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Over the years of working as a film critic in NYC, I had many opportunities to interview or meet celebrities. Many Cannes and New York Festivals enabled me to see and meet some of Cinema's finest talents. Here I've compiled a collection of photos I took on those special occasions. Some of these talented people are no longer with us, so it's especially touching to revisit them here.
Enjoy.
THE SMARTEST FILM CRITIC IN THE WORLD, or something quite like it.
Lunch with Catherine Deneuve at Cannes — "Persepolis"
Guillermo det Toro & Ivana Baquero in Cannes — "Pan's Labyrinth"
Michelle Monahan & Val Kilmer in Cannes — "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang"
Robert Downey Jr. & Val Kilmer in Cannes
Jean Reno & Audrey Tautou in Cannes — "The DaVinci Code"
Neil Rosen & Cole at the Fox Searchlight Party
Penelope Cruz & Pedro Almodovar in Cannes
Jason Ritter & Don Roos in NYC — "Happy Endings"
Paul Thomas Anderson & Daniel Day-Lewis in NYC
Richard Linklater & Eric Schlosser in Cannes — "Fast Food Nation"
Werner Herzog in NYC — "Grizzly Man"
Wim Wenders in Cannes — "Don't Come Knockin'"
Sam Shepard in Cannes — "Don't Come Knockin'"
Quentin Tarantino in Cannes 2004
Norman Jewison in NYC — "The Statement"
Doug Jones & Richard Jenkins in NYC — "The Shape of Water"
Lee Daniels in NYC — "The Paperboy"
Tom Hanks in Cannes — "The DaVinci Code"
Cillian Murphy & Pádraic Delaney — "The Wind That Shakes The Barley"
Malcolm McLeren in Cannes — "Fast Food Nation"
Tom Arnold in NYC — "Gardens of the Night"
Keanu Reeves in Cannes — "A Scanner Darkly"
Micky Rourke, Darren Aronofsky, Marisa Tomei — "The Wrestler"
Neil Cohen ("Chief Zabu") on La Grande Bouffe (The Big Feast)
Jim Jarmusch in Cannes — "Gimme Danger"
Iggy Pop in Cannes — "Gimme Danger"
Scarlett Johansson — "Girl With A Pearl Earring"
Elle Fanning in Cannes — "The Neon Demon"
Nicolas Winding Refn in Cannes — "The Neon Demon"
Atom Egoyan in Cannes — "Where the Truth Lies"
Rachel Blanchard in Cannes — "Where The Truth Lies"
Sir Anthony Hopkins "The World's Fastest Indian"
Jim Jarmusch in Cannes — "Broken Flowers"
Ken Loach in Cannes — "The Wind That Shakes The Barley"
Roger Donaldson — "The World's Fastest Indian"
Errol Morris in NYC — "Standard Operating Procedure"
Colin Ferrel in NYC — "In Bruges"
Ellen (nee Elliot) Page — "Hard Candy"
Mark Ruffalo in NYC — "In The Cut"
Agnès Jaoui at the New York Film Festival
Stew & Spike Lee in NYC — "Passing Strange"
Clive Owen — "The International"
Mai Masri ("3000 Nights") on La Grande Bouffe (The Big Feast)
Nick Stahl — "The Door In The Floor"
Carice van Houten — "Black Book"
Taylor Sheridan, Chris Pine & Ben Foster in Cannes
Chris Pine & Ben Foster in Cannes — "Hell or High Water"
Harvey Pekar in Cannes — "American Splendor"
Richard Schickel & Geraldine Chaplin
William Friedkin in Cannes — "Bug"
Hector Babenco in Cannes — "Carandiru"
Natalie Portman in NYC — "V For Vendetta"
Uma Thurman in NYC — "My Super Ex-Girlfriend"
Catherine Zeta-Jones in NYC — "No Reservations"
Michael K. Williams & Ally Sheedy — "Life During Wartime"
Christopher Sherwood ("All Is Vanity") on La Grande Bouffe (The Big Feast)
Cole with Jason Ritter & Don Roos — "Happy Endings"
Michael Somerville on La Grande Bouffe (The Big Feast)
Michelle Williams at the New York Film Festival — "My Week With Marilyn"
Heath Ledger in NYC — "I'm Not There"
Don Cheadle & Emayatzy Corinealdi — "Miles Ahead"
Rick Crom ("Oh, Rick") on La Grande Bouffe (The Big Feast)
Mandy Moore & Justin Theroux in NYC
Matthew Fox in NYC — "Vantage Point"
Vincent Gallo in Cannes — "Brown Bunny"
Guillermo del Toro in NYC — "The Shape of Water"
Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe & Robyn Hitchcock in NYC
Martin Scorsese — "Shine A Light"
Keith Richards & Charlie Watts in NYC — "Shine A Light"
Daniel Craig in NYC — "Layer Cake"
Cuba Gooding Jr. in NYC — "Dirty"
Leonardo DiCaprio in NYC — "The Departed"
Forest Whitaker in NYC — "Panic Room"
Gretchen Mol in NYC — "The Notorious Bettie Page"
Gael Garcia Bernal in Cannes — "Babel"
Alejandro G. Iñárritu in Cannes — "Babel"
Pierce Brosnan at The Essex House
Jeremy Workman — "The World Before Your Feet"
Côte d’Azur, June 1, 1968.
