Candid, Candle, Canary, Can't, Can: CANNES

Oh my. It was a real whirlwind, a French blur.

1. I flew business class for the first time in my life. The seat went back flat, but when I went to put it up again it wouldn't go and eventually I just had to change seats.

2. There were two companies that were my lovely hosts, Celluloid Dreams, the foreign sales company for the film, and MK2, the French distributor. Little did I know that these two companies were very fine. It was like having a friend who goes to another school and then visiting them and finding out that they are the coolest person at the school and you feel lucky to just get to slide right in with them. Here are some of the people from MK2. This was taken on my first night, before my transformation in to a Person of Glamour. Across from me is Danny Wolf, the producer of, among other things, Gus Van Sant's Last Days which was also premiering at the festival and was distributed by MK2. He told me to not be afraid to speak French.

3. So my life was like this: every day I went to a place where my hair and make-up was done and then I began interviews with people from all over the world. They were interviewing me. (I had to specify because the way I phrased it you might think I was interviewing them, like perhaps I was making a documentary. Not the case. There was no time for documentary film making although I could have made a very complete documentary about a young woman who goes to Cannes with her first movie and is nervous but discovers that she can pull it off, she can really do it, just like she really made the movie. She wrestles with feeling frivolous for enjoying all the attention and the pretty make-up and dressing up. But in the end, she decides that it doesn't do anyone any good to feel guilty about it. Guilt won't reverse the effects of global warming, not even a little bit. And who is this god who decides what is frivolous and what is not? This god is nowhere, she decides, it is just a bad habit learned in childhood. At the end of the documentary we see her eating pannacotta, which is a kind of dessert.)

Make-up by Dior. Learned a lot from these people.

Live interview with Radio France, beside me is Pascale, my wonderful host from Celluloid Dreams

Sometimes many people would interview me at once. I am wearing a dress made by Adam Arnold of Portland, Oregon.

4. A 16 year-old French girl with braces came up to me and told me the movie was just like her life, and an elderly French man thanked me for bringing "this beautiful flower from America."

5. My shoes did not work out. I really don't have a handle on this shoe thing at all. I had to go buy a pair of shoes in Cannes because they hurt so bad.

This is an absolutely disgusting picture, I'm sorry. But this is my heel. I had an elaborate system of bandages I wore in my shoes, almost like a false foot. You can see the residue.

And here I am buying the new shoes. My hosts thought it was very funny that I was having all these problems given that my character in the movie has similar shoe problems. I wanted to buy these men's bedroom slippers but I could see that the hosts were not so excited about them.

6. One night I was invited to the premiere of Last Days. It was decided that Dior would loan me a dress. As it turns out no one actually owns those crazy dresses, but maybe everyone already knows this. Here I am in the dress and feather cape, marveling, over-analyzing what it means to wear such a dress, to live such a life, as the water levels rise.

7. Barry Manilow was on my flight home. I didn't know this until I heard an American man telling a German woman at the baggage carousel. He said: Barry Manilow! Did you see him? and she looked confused and did not understand and so he said: You know, copacabana? And she was still confused so he began singing: At the Copa , Copacabana  The hottest spot north of Havana, at which point she moved away from him and began looking through her purse. But a moment later Barry Manilow walked by and this man was redeemed.