I SEE A RED DOOR, AND I WANT TO PAINT IT BLACK. BUT INSTEAD, I JUST PISS UP IT… - review by Stew.

(BEING A FURTHER INSTALMENT OF THE YEAR-OLD ADVENTURES OF STEWART & PAUL IN CANNES, REGURGITATED FOR THE FINAL TIME)
For all the wanking-off over how great the Cannes film festival is we both do on this site, believe me, it's not all wine and roses, oh no no no. As with every aspect of existence, (or my existence at least), it is fraught with rampant annoyances just waiting to leap out in front of you and boot you in the nutsack. Allow me to once again pilfer the Cannes memory banks to bring you the terrifying tale of one of mine and Paul's worst terrors made flesh…
We were making our way up a winding cobbled hillock full of restaurants looking for some quality French quisine, when the ladies in our group alighted in a shop selling bags opposite a bar. As I stood outside, over my shoulder drifted this voice, a whiny, nasal, Irishy twang like gas slowing escaping from a leaky balloon. Yes, dear reader, a quick glance over my shoulder revealed Mark Fucking Cousins. Yes; Mark Fucking Cousins. What a flaming cunt.
If you don't know who Mark Fucking Cousins is, he's the whinging shamrock-licking toad who has somehow miraculously elevated himself into the position of British film nabob. You may have seen him wittering on about how clever he is while introducing the now-defunct 'Moviedrome' series on BBC2. You may also have seen him lick-spittling all over every actor and director who can bear his odious company in the occasional 'Scene By Scene' series. Paul hates him because, during a 'SBS', he told Brian DePalma that he hated all of his films and and based his questioning on prejudged opinion of DePalma as a woman-hating sex-deviant; I hate him because he's a smug cunt. We collectively hate him because any man who extends the space between syllables in words to such an infinite degree is (a) doing it to sound like the tired theories he's regurgitating are coming direct from his own intellect, or (b) midway through a serious stroke. Mark Fucking Cousins is most definitely rocking the (a) vibe, but will be getting a serious stroke from us if we see him when we're drunk enough to give him the shoeing he so richly deserves. I also like to think that Britain is behind us on this one.
Who is he? Where did he come from? Like a really snidey, weedy Celtic Batman he sprung from the night, slithered onto our TV screens and won't fuck off, oiling his opinion into the minds of the nation when all he is really doing is, literally, peddling other people's tiresome, hackneyed theories in the most dull duller dullest monotone Irish tortoise tones imaginable. A genuine reason he is so hated by us is that, when interviewing a film luminary, he will break every known law of interpersonal space, and almost sit on the lap of the actor or director he is conversing with; this has the effect of unsettling the interviewee, yet also visibly serves to elevate Cousins in his own mind to equal status with them. The interviews become less about the subjects, more about Cousins himself; as his own producer, he secures the close-ups for himself that should go to the genuinely talented individual he is deigning to share space with, which, coupled with his interview technique, (constructed so we see their reaction to his pseudo-intellectualised line of questioning rather than dwell on their answers - during which we see him reacting and 'mentally forming' his next dazzling scripted question), serve to make any programme he's involved in dry and arid, mildly disrespectful at least, and simply audio-visually annoying.
We saw him at Le Petit Majestic our first year out and were building ourselves up into giving him some stick, but chickened out. We vowed to tan his slow-talking hide if we saw him the next year, but when we turned and faced him, to a man we felt a cold chill of terror in our hearts. We could not strike down this demonic being in our midst, not a word could be raised against this Irish devil - perhaps he has the power to cloud men's minds, maybe he wears a cape of invulnerability, but either way, we just gawped at him them moved on, cursing ourselves for ever believing that we could possibly vanquish his Blarney-stone powered evil. However, when he rather ostentatiously blinged the bell on his push-bike (push-bike! Cunt!) alerting any potential camera crews to his presence as he forced his way down the tightly-packed road, we both wanted to twat him again. We have vowed to follow through our semi-justifiable threat of slaughtering him like a stuck pig should we ever gaze upon him again (and oh, we will see him alright, as he prowls Cannes looking for someone to pontificate at very... slowly... about... what.................................... ever comes to.................................. mind..............................), but just you wait - we'll get within twenty feet of him then, like an opinionated Medusa, he shall turn and we shall be frozen to the spot yet again. But the intention is there, my friends. Oh yes…
The main annoyance for me on all occasions was the ticket distribution system - a system that can only be described as 'arcane'. The deal with tickets is, there are two parallel queues (one for us normal 'film' people, one for people with the exhorbitantly expensive blue market passes, which are of no use to people like us because we don't need to be in the Cannes sales directory seeing as how we're not a sales agent or distribution company), slowly edging down to parallel kiosks doling out tickets for the same screenings - and you don't really always know what tickets you're queuing for, as what you want may run out before you get there, and you may not know what else is available. Something like 'Moulin Rouge' will end up dangerously over-subscribed, but the good thing is that the kiosks dole out tickets for all films playing in that particular day's programme, (and/or the next morning's). The unfortunate problem with blind queuing is that, should you just desperately take a ticket in the fashion known amongst today's youth as 'willy nilly' then not go and see the movie in question, your right to other tickets for other movies can theoretically be revoked. Hey, they scan your passes and tickets left, right and centre, they know if you've been to the screening or not, like a crack troop of unbearably rude French Santa Clauses.
