JURY DUTY

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Being a writer is mostly dull work, alone in a room tapping away. But there can be rewards and even perks, as I was to find out.

It was 1992, and after writing three films, my first novel The Buddha of Suburbia had just been released in Italy. I received a call inviting me to be a jury member of the Venice Film Festival, which is generally considered to be the most glorious of the festivals in terms of food, accommodation, and the beauty of the destination.

I was picked up at the airport by a private boat that took me across the lagoon to the Excelsior Hotel, which is on the Lido – a barrier island - around the corner from the Hotel des Bains, the setting for Death in Venice. As I stood up in the boat and looked across at the dreamscape of Venice in the mist, I was aware that I hadn’t see anything as beautiful before; and as they say, beauty is the promise of happiness.   

We jury members met in a conference room in the hotel. I walked in to see a number of remarkable filmmakers, including Neil Jordan and the great Jiri Menzel, the director of Closely Observed Trains, one of my favourite films.

The director of the festival, Gillo Pontecorvo, who I admired for making the masterpiece The Battle of Algiers, stood before us and made it clear which films, directors and actors the prizes should go to. If any of us felt there were others who should win, it would be possible for other awards to be devised. I was a little surprised, but kept quiet; I wanted nothing to disturb the ecstasy of this week.  

Then I met Dennis Hopper, who was the Jury President that year. It was amusing that such an anti-authoritarian figure would accept the role, but he knew a lot about film, and ran the jury efficiently, and more importantly, made sure we got through its work quickly, so we could go out and play in the city.  

By the early nineties, Hopper had become a benign and charming figure, far from the raving miscreant of earlier years when, it was said he would get arrested within a couple of hours of arriving in any new country.

He might have been sober and straight now, but he did kick-off after a screening of a film he considered anti-American. During the Q&A, Hopper attacked the director for a lack of patriotism and loyalty to the flag. I was disappointed, but not so disappointed that I didn’t continue following him around. He took me to parties, openings and dinners, and we always got a great reception. In the foyer of the Excelsior, he introduced me to a hero of mine, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Dismayingly, Hopper prefaced the introduction by referring to me as, “Stephen Frears’s screenwriter.” I had to rapidly interject that Stephen was in fact my director, and I had written a novel.  

Later, at the hotel bar, I was approached by the exotic Italian publisher Elisabetta Sgarbi. With her charisma and shopping list of promises, she had sought me out to persuade me to leave my Italian publishing house, Mondadori, and follow her to Bompiani, where all my subsequent books were published. This began my lifelong connection with Italy. Through Elisabetta I met Isabella, who sits opposite me as I dictate these words.

The most prestigious and glamorous film festival of all is Cannes, where I was asked to be on the jury in 2009. I was given a suite in the Carlton so big, there were rooms I didn’t even go into. I had a view of the ocean and the yachts parked in the harbour.

The festival is sprawling and chaotic, with a carnival atmosphere. The jury are kept in a protective bubble, surrounded by security. Each jury member had their own car with a driver, and sometimes our cars were accompanied by motorcycle outriders. I would ring my friends in London excitedly as my escorts pushed through the Cannes crowd.

In the early evenings, before the main screening, the jury members would meet in a room underneath the cinema. It was a small, windowless low-ceilinged space with food and booze laid on. The men got pissed while the women - including my red-carpet buddies Robin Wright and Asia Argento – got their hair and makeup done. Not being the savviest packer, I didn’t bring enough clothes, and wore the same black shirt and jacket every night, which took me less than a minute to get on.

Then we’d all make our way through the crowds and up the red carpet, waving like royalty. It was always slightly embarrassing; we had to take part in this ritual every night, walking with the biggest stars and directors in the world, we the judges of their fate.   

Jury meetings could seem interminable, because everybody had to have their say, some using interpreters.  At the beginning we were all too polite. It was a breakthrough moment in the second meeting when someone actually said “that film we saw last night. God that was shit, I really hated it.”

Everyone laughed, it was a relief, and we become uninhibited and direct. It was true, almost all the films we saw were shit, and most would be quickly forgotten. At times we wondered whether we would find enough good movies to give the awards to.  

But it was really fun to be on the jury, sitting at the back of the movie house in a cordoned-off area; a giggling gang living this artificial, showbiz life for ten days.

One of the things we jury members most enjoyed was when a particularly unpleasant film would cause a stampede of disgusted people to rush to the exit, groaning and shouting as they went. This happened with Lars von Trier’s grotesque Antichrist, a film I still have nightmares about.

I was on the red carpet when Tarantino was in competition with Inglourious Basterds. I ran into Christoph Waltz and told him how good he looked in that Nazi uniform. He laughed and we embraced, since a few years before, I had met him when he was just a jobbing actor. On a reading tour of Germany, Christoph, who seemed a bit depressed at the time, accompanied me, reading from my work in German, and we became good mates as we travelled across the country on interminable train rides. I was thrilled to see he was on his way to becoming a major star.

Isabelle Huppert, president of the jury, was a sweet and intelligent person. We called her Mistress Isabelle, because she could be strict when we become unruly.  Like a bunch of school kids, we had no responsibilities other than to observe the requirements of the festival. Isabelle was friends with Michael Hanneke, so it was clear that his film, The White Ribbon, which I found a little dull, would win the Palme d’Or. What I wanted was for Jacques Audiard’s accomplished movie, A Prophet, to get something, and it did, the Grand Prix.

After breakfast, in the mornings, I liked to walk about the town, along the front and around the shops. Being away from friends and family, I felt isolated, if not lonely, and wondered if I was having as much fun as I should be.

As the festival went on, it seemed to get crazier with the amount of people that gathered on the Croisette. I was accosted frequently by film distributors and producers who would beg you to vote for their film. Sometimes, I couldn’t get through the crowd and into the theatre, and security would have to virtually carry you to the little room downstairs.  

Asia Argento and Robin Wright were always on the phone seeming to have turbulent personal lives, which they were managing from an underground bunker on the French Riviera. In a corner of the room, I was frantically reading all of John Cheever’s short stories, as I was writing an introduction for a new edition of his work.

At the end, when we were to make our final decisions, we were taken to a kind of castle above Cannes, where we were isolated and without phones, to complete the judging. We were a little sad that it was over, since we would have to return to our everyday lives of shopping and responsibilities, having been treated with such deference and privilege.

At times, it felt like being at a frantic, crazy party that you could never leave, one you had to return to every night. You were either sitting in a darkened room, watching two films a day, or in overwhelming sunshine, meeting countless interesting strangers, all there as lovers of same medium, film.

I dream of places I will never go again. I miss it all, the able-bodied freedom of my former life.