Dallas Morning News, Written By Charles Ealy
May 30th, 2002
Director Paul Thomas Anderson, known for the dark and moody dramas Boogie Nights and Magnolia, was all smiles at a media conference for his new romantic comedy, Punch-Drunk Love.
The Europeans peppered him with questions, primarily wanting him to explain the American phrase "punch-drunk."
Mr. Anderson acknowledged that the title was hard to translate but said that the movie's main character, played by Adam Sandler, "feels stuff that he can't express, so he throws punches" at walls and bathroom stalls. And when you fall in love, it's even more complicated, and you literally become punch-drunk. "At least that's how I feel when I'm in love," Mr. Anderson said.
He also fended off questions about why he chose Mr. Sandler as a star. Henri Behar of French Vogue noted that the former Saturday Night Live comic isn't known for being the type of actor to appear at Cannes, "the temple of art." Mr. Anderson just smiled, looked at the hang-dog-looking comic and said: "He looks funny. He makes me laugh. ... His ears look funny. I haven't seen him naked, but that might be funny, too."
Mr. Sandler replied rather too quickly: "Just to be honest with you, naked is not so bad."
Co-star Emily Watson, whose previous roles include Breaking the Waves and Hilary and Jackie, said she was just happy to be cast in a romantic comedy "where I don't have to die or cry."
A French critic, apparently hoping to launch into an extended debate, then asked Mr. Anderson about his theme of "incommunicability."
The director just smiled, shook his head, and said he didn't understand the question.
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Thursday, 30 May 2002
Monday, 20 May 2002
Interview: "Crazy For Love"
LA Times, Written By Kenneth Turan
May 20th, 2002
The filmmaker whose creative drive was seen in 'Boogie Nights' and 'Hard Eight' has taken on the romantic-comedy genre, and he's determined to push the limits.
CANNES, France--"It's so simple," Paul Thomas Anderson says, looking out at the rain from the marble-floored living room of the rented villa shared with about a dozen of his cast and crew just outside of town. "A camera, film, a microphone. Stuff comes in, stuff goes out. That's it."
Except that with Paul Thomas Anderson, nothing is ever quite like that. Simple is just not in the cards.
It doesn't take more than seconds in the presence of this gifted, aware 31-year-old writer-director to feel the intensity and creative zip that led to "Hard Eight," "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia." He is, in the best sense, a filmmaker who is driving everything--the audience, the form, his collaborators, himself most of all--to go further than they have before. Which is how his latest film, "Punch-Drunk Love," which premiered at the Festival de Cannes on Sunday, came to be.
The idea, Anderson explains, was to shake himself up, "to strive for a 90-minute length, to strive for romantic comedy," to not, in short, do business as usual. "I felt like I'd become pretty good to a certain extent at my job," he says. "I wanted to scare myself."
The result is a blithe misfit tango starring Adam Sandler and Emily Watson, a romantic comedy as wonderful as it is strange that expands the genre to its absurdist outer limits and makes us believe. Sandler plays a nonflying small businessman obsessed with amassing frequent flier miles, an innocent as prone to violent moods as only someone systematically squashed by seven sisters can be, while Watson is the woman who still manages to fall for him.
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were never like this, but then again, maybe they were.
"I've always loved the romantic comedy genre, especially Astaire-Rogers movies like 'Carefree' and 'The Gay Divorcee,' but they're a bit out to pasture, they've kind of become standard, like action movies," Anderson says. "These are dark, confused days for movies; stuff is not working. It's a good opportunity for small revolutions to happen, for filmmakers to feel a responsibility to mix it up a bit."
Anderson also had a long-standing passion for working with Sandler, for a very basic reason. "He's always just made me laugh, he gets me, I wanted a piece of him," the director explains. "And he's amazing in his approach. He just does it; he works from instinct, from his gut. Sometimes there's nothing more disturbing than an actor parading the work, where you say 'look at the cheese on that.' I want to see acting with a capital A when I'm in the mood for it, but sometimes it's 'back off on the fromage.'"
Anderson wrote Sandler's character of Barry Egan specifically with the actor in mind, and it's hard to imagine someone else playing the man's particular contradictions. "I wanted just to write a real guy," the director explains, "not to be afraid of getting caught in the trap of character. Writers are always worried about moments that are 'out of character,' but everyone does things they don't want to do, where you wonder 'where did that come from?' We're all a bit of a mess."
