Despite media reports that he wants to spend the rest of his life as a shoemaker in Italy, the gifted Daniel Day-Lewis is set to return to movies for Martin Scorsese's $100 million historical gangster epic, Gangs of New York, in which he will co-star with Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz. Day-Lewis, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of Christy Brown in My Left Foot, has not acted since he played the title role in Jim Sheridan's The Boxer three years ago.
Harvey Weinstein, the colourful supremo of Miramax Films which released My Left Foot in the US, convinced DayLewis to come out of his self-imposed retirement from movies and to reunite with Scorsese, who directed him in the Edith Wharton adaptation, The Age of Innocence.
In Cannes, Weinstein recalled how he was in hospital recently when he pitched the role of the key villain in Gangs of New York to Day-Lewis. According to Weinstein, the actor was softened up by the promise of a meeting with DiCaprio. What clinched the deal, Weinstein said, was organising a meal at a New York restaurant said to be frequented by modern-day gangsters. The movie starts its 18-week shooting schedule in August at Cinecitta Studios in Rome.
European Film Promotion, the body formed three years ago to focus attention on emerging European talent, selected 17 women as part of its Cannes initiative, Producers on the Move. The Irish producer chosen is Marina Hughes, who started her career as a lawyer.
There were crossed wires, she said, when she met the Irish film director, Martin Duffy. "I thought he was being introduced to me as a potential client and he thought I was being introduced to him as a potential producer," she explained in Cannes. "At the end of the meeting, we just decided - shag it, give it a go." And they made Duffy's first feature film, The Boy From Mercury.
Having fallen while hill-walking in Ireland last month, Marina Hughes was limping her way around Cannes this week with a broken big toe, but there was consolation in the firmly enthusiastic festival market response to her second feature, the spirited romantic comedy, About Adam, written and directed by Gerry Stembridge, and made by her production company, Venus Films.
Miramax will open the movie in key US cities on August 18th, and an Irish release will follow in the autumn.
"Marina is one of the new generation of Irish producers, bringing fresh energy to Irish cinema," Andrew Lowe, business manager with the Irish Film Board, said at the Irish Pavillion in Cannes this week. The producer herself was more modest, citing that she runs Venus Films with fellow producer Anna Devlin. "It just happens that I'm the one chosen by European Film Promotion, but it's a two-person operation," she insisted.
The leading film trade paper, Variety, held a pitching session in Cannes at which aspirant film-makers were given just five minutes to sell their ideas to a panel of industry professionals, which included Simon Perry of British Screen, Howard Cohen of United Talent Agency and Jeremy Barber of Artisan, the company which shrewdly acquired and marketed The Blair Witch Project last year.
"Irish brothers Brendan and James Butler got the most popular reception," Variety reported, "even though the panellists admitted that they often couldn't follow what was being said, thanks to the thick brogues. The duo made a tag-team spiel for heist comedy Ton of Money, about criminals who steal a huge amount of currency in coins."
At Film Four's festival lunch this week on the roof of the Noga Hilton hotel, we were having a chat with Alan Parker when a young woman bumped into the Angela's Ashes director, causing him to spill red wine down his linen jacket. He turned on the culprit who exclaimed, "Oh, God! It's Alan Parker". To which he responded, "Who are you?".
She identified herself as Lynne Ramsay, the Scottish director of the award-winning Ratcatcher, and she looked mortified, not least because Parker is now chairman of the Film Council, the new super-body for funding British film. "Anyone that talented can spill wine on me anytime," Parker laughed, adding that Martin Scorsese had thrown up on the same jacket some years ago - while Parker was wearing it.
The next day, at Little Bird's elegant lunch on the terrace of the Gray d'Albion hotel, the Irish film censor, Sheamus Smith, found himself seated next to British director Stuart Urban - who introduced himself by reminding the censor that he had banned his movie, Preaching to the Perverted, last year. Urban graciously just laughed it off, the censor said.
THE combination of Madonna and arthouse director Peter Greenaway might seem an unlikely one, but Greenaway, who made The Draughtsman's Contract and The Pillow Book, has signed the singer-actress to play the femme fatale in his next project, The Tulse Luper Trilogy which will comprise three feature films, two back-toback CD-Roms and a 52-part television series, as well as 1001 stories on a special Internet site. All for a snip of a budget: $10 million.
The project, which will be shot all over the world, gets underway in the Utah desert in September. Among the eclectic cast already committed to appearing in it at various stages are Kathy Bates, Vincent Gallo, David Thewlis, Isabella Rossellini, Debbie Harry, Lothaire Blutheau, Tcheky Karyo, Dawn French, Amanda Plummer and Richard Griffiths.
On top of the 518 movies screening in the market at Cannes and the 75 screening in the official and sidebar sections, the US "infotainment channel", E!, is making a movie during the festival.
The E! people on the Croisette describe the project, Murder at the Cannes Film Festival as "a fast and funny Hollywood whodunnit set against the the lush backdrop of the world's choicest entertainment gathering".
It features French Stewart (from Third Rock From the Sun) as an actor stranded in Cannes when he learns that his role in a fictional movie, Hemingway Loved Me, has been left on the cutting-room floor. At the opening of the festival, he discovers the lifeless body of the movie's star (played by Bo Derek). Enter Karina Lombard (from Legends of the Fall) as what E! says is the "deft-yet-sultry police chief" of Cannes who suspects the Stewart character of murdering the star.
Don't expect this movie to turn up in competition at the 54th Cannes Film Festival next May.
The most entertaining column appearing in the mass of free, advertising-dominated, film trade papers published daily at Cannes is "Downey & Dirty", Mike Downey's page in Moving Pictures. This week Downey has been castng a sardonic eye on "The Top 10 Things You Learn From the Movies". They are:
1. Large, loft-style apartments in New York City are well within the price range of most people - whether they are employed or not.
2. At least one of pair of identical twins is born evil.
3. Should you decide to defuse a bomb, don't worry which wire to cut. You will always choose the right one.
4. Most laptop computers are powerful enough to override the communications system of any invading alien society.
5. It does not matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts. Your enemies will wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around in a threatening manner until you have finished off their predecessors.
6. When you turn out the lights to go to bed, everything in your bedroom will still be clearly visible, just slightly blueish.
7. The ventilation system of any building makes a perfect hiding place. No one will ever think of looking for you there and you can travel to any other part of the building without difficulty.
8. Honest and hard-working policemen are traditionally gunned down three days before their retirement.
9. During all police investigations it will be necessary to visit a strip club at least once.
10. All beds have special L-shaped cover sheets that reach armpit level on a woman but only waist level on the man lying beside her.