About Town RAMBLING REPORTER By Gary Baum & Merle Ginsberg Some Like Reese Rough Irish-born director Brian Kirk (Game of Thrones), in town for the Reese Witherspoon-Keanu Reeves sci-fi romantic epic Passengers (which Exclusive Media is shopping), didn’t seem concerned about the actress’ April 19 arrest for disorderly conduct in Atlanta. He and Wayfare Entertainment, which is financing the film, were in the midst of talking to Witherspoon about taking the role when the incident happened. “One of the things that I really like about her is that she’s really feisty and that she’s not a prize or a trophy,” says Kirk, adding that he wanted a strong, confident woman to play the role. Anyway, says Kirk, “if that’s the worst thing she’s ever done, she’s better than me.” Family Man Marty Martin Scorsese was feted by Johnnie Walker on its yacht in honor of Silence, his long-gestating passion project based on the novel by Japanese novelist Shusaku Endo. (It was recently announced that Andrew Garfield will star.) But the director admitted to guests, Mocca Left: Witherspoon. Above: DiCaprio with his mother, Irmelin Indenbirken, in 2010. including producers Lawrence Bender and Melita Toscan du Plantier, that he was eager to return home from Cannes because he was missing his family (wife Helen and 13-year-old daughter, Francesca). Indeed, he told THR that while working on the upcoming Wolf of Wall Street, “I put the editing machines in my house, because a lot gets done at night. If I have to go to the editing room I miss the little one and Helen. We moved her dining room out, and she wasn’t happy about that. I said, ‘Me or the furniture!’ ” Parties du Soir <strong>The</strong> cold, wet rain didn’t deter Cannes partiers the second night of the fest. Still, the crowds that descended on the Louis Vuittonand W magazine-sponsored Bling Ring afterparty at Albane at the top of the JW Marriott, and the Calvin Klein party at Ecrin Plage, were more covered up — with not an open-toed shoe in sight. Despite Albane’s dim lighting, it was hard to miss Sofia Coppola in her black Louis Vuitton Mulligan short dress, surrounded as she was by well wishers, and husband Thomas Mars to boot. Emma Watson was gracious to everyone who approached her, which included Berenice Bejo and Michel Hazanavicius. Bryan Ferry made an entrance, even in the dark, and others on hand included Bling’s Katie Chang, Taissa Farmiga, Claire Julien and Israel Broussard as well as Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich’s paramour, Dasha Zhukova. <strong>The</strong> Calvin Klein party, hosted by IFP’s Joanne Vicente and CK designer Francisco Costa, all the way at Port-Pierre Canto was hard to get to, but worth the Uber (car service) wait, as there was much gawking at A-listers Nicole Kidman and her CAA agent Chris Andrews, Rooney Mara, Carey Mulligan — who stayed for all of five minutes — Skyfall’s Naomie Harris, director Lynne Ramsay and, of course, Harvey Weinstein right in the middle of it all. Leo’s Parent Posse Leonardo DiCaprio’s gone positively wholesome, at least by the looks of it. Notoriously the leader of the “pussy posse” of his youth, perpetually out looking for ladies with longtime friends like his Great Gatsby co-star Tobey Maguire, these days he’s traveled to Cannes with a parent posse constantly in tow: His mother, Irmelin Indenbirken, her boyfriend, and his father, George DiCaprio (the pair were divorced when he was a year old). <strong>The</strong>y attended the Gatsby premiere with Leo, then Scorsese’s yacht soiree the following evening. On May 17, Michel Hazanavicius lunched at Mocca Brasserie, across the PowerLunch Croisette from the Palais, where his wife Berenice Bejo’s movie <strong>The</strong> Past premiered earlier in the morning. … Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer and Lionsgate Motion Picture Group co-president Patrick Wachsberger visited Fouquet’s at the Majestic, where the studio has adorned the outside with a huge Hunger Games: Catching Fire installation. … FilmDistrict CEO Peter Schlessel broke bread with Nu Image/Millennium Films chairman Avi Lerner at Millennium’s Cannes office. (All the big sales companies bring in chefs to cook meals since there’s no time to go out.) … Robin Wright took to a corner of the JW Marriott restaurant. … Producer Jason Blum did business on the Carlton terrace. A short while later, uber-publicist Peggy Siegal was chatting with a friend nearby about how she brought five trunks of clothes to accommodate her social calendar during the festival. … Sierra/Affinity’s Nick Meyer was at the Carlton but left once the rain started coming down. How the Jet Set Fights Jet Lag Surviving the slew of cocktails and red carpets of Cannes requires near-athletic-level stamina. And with glitterati arriving from the four corners of the world, it can take a little something extra to make it through. How to cope? “This year, I popped two Midnights [melatonin] for the flight,” says <strong>The</strong> Help producer Brunson Green, who also made a stop in London a few days early in order to adjust to the time change. Others take more drastic measures with sometimes unfortunate side effects. One exec popped an Ambien on the flight over. Upon landing a man told him how nice it had been to meet him. <strong>The</strong> exec didn’t remember ever speaking to him and later was stunned when the man sent a bottle of wine to his hotel. <strong>The</strong>n there’s the tale of the film exec who likewise hit the Ambien only to find himself awoken by a flight attendant asking him to kindly put his shirt back on. <strong>The</strong> Weinstein Co. COO David Glasser says he’s heard tales of people sleepwalking through the Carlton (though he’s quick to point out he’s not one of them). Still others abstain entirely. James Toback, director of the doc Seduced and Abandoned, screening at the fest, enjoys jet lag. “Since I have not consumed a mind-altering drug since my LSD-blowout as a Harvard sophomore, my only circuit to approximating that weirdly intriguing state of disoriented consciousness is jet lag,” he says. “As a result, I not only don’t resist but rather relish it with perverse anticipation, much as I used Toback to revel in the discombobulating effects of the Cyclone at Coney Island. I’m often amused by the unexpected things I — or more precisely, the altered I — say and do after landing.” WITHERSPOON: EVAN AGOSTINI/INVISION/AP. DICAPRIO: WILLI SCHNEIDER/REX/REX USA. MULLIGAN, GLASSER, GREEN: GETTY IMAGES. MOCCA: TODD WILLIAMSON/INVISION/AP. PILL, PLANE: ISTOCK. THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 28
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