But it's not just as easy as that; the ticket system is steeped in even further levels of unfathomable mystery. We have since discovered that, beside our queue and the parallel market pass queue, there are numerous other ticket queues dotted around the building, apportioning tickets on the basis of who you received your festival accreditation from; sort of an acceptable situation, but when we were told that the tickets weren't available yesterday afternoon and to return in the morning, and then when we do just that, are effectively head of our queue and still the showing has 'sold out', well, you know, fuck you Frenchie! Something rotten is a foot, I'm sure you'll agree, when we actually got up at seven in the morning to get a ticket we couldn't get at two the previous afternoon, only to be told that they were all gone when they simply couldn't be because the ticket office hadn't been open between the two time periods. Well, the only phrase going through my head was "Hulk Smash!"
Despite the somewhat xenophobic air this entry has adopted, I really just ought to point out that, with the exception of three waiters in Le Petit Majestic and the six people alternately driving our hotel shuttle bus, the fair inhabitants of Cannes were utter arseholes. One of the favourite tricks of the waitresses we unavoidably conversed with was to listen to your order, then look at you like shit and shrug; a repetition of said order receives much the same reaction, (except this time you think they're going to spit on you), then at the third attempt, they look at you like shit a little longer, then break into smirks, repeat your order back to you with an obviously-more-French accent than yours, (but still using what you can only honestly describe as the exact same words - they're just fucking with you, seriously, they know what you're saying to them first time out, and despite the language barrier, even an English accent saying French words is still saying French words, right?), then proceed to disappear off for thirty minutes before bringing you your drinks, and lump you with a bread basket you never ordered in lieu of some other side dish you actually wanted.
As testament to the vague truth hidden within this 'We Won The War' diatribe, we ate in a Chinese restaurant another night; swift, pleasant courteous service from people for whom English is more than likely a third or fourth language, let alone a second, and who singularly failed to bring us the wrong item or have us repeat any order. I'm not saying I'm not a surly bastard, because on occasion I most definitely am, (shocking I know, but there we go), but my sometimes objectionable rudeness isn't to be taken as the benchmark for an entire nation's behavioural patterns. Another justification for my hate crimes, say you? In a restaurant another night, I ordered a Hoegaarden, (milky German 'white beer' that tastes like Das Vomit on first acquaintance, but will steadily grow to become a favourite drink if you persevere - kind of like the Marmite of the booze world). The waitress shrugged the universal 'what do you mean you foreign fool?' response, at which point I repeated the word 'Hoegaarden' five more times, until the waitress decided she'd had enough of fucking with my head and went:
"Ah, 'Oegaarden".
The exact same word without the 'H'. Pronounced in exactly the same way. There's no other word on the fucking menu that even sounds like 'Hoegaarden' other than 'Hoegaarden', it isn't even a French word, yet still the waitress went through the rigmarole of making me feel like a prize twat. So, waitresses - the supernatural levels of rudeness these delightful mademoiselles can attain would raise the hackles on a priest. This may explain why, despite popular rumour, all of their gratuities are already included in the bill. You want a tip? Stay away from yellow snow; thank you and fuck off.
Oh, and as there were six of us we split into two cabs, three per cab, to get back to the hotel. Same journey, same distance, two cars in convoy. Our cab - 50 francs. Their cab - 92 francs. Robbing bastards.