"Actress Catherine Deneuve is standing on Pampelonne beach, near Saint-Tropez, for the shooting of La Chamade by Alain Cavalier, adapted from the novel by Françoise Sagan. She plays Lucile, who leads a worldly and superficial life, tinged with ease and a taste for luxury. Her heart beats frantically, hurriedly, passionately. Like the heart of cinema that the Festival de Cannes celebrates every year: its lively and embodied pulse can be heard everywhere. The heart of the 7th Art - of its artists, professionals, amateurs, press - beats like a drum, to the rhythm of the urgency that its eternal nature imposes."
"The actress of Peau d'Âne is an embodiment of cinema, far from what is conventional or appropriate. Without compromise and always in tune with her convictions, even if it means going against the grain of the times. She is the muse of Jacques Demy, Agnès Varda, Luis Buñuel, François Truffaut, Marco Ferreri, Manoel de Oliveira, André Téchiné, Emmanuelle Bercot or Arnaud Desplechin. Her collaborations are in the pantheon of immense filmmakers of yesterday and today. Catherine is the link between them all. For more than 60 years, the greatest French star has never stopped shooting, reinventing herself, experimenting, daring to do counterintuitive work or first films. An icon who has never stood still and has kept her art alive. Deneuve embodies in her very own way the richness of the cinema that the Festival wants to defend: auteur films but also quality popular films."
"Four years before 1968, Catherine Deneuve illuminated Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which won the Palme d'or in 1964. The following year, Repulsion by Roman Polanski won the Silver Bear in Berlin. This was followed by A Matter of Resistance by Jean-Paul Rappeneau, The Young Girls of Rochefort by Jacques Demy and Luis Buñuel’s Belle de jour."
"From then on, hers will be a path of glory, studded with masterpieces and commitments that will shape the portrait of a star as well as that of a woman of convictions. For Catherine Deneuve also co-signed the "Manifesto of the 343" in 1971, demanding the legalization of abortion on one hand and a collective text in 2018 in which a hundred women reject, "puritanism, denunciation and any form of expeditious justice” on the other hand."
"Catherine Deneuve also starred in Indochine by Régis Wargnier, which remains, to this day, the last French winner, in 1993, of the Oscar for best international film. In 1994, she was Vice President of the Jury headed by Clint Eastwood which awarded the Palme d’or to Pulp Fiction by Quentin Tarantino. In 2000, Dancer in the Dark by Lars von Trier was the second Palme d'or in her filmography. In 2005 she received an Honorary Palme d'or and in 2008, under the presidency of Sean Penn, the Special Prize of the 61st Festival for her entire career. In 2016, Catherine Deneuve was awarded the Prix Lumière which she dedicated "to the farmers", thus taking everyone by surprise once again."
"Joyful, bold-faced and romantic, a young woman with long blond hair smiles, confidently, at her future. It is a certain form of magic that Catherine Deneuve embodies - pure, incandescent and sometimes transgressive. It is this unspeakable magic that the 76th International Film Festival conveys with this timeless poster. To reiterate the glorious present of cinema and to envisage its future full of promise. Catherine Deneuve stands for what cinema should never stop being: elusive, daring, irreverent. Something self-evident: a necessity."
The official poster of the 76th Festival de Cannes was created by Hartland Villa (Lionel Avignon, Stefan de Vivies) from a photo by Jack Garofalo on the set of La Chamade, a film directed by Alain Cavalier starring Catherine Deneuve, Michel Piccoli and Roger van Hool. Photo credits: Jack Garofalo/Paris Match/Scoop Poster credits: Photo © Jack Garofalo/Paris Match/Scoop – Graphic design © Hartland Villa