May 22, 2025<\/strong> \u00a0|\u00a0 \u201cSo how come Rambo isn\u2019t coming here, eh?\u201d<\/p>\n The question, posed to me with a delicate mixture of playfulness and contempt,\u00a0came from a bartender at the Hotel Martinez, reflecting the attitude of many\u00a0locals during the opening day of the 1986 Cannes Film Festival. In normal times, the bartender likely would have taken a slightly less snarky approach to his opening conversational gambit with any of the journalists covering the annual invasion by filmmakers, industry executives, tireless publicists and megawatt movie stars in his French Riviera resort city.<\/p>\n But May 1986 was not a normal time.<\/p>\n In the wake of then-recent terrorist acts in Europe and, arguably more important, the U.S. air strikes in Libya in retaliation for the bombing of a West Berlin disco just weeks earlier, many A-list celebrities \u2014 and yes, quite a few journalists \u2014 had called off previously ballyhooed appearances at the prestigious celebration of cinema, citing the danger of possible terrorist activity.<\/p>\n As had been widely reported in the international press, Sylvester Stallone did indeed cancel his tentative plans to attend the fest. Other notables \u2014 including Steven Spielberg, Whoopi Goldberg, Kim Basinger, and Martin Scorsese \u2014 also sent their regrets.<\/p>\n There were scads of stories in trade and mainstream papers about the incredible shrinking contingent of celebrities. Aljean Harmetz of The New York Times<\/em> noted how \u201cmany Hollywoodians are reassessing their plans\u201d to make their Cannes pilgrimage, and quoted Barbara Hershey, who\u2019d originally been announced as an attendee to promote Woody Allen\u2019s Hannah and Her Sisters<\/em>, thusly: \u201cProbably if I were a single person, I\u2019d go. But part of my responsibility to my son is not to put myself in any potential danger.\u201d<\/p>\n As I told an inquiring colleague: \u201cIf someone could get close enough to Godard with a pie, maybe someone else could get close enough to another director with a gun.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Depending on who you talked to, those who decided not to attend Cannes \u201986 were either needlessly skittish or scrupulously wise. In any event, local police and festival officials took the threat of terrorism very seriously: Traffic was not allowed to flow directly in front of the Palais du Festival, the festival headquarters; uniformed police were more visible, and more numerous, than in previous years along the Boulevard de la Croisette outside; and festival workers were even more diligent than usual in their inspection of photo IDs flashed by anyone entering screenings.<\/p>\n The late David Overby, representing the Toronto International Film Festival (then still known as the Festival of Festivals) in Cannes, said early rumors suggested security police would check the packages and briefcases of everyone entering the Palais du Festival. \u201cBut can you imagine how long that would take!\u201d he snorted incredulously. \u201cWe\u2019d be here for 40 years, not two weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n In her New York Times<\/em> curtain-raiser, Harmetz quoted Michel Bonnet, general secretary of the festival, as warning that, while there would not necessarily be any frisking of individual attendees, security would be tightened to an unprecedented degree.<\/p>\n \u201cCannes is always a hot place, and every year we put under examination the hot spots,\u201d he said, adding: \u201cTo enter the Palais this year, you will need to have your festival identity card. Sometimes people forget their cards and say, \u2018I\u2019m a VIP\u2019 and we let them in, but this year we won\u2019t let them in. We will have more police in civilian clothes. And we will recommend to the hotels on the Croisette not to let unknown people enter their lobbies.\u201d<\/p>\n No joke: It got to the point prior to Cannes \u201986 that journalists were interviewing other journalists about whether or not they would be attending the festival.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n To be sure, more than a few Cannes residents thought festival officials, and the international press, were exaggerating the possible danger. \u201cIt\u2019s all quite a bother, really,\u201d a clerk at the Cannes English Bookshop told me. \u201cThey\u2019ve set up barricades that make it very difficult to park where I usually do.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd the newspeople! The stories they\u2019ve been telling! Last night, I got a phone call from my mother, who lives in Australia. She wanted me to get out of here immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n No joke: It got to the point prior to Cannes \u201986 that journalists were interviewing other journalists about whether or not they would be attending the festival. \u201cI suspect,\u201d one scribe responded, \u201cthat the people who are making a big deal about not going weren\u2019t going anyway and have never gone before.\u201d<\/p>\n Maybe so. Truth to tell, however, even though I had been assigned to cover the fest in my capacity as film critic for the now-shuttered Houston Post<\/em>, I was a tad anxious about actually going there, if only because \u2014 yes, I\u2019ll admit it \u2014 I didn\u2019t want to be caught in the line of fire.<\/p>\n At the previous year\u2019s Cannes, Jean-Luc Godard was hit in the face with a cream pie, tossed by what Charles Champlin of The Los Angeles Times<\/em> later described as \u201can iconoclastic Belgian journalist.\u201d As I told an inquiring colleague: \u201cIf someone could get close enough to Godard with a pie, maybe someone else could get close enough to another director with a gun.\u201d<\/p>\n In the end, fortunately, the most serious attacks on film celebrities \u2014 and festival jury members \u2014 were nonlethal brickbats tossed by critics and other media types.<\/p>\n As usual, there were complaints about the winner of the Palme d\u2019or. In this case, it was The Mission<\/em>, director Roland Joff\u00e9\u2019s lavishly produced historical drama of religious conversion and cultural imperialism in 18th century South America. The epic, featuring Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons in lead roles, and a stunning score by Ennio Morricone that would late nab an Oscar nomination, premiered as \u201ca work in progress\u201d \u2014 prompting some cynics to suggest, if not bluntly claim, that producer David Puttnam and others had been promised the Golden Palm weeks earlier, in return for their making the film available for a world premiere at Cannes.<\/p>\n Not at all surprisingly, festival president Gilles Jacob heatedly denied rumors of a rigged ballot. \u201cIf you ask about this,\u201d he said after the closing-night awards presentation, \u201cyou attack the integrity of every member of our jury. With another jury, we might have had another prize. But we have complete confidence in the prize they awarded.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh, no, Joe,\u201d [Polanski] said, offering me another glass of wine and gesturing that I should return to my chair. \u201cI don\u2019t have another interview for a while.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The press was even harsher in appraising the festival\u2019s opening-night film, Roman Polanski\u2019s long-planned and massively disappointing Pirates<\/em>, a flat-footed comedy-adventure film starring Walter Matthau (another Cannes \u201986 no-show) as a blustering buccaneer named Captain Red.<\/p>\n A massive chunk of the budget went toward construction of a period-perfect Spanish galleon that was docked throughout the festival in the Cannes harbor. It remained there for years after Pirates<\/em> bombed at the box-office, perhaps serving as a reminder to other -filmmakers of just how easily dreams can turn into nightmares.<\/p>\n