This week Neil Calloway looks at what winning the Palme d’Or can do to your box office…
So we are in the middle of the Cannes Film Festival, and it’s easy to dismiss it as a two-week publicity vehicle for beautiful actresses to get photographed next to middle-aged European film directors on the Croisette, or a time for oligarchs and their trophy wives to entertain fading Hollywood stars on their super yachts. However, the importance of the festival to the film industry cannot be understated.
Cannes is the biggest film industry event of the year; the Oscars comes close but that only lasts one night. It is, in fact, one of the biggest annual events of any kind. As William Goldman points out in Hype and Glory, his entertaining memoir of sitting on the juries for both Cannes and the Miss America Pageant, the World Cup and Olympics are bigger, but they only happen every four years. No other cultural event can garner front pages around the world for a solid two weeks every year.
There are, of course, two festivals happening in Cannes; the Film Market is where producers attempt to pre-sell films that haven’t been made yet to international distributors so they can fund their production. If you want an excruciatingly hilarious look at this, then check out James Toback’s 2013 documentary Seduced and Abandoned, where Toback and Alec Baldwin attempt to fund and cast a film described as Last Tango in Paris, but set in Iraq. Like I said, it’s excruciatingly hilarious.
The other festival is the one that gets the front pages; the one where Salma Hayek gets photographed on the red carpet and Matthew McConaughey gets booed at a press screening. This is the glamorous part of the festival, with the festival jury being headed by Joel and Ethan Coen this year, and also featuring Sienna Miller, topping off what has been a remarkable comeback from tabloid fodder to serious actress. When the jury convene next Sunday to decide on awards, the world will be watching.
Does being awarded the Palme d’Or by the jury matter, though? It’s easy to dismiss Cannes as two weeks of selling and self-congratulation by the European Film establishment, and the winners often seem like they are plucked from the “Big Book of Great European Directors” – Ken Loach, Michael Haneke, Lars Von Trier, with the occasional “American Indie Director It’s OK To Like”, such as Gus Van Sant, Michael Moore and Terrence Malick thrown in for good measure.
The fact is, though, that winning the Palme d’Or all but guarantees your film worldwide distribution. There is no way a Romanian film about illegal abortion set in the dying days of the Communist regime would have got a release in the US had it not won, but 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days did, and didn’t do too badly at the box office there either. Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, winner in 2002, did far better at the box office (earning $120 million) than the two films he made before and after it combined, despite one – The Ninth Gate – starring Johnny Depp and the other being an adaptation of Oliver Twist. Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes The Barley, winner in 2006, made $22 million at the box office, accounting for more than half of the money taken by a Ken Loach film in a career lasting almost fifty years.
The Tree of Life, Terrence Malick’s semi-autobiographical coming of age drama, with an added birth of the universe sequence and CGI dinosaurs, won in 2011, despite getting booed at screenings, and went on to make $54 million at the worldwide box office, whereas his previous film, The New World, made only $30 million. His next, To The Wonder, made a paltry $2 million.
If you’re a young up and coming director then winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes gives you access to cinema screens around the world, if you’re already a member of the film-making establishment, then Cannes can give you the biggest box office hit of your career.
You don’t believe me? The opening film this year, screening out of competition, was Mad Max: Fury Road, which took almost $17 million on its opening night at the US Box Office. All down to those pictures of Charlize Theron on the red carpet, I bet…
Neil Calloway is a pub quiz extraordinaire and Top Gun obsessive. Check back here every Sunday for future installments.
https://youtu.be/8HTiU_hrLms?list=PL18yMRIfoszFLSgML6ddazw180SXMvMz5
Originally published May 18, 2015. Updated April 14, 2018.