One of Egan's most noticeable traits, his determination to take advantage of a marketing loophole and accumulate huge numbers of frequent flier miles, is based on a real person, a civil engineer at UC Davis who gained 1.25 million miles by buying 12,150 cups of Healthy Choice pudding for $3,000.
"This made sense to me," says Anderson, who read about it in Time magazine. "And, for whatever reason, pudding is funny."
Egan's other defining characteristic, having seven sisters, though partially due to Anderson's passion for "high concept ideas, like the seven dictionary makers in 'Ball of Fire,' " also has a real-life connection. "I'd seen an episode of 'Cops' where the guy had his shirt off, he was all scratched up and crying; one of his sisters had beaten him up. The cops needed to take him somewhere, and he kept naming all these other sisters he couldn't go to. Someone asked how many there were and he said, 'I have seven.' And it was like, 'That poor guy.'"
Not only is some of "Punch-Drunk" based on real people, it also has real people in it. Lots of them. The four blond Mormon brothers from Utah who are the bane of Barry's existence are played by four Mormon brothers from Utah, and four of the seven sisters are related to each other (two are sisters, and two others are their cousins.) More than that, with the exception of Sandler, Watson and co-stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Luis Guzman and Mary Lynn Rajskub, everyone on screen is a nonprofessional.
"I just thought that would be more fun or more interesting, and I got a bit bored by casting sessions," Anderson explains. "You go on a location scout, you find a place with people and you say, 'We've got to make the actors look like that.' I thought, 'Why don't we just ask them if they want to be in the movie?' That's better than having 20 people outside an office waiting to say, 'More pudding, sir?' until someone says, 'You've got the job.' It saves lot of heartache and trouble."
Using real people also fit in with Anderson's overall determination to keep things as uncomplicated as possible. "Picasso said he spent his youth trying to paint like the old masters and the rest of his life trying to paint like a child," he says. "We had a plan of attack not to have a plan of attack. I told Emily to throw the ways she's worked before out the window.
"The main thing was, 'We don't know where we're starting, but we're not starting here.' OK, but what does that mean? We'll find it as we go along."
That finding turned out to take longer and be more complicated than anticipated. "I struggled initially; there were scary moments when I didn't know what I was doing," Anderson says. "We scrapped the first two weeks of shooting because I was still making the same movie. I had to educate myself on how to keep it simple."
Proving an unexpected ally was the threat of Hollywood strikes in 2001, which although they never materialized had actors so lined up with back-to-back projects that both Sandler and Watson had other movies they were committed to before filming on this one originally was scheduled to end. "That was the best thing that ever happened," the director says. "We were able to stop and then start again. We stretched the shooting and editing out over a year and a half; it just became a great accidental way to learn. So much about making movies is not conducive to any kind of creative thinking. It was a luxury to sit with it for a while."
One luxury Anderson denied himself was dunning Joe Roth, whose Revolution Studios financed the picture, for funds over and above the film's estimated $29 million to $30 million budget. "I told him, 'I'll never come ask you for more money. I can make it for this.' Movie-making can become a fair and simple game if that stuff is respected and kept to."
It is finally the filmmaking itself that means everything to Anderson.
Ask him about any aspect of this intricately put-together film, details such as the hypnotic digitally created plasma screen art by Jeremy Blake that fills the frame at key moments, and his eyes burn with the excitement of it all.
"That's the fun, that place where ideas come from, what you're seeing, doing and thinking about," he says. "I love to work."
May 20th, 2002
The filmmaker whose creative drive was seen in 'Boogie Nights' and 'Hard Eight' has taken on the romantic-comedy genre, and he's determined to push the limits.
CANNES, France--"It's so simple," Paul Thomas Anderson says, looking out at the rain from the marble-floored living room of the rented villa shared with about a dozen of his cast and crew just outside of town. "A camera, film, a microphone. Stuff comes in, stuff goes out. That's it."
Except that with Paul Thomas Anderson, nothing is ever quite like that. Simple is just not in the cards.
It doesn't take more than seconds in the presence of this gifted, aware 31-year-old writer-director to feel the intensity and creative zip that led to "Hard Eight," "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia." He is, in the best sense, a filmmaker who is driving everything--the audience, the form, his collaborators, himself most of all--to go further than they have before. Which is how his latest film, "Punch-Drunk Love," which premiered at the Festival de Cannes on Sunday, came to be.