And then there's more of that jolly French 'eager to please' attitude to inform you of. Woke up on the last morning of Cannes 2002 to find that the toilet cistern had sprung a leak and filled the apartment with an inch of stale piddle during the night. Swimming in urine - not what you expect to have to do when you get up in the morning. Unless you're appearing in 'Piss Klinik Vol. 16' for Das Ficken Video Produktions. Thankfully we were all packed and ready to go so none of our stuff got ruined, so upon building a dam of towels we called the front desk and told them the situation. A clear, one-syllable explanation was met with silence, then 'you need a technician', then the phone was slammed down on me. After 45 minutes me and Paul's then-girlfriend went down to breakfast; 20 minutes after that, when he had had to use his own towels to stem the ever-growing puddle of rotten Frog wiz all over the floor, Paul finally snapped and went down to the front desk, where they told him that it had not been reported. Half an hour after that, Paul went back to the front desk to ask where this technician was, (the flow of Gallic piss now making like 'Force 10 From Navarone' and threatening to bust the terry-towelling dam clean open at any moment), and they denied any knowledge of either of our requests, but rather huffily agreed to send someone up. How very reasonable…
Twenty minutes later, a lumbering sub-humanoid hulk with an industrial vacuum cleaner came and sucked up the piss in the company of two hotel security guards, (who no doubt were just waiting for any excuse to, you know, chin us), pausing only to open Paul's bedroom door without knocking and leer at his then-girlfriend as she did the last of her packing. This dude stank of shit, which seemed really horrible until you realised that, if you spent your days sucking up effluent with an industrial vacuum cleaner, you'd probably stink of shit too.
Anyway, that minor balls-ache out of the way, we cleared out. At the front desk they refused our amigo Rich's credit card, effectively screwing us all roads as this was our only means of ready-to-hand payment for the rooms. It eventually transpired that the deposit they had taken upon booking and the further deposit they had taken upon our arrival had not been entered into their records, and they had tried to take not only the total cost of the rooms, but also both deposits twice, even though the total cost of the rooms includes the two deposits. Jesus. Nevertheless, it got sorted out, they just about scraped an apology together, and we got the fuck out of Dodge.
Not that we stinking Johnny English pig-dogs are beyond reproach of course. I myself nearly managed to get myself marmalised due to my filthy scumbag behaviour. Due to the severe lack of public toilets on the streets of Cannes, I decided to Unleash The Dragon and empty my pumpkin-sized bladder in a darkened doorway on my way to a restaurant some ten minutes walk away, (ah, you can take the boy out of Birmingham, but you can't take the filthy degenerate out of the boy...). Having unfurled my national average, I proceeded to widdle...
...at which point the door flung open and three burly French dudes came clattering after me. Now, in England my behaviour would have warranted a stern bollocking at best, but having seen three pitched battles erupt over bugger all over there already in the previous three days,* I just high-tailed and scarpered with my tiddler flapping in the wind lest I get absolutely fucking battered. I tore past my compadres, shoving my tallywhacker back into my strides, bolting into Le Petit Majestic, where the French fuckers lost me. Okay, maybe I was only twenty seconds walk from Le Petit and could have used their John instead of busting a nut up some strange shop doorway, but I was drunk and I'm scum and, besides, with the overall attitude of the wankers we'd rubbed shoulders with, the townsfolk of Cannes have been metaphorically urinating on us all week. So, nearly got thrashed but didn't. Close. Damn close. Damn closer than I ever like to get to a good hiding, especially for something so stupid, but it did teach me one thing - "The first rule of Fight Club is: Don't Piss Up Fight Club".
*Fight one: A big gang of blokes beating fuck out of some other geezer outside of a club. A lone policeman half-heartedly led the beatee away, while various beaters came up in ones and twos to punch the poor bastard in the mouth as and when they felt like it. That happens in Birmingham, thirty riot police arrive and everybody spends the night in prison. Mind you, British police don't carry big guns like their French counterparts, so you need thirty of 'em to pull a couple of pastel-shirted Brummie sophisticates off each other outside of the Caspian kebab house while two un-coated corned-beef-legged scrubbers bellow "he ay done nothin', why'm yer tekkin' 'im away" at them. One gun - one cop - no shit.
Fight two: While my chums and I enjoyed a late-night Filet O'Fish at McDonalds, three burly Arabic dudes literally punched and kicked a Russian bloke from one side of the place to the other, out of the door, and down the path to the street. Then the silly fucker came back for more, (or to be strictly accurate, his bag and coat), and one of the Arabs had to be physically restrained from absolutely pounding shit out of him while another Arab level-headedly retrieved his stuff and told him to "fuck off, bitch". It later transpired that not only were all three Arabs employees of McDonalds, one of them was the frigging Duty Manager.
Fight three: What amounts to a full-scale ruck in Britain, over here two blokes scuffling and tugging each others shirt-collars for a few seconds outside a boozer is considered almost an outright admission of homosexuality. A crap girlie squabble by French standards, the assault on Stalingrad back in Blighty.
So there we go; while every cloud has a sliver lining, sometimes those silver linings contain a pile of shit. Would I go to Cannes again? Fuck yeah! Swings and roundabouts, innit mate…