three monkeys

Hitting the keyboard for a quick update on an insane day. In the course of few hours, my schedule of on-on-one interview schedule includes Ricky Gervais, Renee Zellweger, Spike Lee and John Malkovich. So far I’ve just done Gervais who was utterly charming, even when I interrupted his seamless flow of wit with an asthmatic coughing spasm. “Bronchial asthma,” I gasped, grabbing a water bottle. “Don’t worry. It’s not contagious.” Offering to thump me on the back, which wasn’t necessary, Gervais filled the awkward interlude with an anecdote tabout how he was choking once in a restaurant and a friend shouted, “I don’t know the Heimlich manoever!”—as if to absolve himself in advance of any responsibility if Gervais choked to death.

It’s raining again in Cannes, and the films have been as unsettled as the sky. And as moist. Earlier I blogged about clogged drains and nasty plumbing, which have surfaced as a bizarre theme in the program. I cited drain-clearing scenes in Brazil’s Linha de Passe and, by Walter Salles, and Serbis, by Filipino director Brillante Mendoza. Since then we’ve seen another plumbing incident in Gomora, a mafia movie from Italy called by Matteo Garron. And my National Post colleague Chris Knight reminded me that the incarcerated characters in Blindness spend much of their time groping around floors slick with human waste. Chris, in fact, he penned a clogged sink blog called Plumbing the Depths of World Cinema. Wish I’d thought of that.