The idea, Anderson explains, was to shake himself up, "to strive for a 90-minute length, to strive for romantic comedy," to not, in short, do business as usual. "I felt like I'd become pretty good to a certain extent at my job," he says. "I wanted to scare myself."
The result is a blithe misfit tango starring Adam Sandler and Emily Watson, a romantic comedy as wonderful as it is strange that expands the genre to its absurdist outer limits and makes us believe. Sandler plays a nonflying small businessman obsessed with amassing frequent flier miles, an innocent as prone to violent moods as only someone systematically squashed by seven sisters can be, while Watson is the woman who still manages to fall for him.
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were never like this, but then again, maybe they were.
"I've always loved the romantic comedy genre, especially Astaire-Rogers movies like 'Carefree' and 'The Gay Divorcee,' but they're a bit out to pasture, they've kind of become standard, like action movies," Anderson says. "These are dark, confused days for movies; stuff is not working. It's a good opportunity for small revolutions to happen, for filmmakers to feel a responsibility to mix it up a bit."
Anderson also had a long-standing passion for working with Sandler, for a very basic reason. "He's always just made me laugh, he gets me, I wanted a piece of him," the director explains. "And he's amazing in his approach. He just does it; he works from instinct, from his gut. Sometimes there's nothing more disturbing than an actor parading the work, where you say 'look at the cheese on that.' I want to see acting with a capital A when I'm in the mood for it, but sometimes it's 'back off on the fromage.'"
Anderson wrote Sandler's character of Barry Egan specifically with the actor in mind, and it's hard to imagine someone else playing the man's particular contradictions. "I wanted just to write a real guy," the director explains, "not to be afraid of getting caught in the trap of character. Writers are always worried about moments that are 'out of character,' but everyone does things they don't want to do, where you wonder 'where did that come from?' We're all a bit of a mess."
One of Egan's most noticeable traits, his determination to take advantage of a marketing loophole and accumulate huge numbers of frequent flier miles, is based on a real person, a civil engineer at UC Davis who gained 1.25 million miles by buying 12,150 cups of Healthy Choice pudding for $3,000.
"This made sense to me," says Anderson, who read about it in Time magazine. "And, for whatever reason, pudding is funny."
Egan's other defining characteristic, having seven sisters, though partially due to Anderson's passion for "high concept ideas, like the seven dictionary makers in 'Ball of Fire,' " also has a real-life connection. "I'd seen an episode of 'Cops' where the guy had his shirt off, he was all scratched up and crying; one of his sisters had beaten him up. The cops needed to take him somewhere, and he kept naming all these other sisters he couldn't go to. Someone asked how many there were and he said, 'I have seven.' And it was like, 'That poor guy.'"
Not only is some of "Punch-Drunk" based on real people, it also has real people in it. Lots of them. The four blond Mormon brothers from Utah who are the bane of Barry's existence are played by four Mormon brothers from Utah, and four of the seven sisters are related to each other (two are sisters, and two others are their cousins.) More than that, with the exception of Sandler, Watson and co-stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Luis Guzman and Mary Lynn Rajskub, everyone on screen is a nonprofessional.
"I just thought that would be more fun or more interesting, and I got a bit bored by casting sessions," Anderson explains. "You go on a location scout, you find a place with people and you say, 'We've got to make the actors look like that.' I thought, 'Why don't we just ask them if they want to be in the movie?' That's better than having 20 people outside an office waiting to say, 'More pudding, sir?' until someone says, 'You've got the job.' It saves lot of heartache and trouble."
Using real people also fit in with Anderson's overall determination to keep things as uncomplicated as possible. "Picasso said he spent his youth trying to paint like the old masters and the rest of his life trying to paint like a child," he says. "We had a plan of attack not to have a plan of attack. I told Emily to throw the ways she's worked before out the window.
"The main thing was, 'We don't know where we're starting, but we're not starting here.' OK, but what does that mean? We'll find it as we go along."
That finding turned out to take longer and be more complicated than anticipated. "I struggled initially; there were scary moments when I didn't know what I was doing," Anderson says. "We scrapped the first two weeks of shooting because I was still making the same movie. I had to educate myself on how to keep it simple."
