know it, you're talking shit. The effect is magnified if you're standing on a balcony in Cannes, overlooking the sea: you're much more likely to make outrageous, untrue statements, while utilising an accent 2.5 times posher than your own. See the video below for an example of two bell-ends (or, in French, bell-endes) who have quaffed more than their fair share.