The 10 Most Shocking Cannes Film Festival Moments

The film world will descend on the South of France this week for the annual Cannes Film Festival, with the heady promise of glamour, movie stars and spectacular cinema.

However, its classy French setting is often at odds with the brash excesses that Hollywood brings along to the party. Obscure art-house fare jostles for attention on the Croisette, competing for column inches against B-list actors desperate for attention, fading starlets looking for a break, and Hollywood blockbusters touting crass publicity stunts.

Let’s take a look at the moments when the Cannes Film Festival spilled over from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Kristen Stewart’s mask slips

The dour ‘Twilight’ star caused a stink at the 2012 festival while promoting literary adaptation ‘On The Road’. She appeared at the obligatory promotional photo call alongside Kirsten Dunst, Viggo Mortensen, Sam Rile, and Garrett Hedlund, dutifully posing for the photographers (she even cracked a smile!), but it all kicked off when they asked her to pose alone.

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K-Stew refused to be snapped solo, preferring to pose with Dunst. The photographers booed, which was unprecedented, and the 24-year-old responded by sullenly flipping the bird.

Pigeon party

The cast of Michael Winterbottom’s Madchester biopic ’24 Hour Party People’ hit Cannes in 2001 with the intention of bringing some Shaun Ryder-inspired madness to the seaside town. The four actors who played the Happy Mondays hit a private beach in front of the Majestic Hotel with a suitcase full of dead pigeons, and proceeded to attack each other with the stuffed birds.

The actors and journalists were ejected from the beach following the incident, which was inspired by a real-life event portrayed in the film. Danny Cunningham, who played Shaun Ryder in the film, received a cut to his head, but he left the festival with his mission accomplished. “I think Shaun would have been proud of us,” said Cunningham. “We came to Cannes to be wild and now we are going home.”

Bee list

Being the creator of one of the biggest sitcoms of all time wasn’t enough for Jerry Seinfeld, he wanted to make in the movie world too. Having finished ‘Seinfeld’ in 1998, Jerry took some time away from the limelight, making the occasional TV special and documentary, but in 2007 he was ready to make his comeback with the animated comedy ‘Bee Movie’.

Cannes Festival was the venue for his return, and his mode of transport? The zip line. The comedian flew from the top of the Carlton Hotel, down a 126m wire onto the end of a pier, dressed in a giant bee costume. Nobody remembers the film, everyone remembers the cringeworthy stunt.

Batter up

Spike Lee was in town promoting ‘Do The Right Thing’ in 1989. His hard-hitting comedy-drama is often put on lists of the greatest films of all time, but one person who wasn’t a fan was serious German film-maker Wim Wenders. Unluckily for Spike, he also happened to be on the jury when ‘Do The Right Thing’ was in competition.

Wenders awarded the Palm d’Or to Steven Soderbergh for ‘sex, lies and videotape’, labelling the lead character (also played by Spike Lee) in ‘Right Thing’ as “not heroic”. Lee responded by piping up “Somewhere I’ve a Louisville Slugger with Wim Wenders’s name on it”. That’s a baseball bat, if you weren’t familiar with the “heroic” vernacular.

Naked ambition

Robert Mitchum was in Cannes with his wife Dorothy on their first trip to Europe back in 1954, so the press whisked him off to Lerins Island for a photoshoot. In their inexplicable wisdom, they paired him up with Simone Silva, an upcoming (but ultimately unknown) starlet.

Silva realised it was her time to shine and promptly whipped her top off to display the two biggest hits on her CV so far. Mitchum was mortified and tried to cover her up, but the paps had their shots and history was made. Unfortunately, Silva would be dead within 3 years of the photos following a stroke caused by a debilitating diet.

Oh Lars

Lars Von Trier, the Danish enfant terrible of European cinema is well versed in causing controversy, not just with his films, but also with his words. In 2011, he announced “I’m a Nazi" while promoting ‘Melancholia’. He backed that bon mot up with “What can I say? I understand Hitler. He did some wrong things, absolutely, but I can see him sitting there in his bunker at the end … I sympathise with him, yes, a little bit.”

The festival was drawn into apologising for the remarks, and now Lars refuses to talk to the press about his films. His latest film, ‘Nymphomaniac’, was promoted with pictures of the film-maker with tape on his mouth, and he attended the film’s premiere with a T-shirt emblazoned with ‘Persona Non Grata’ in Cannes festival’s distinctive typeface.

Bikini boom

Although she didn’t have a film at the festival in 1953, French actress Brigitte Bardot hogged the headlines thanks to an extremely brief bikini. "She invented a new image of the French starlet: anti-snobbish, non-intimidating,” says Columbia film professor Edward Baron Turk. Bardot became a huge hit thanks to the exposure generated by her… ahem… exposure.

The shots also made the new-fangled bikini a huge hit in the fashion world. She’s now a virtual recluse having retired from this industry industry in 1973, but she insists that the paparazzi who ensured she was in every newspaper in the world, chose her "at random, for want of anyone better.”

Negotiation

In 2004, it wasn’t a film that caused a stir on the red carpet, rather a gang of cunning performance artists. They hit the red carpet with the word ‘Negociation’ hidden on their backs. They lined up, spelling out their message to stage a protest against French unemployment benefits and the press lapped it up.

Good job they could spell, otherwise the protest could have read “I Got In Ocean”. That wouldn’t have solved anything.

Wawaweewa!

Brigitte Bardot isn’t the only movie star to launch a swimwear fashion on the beaches of Cannes. In 2006 Sacha Baron Cohen was in town promoting his new comedy ‘Borat’, and he hit the shores in an eye-watering swimming costume dubbed “the mankini”.

OK, so it may not have had the fashion impact Bardot’s bikini snaps did, but it did launch a million stag do and festival costumes (for better or worse - probably worse), and the stunt guaranteed front pages and column inches (ahem) around the world.

Universal Farce

European muscle-heads Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren were at Cannes to promote their sci-fi action film ‘Universal Soldier’. There’d been reports of tension between the two action stars on set, so the pair played up to it on the red carpet premiere of their film.

The press had already been prepped by the Muscles From Brussels’ PR, so it was no surprise when the two play-acted some fisticuffs for the camera ensuring press coverage for their film. JCVD later admitted it was all made up saying, “It was free publicity. I’m a businessman.”

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Image credits: Rex Features