Proving an unexpected ally was the threat of Hollywood strikes in 2001, which although they never materialized had actors so lined up with back-to-back projects that both Sandler and Watson had other movies they were committed to before filming on this one originally was scheduled to end. "That was the best thing that ever happened," the director says. "We were able to stop and then start again. We stretched the shooting and editing out over a year and a half; it just became a great accidental way to learn. So much about making movies is not conducive to any kind of creative thinking. It was a luxury to sit with it for a while."
One luxury Anderson denied himself was dunning Joe Roth, whose Revolution Studios financed the picture, for funds over and above the film's estimated $29 million to $30 million budget. "I told him, 'I'll never come ask you for more money. I can make it for this.' Movie-making can become a fair and simple game if that stuff is respected and kept to."
It is finally the filmmaking itself that means everything to Anderson.
Ask him about any aspect of this intricately put-together film, details such as the hypnotic digitally created plasma screen art by Jeremy Blake that fills the frame at key moments, and his eyes burn with the excitement of it all.
"That's the fun, that place where ideas come from, what you're seeing, doing and thinking about," he says. "I love to work."
Sunday, 19 May 2002
Interview: Paul Thomas Anderson Brings Adam Sandler, Emily Watson Together In Off-Beat Romance
Associated Press, Written By Jocelyn Noveck
May 19th, 2002
CANNES, France - It all started with pudding.
Paul Thomas Anderson, the talented young director of "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia," read an article about a guy who bought a lot of pudding to take advantage of a frequent-flyer promotion.
Then he got Adam Sandler to be in his movie.
Thus was born "Punch-Drunk Love," starring Sandler and Emily Watson, a film that's described as a romantic comedy but has lots more edge than most romantic comedies.
The film, one of the most highly anticipated at Cannes this year, should play well with Anderson fans. But it may be less successful with European audiences, who liked "Magnolia" but have little knowledge or appreciation of Sandler and his comedy.
The film is a departure for director and stars alike.
After the long and weighty "Magnolia," Anderson wanted to make a lighter film — and a shorter one as well. "Punch-Drunk Love" clocks in at 90 minutes. "I wanted to save everybody a little bit of time in their day," the director says.
As for Sandler, he's best known for his comic turns on "Saturday Night Live" and for movies like "Big Daddy" and "The Wedding Singer" — not hip, offbeat films like Anderson's. And Watson, the star of "Breaking the Waves" and "Angela's Ashes," usually inhabits much more serious fare.
Anderson says he chose Sandler because "I love him. I absolutely think he's the greatest. I fell in love with him when I saw Saturday Night Live."
Watson says she had lunch with Anderson and told him: "I don't want to cry or die anymore." He said fine.
The idea came from an article in Time magazine. David Phillips, a civil engineer in California, had figured out how to accumulate 1.25 million frequent-flyer miles by buying 12,150 cups of Healthy Choice pudding for dlrs 3,000.
Anderson met with Phillips and bought his story. It was the launching point for Sandler's character, Barry Egan, who runs a business out of a warehouse and is hounded by seven pushy sisters, whose abuse has left him unable to fall in love.
One night, he uses a phone sex service, just to talk to someone. The sleazy operators of the service then try to blackmail him, chasing him down at work and home to demand money, then sending a bunch of lowlifes to rough him up.
At the same time, Barry is falling for a mysterious woman, Lena (Watson). The budding relationship will force him to master some of his darker impulses — like bashing down the glass doors at his sister's house or smashing up a restaurant bathroom while on a date.
When Lena goes to Hawaii on a business trip, Barry follows. There, the two fall in love — "punch-drunk" love. But trouble awaits back home in California, where the lowlifes are back, smashing into Barry's car and injuring Lena.
In a sign that love has given him strength, the normally timid Barry fights back with a crowbar. Then he goes all the way to Utah to track down the phone sex operator, an easily excitable sort played by Anderson regular Philip Seymour Hoffman. The scene in which Barry asserts himself, getting his pursuer to back off, is among the most affecting in the movie.
Running through the film is the pudding scheme; it is part of Egan's plan to win Lena and keep her.
Sandler is well aware that few expected him to surface in a serious film, even one that's termed a romantic comedy. He joked about it at a news conference on Sunday, when a journalist asked a long and convoluted question in French that no one understood.
