Selections from Roger Ebert’s Cannes coverage…
Flashback #5: The Festival Comes Into Focus
It was halfway into the second week of Roger’s fifth year at Cannes that the critic felt he had finally got “the festival into focus.” This magnificent essay written at the 1980 festival details how “unreality is the only reality” on the Riviera, epitomized by the phony press credentials issued out by Roger’s beloved friend, Billy “Silver Dollar” Baxter. “Baxter’s
credentials have become widely respected and observed at Cannes simply because
they look good: They have no official validity at all but you wear them around
your neck on a chain and you look important at a festival where appearances are
everything. Baxter has figured out the rules of festival gamesmanship and has
simply bypassed them. It is a stroke of simple genius.”