"It's the why-Adam Sandler question again," Sandler offered.
May 19th, 2002
CANNES, France - It all started with pudding.
Paul Thomas Anderson, the talented young director of "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia," read an article about a guy who bought a lot of pudding to take advantage of a frequent-flyer promotion.
Then he got Adam Sandler to be in his movie.
Thus was born "Punch-Drunk Love," starring Sandler and Emily Watson, a film that's described as a romantic comedy but has lots more edge than most romantic comedies.
The film, one of the most highly anticipated at Cannes this year, should play well with Anderson fans. But it may be less successful with European audiences, who liked "Magnolia" but have little knowledge or appreciation of Sandler and his comedy.
The film is a departure for director and stars alike.
After the long and weighty "Magnolia," Anderson wanted to make a lighter film — and a shorter one as well. "Punch-Drunk Love" clocks in at 90 minutes. "I wanted to save everybody a little bit of time in their day," the director says.
As for Sandler, he's best known for his comic turns on "Saturday Night Live" and for movies like "Big Daddy" and "The Wedding Singer" — not hip, offbeat films like Anderson's. And Watson, the star of "Breaking the Waves" and "Angela's Ashes," usually inhabits much more serious fare.
Anderson says he chose Sandler because "I love him. I absolutely think he's the greatest. I fell in love with him when I saw Saturday Night Live."
Watson says she had lunch with Anderson and told him: "I don't want to cry or die anymore." He said fine.
The idea came from an article in Time magazine. David Phillips, a civil engineer in California, had figured out how to accumulate 1.25 million frequent-flyer miles by buying 12,150 cups of Healthy Choice pudding for dlrs 3,000.
Anderson met with Phillips and bought his story. It was the launching point for Sandler's character, Barry Egan, who runs a business out of a warehouse and is hounded by seven pushy sisters, whose abuse has left him unable to fall in love.
One night, he uses a phone sex service, just to talk to someone. The sleazy operators of the service then try to blackmail him, chasing him down at work and home to demand money, then sending a bunch of lowlifes to rough him up.
At the same time, Barry is falling for a mysterious woman, Lena (Watson). The budding relationship will force him to master some of his darker impulses — like bashing down the glass doors at his sister's house or smashing up a restaurant bathroom while on a date.
When Lena goes to Hawaii on a business trip, Barry follows. There, the two fall in love — "punch-drunk" love. But trouble awaits back home in California, where the lowlifes are back, smashing into Barry's car and injuring Lena.
In a sign that love has given him strength, the normally timid Barry fights back with a crowbar. Then he goes all the way to Utah to track down the phone sex operator, an easily excitable sort played by Anderson regular Philip Seymour Hoffman. The scene in which Barry asserts himself, getting his pursuer to back off, is among the most affecting in the movie.
Running through the film is the pudding scheme; it is part of Egan's plan to win Lena and keep her.
Sandler is well aware that few expected him to surface in a serious film, even one that's termed a romantic comedy. He joked about it at a news conference on Sunday, when a journalist asked a long and convoluted question in French that no one understood.
"It's the why-Adam Sandler question again," Sandler offered.
Saturday, 18 May 2002
Interview: "US Comic Adam Sandler Makes Splash At Cannes"
Variety, Written By Jodie Diderich
May 19th, 2002
CANNES, France - Adam Sandler, the accident-prone comic hero of simplistic U.S. hits like "Big Daddy" and "The Waterboy," gate-crashed the rarefied world of art house film Sunday.
Sandler performs a 180-degree turn in "Punch-Drunk Love," a romantic comedy with a twist directed by cult independent director Paul Thomas Anderson.
The New York-born Sandler is emotionally wrenching as Barry Egan, a small business owner brow-beaten by his seven sisters and unable to fall in love until he meets Lena, a mysterious woman played by Emily Watson.
It was also a complete change of direction for Anderson, whose last movie was the three-hour lyrical opus "Magnolia" with Tom Cruise.
The much shorter "Punch-Drunk Love" is competing for the coveted Palme d'Or at the world's biggest film festival, where Anderson said he was thrilled to surprise audiences with his unlikely choice for the lead role.
"I love him. I absolutely think he's the greatest," said the director, who spotted Sandler on the cult U.S. comedy show "Saturday Night Live" in the early 1990s.
"He really just made me laugh, and he walks very funny and his head is kind of funny, and his ear is a little bit funny. I haven't seen him naked but that might be funny," he said.
Sandler interjected: "Actually, just to be honest with you, naked is not so bad."
The movie also gives Watson a chance to break free from the tragic characters she has played in films like "Breaking the Waves" and "Hilary and Jackie."
"I said I didn't want to cry and I didn't want to die," she said. "It's very delicious being in a romantic film."
Although the message of "Punch-Drunk Love" is ultimately redeeming, it is a dark film that explores lonely characters adrift in a world of strip malls and soulless apartments.
Egan is a monument of barely-suppressed rage, exploding in destructive fits at unexpected moments.
"I think he's a bit confused, he's a bit angry, and a lot of it has to do with how he grew up," said Anderson. "It's about that feeling when you can't say something, and you just start to throw punches."
Also in weekend competition was "Demonlover" by French director Olivier Assayas, a complex thriller about a corporate battle to distribute Japanese pornographic comics via the Internet.
"I wanted to touch on the complexity with which images interact with our world today," Assayas told Reuters in an interview.
"Within a very short period of time, we will be able to recreate in animation form characters who will have a very striking resemblance with humans," he said.
The dense plot failed to win over critics, who booed the film at its screening.
Among the prime contenders for the top prize is British director Mike Leigh, who doffed his cap to Cannes, thanking the festival for resisting domination by Hollywood.
Leigh, whose gritty drama "All Or Nothing" won critical acclaim, said of Cannes: "It is beyond the reach of Hollywood. No matter what they do, they can't get at it. It's beyond their grip."
May 19th, 2002
CANNES, France - Adam Sandler, the accident-prone comic hero of simplistic U.S. hits like "Big Daddy" and "The Waterboy," gate-crashed the rarefied world of art house film Sunday.
Sandler performs a 180-degree turn in "Punch-Drunk Love," a romantic comedy with a twist directed by cult independent director Paul Thomas Anderson.
The New York-born Sandler is emotionally wrenching as Barry Egan, a small business owner brow-beaten by his seven sisters and unable to fall in love until he meets Lena, a mysterious woman played by Emily Watson.
It was also a complete change of direction for Anderson, whose last movie was the three-hour lyrical opus "Magnolia" with Tom Cruise.
The much shorter "Punch-Drunk Love" is competing for the coveted Palme d'Or at the world's biggest film festival, where Anderson said he was thrilled to surprise audiences with his unlikely choice for the lead role.
"I love him. I absolutely think he's the greatest," said the director, who spotted Sandler on the cult U.S. comedy show "Saturday Night Live" in the early 1990s.
"He really just made me laugh, and he walks very funny and his head is kind of funny, and his ear is a little bit funny. I haven't seen him naked but that might be funny," he said.
Sandler interjected: "Actually, just to be honest with you, naked is not so bad."
The movie also gives Watson a chance to break free from the tragic characters she has played in films like "Breaking the Waves" and "Hilary and Jackie."
"I said I didn't want to cry and I didn't want to die," she said. "It's very delicious being in a romantic film."
Although the message of "Punch-Drunk Love" is ultimately redeeming, it is a dark film that explores lonely characters adrift in a world of strip malls and soulless apartments.
Egan is a monument of barely-suppressed rage, exploding in destructive fits at unexpected moments.
"I think he's a bit confused, he's a bit angry, and a lot of it has to do with how he grew up," said Anderson. "It's about that feeling when you can't say something, and you just start to throw punches."
Also in weekend competition was "Demonlover" by French director Olivier Assayas, a complex thriller about a corporate battle to distribute Japanese pornographic comics via the Internet.
"I wanted to touch on the complexity with which images interact with our world today," Assayas told Reuters in an interview.
"Within a very short period of time, we will be able to recreate in animation form characters who will have a very striking resemblance with humans," he said.
The dense plot failed to win over critics, who booed the film at its screening.
Among the prime contenders for the top prize is British director Mike Leigh, who doffed his cap to Cannes, thanking the festival for resisting domination by Hollywood.
Leigh, whose gritty drama "All Or Nothing" won critical acclaim, said of Cannes: "It is beyond the reach of Hollywood. No matter what they do, they can't get at it. It's beyond their grip."