TORRENTIAL rain and a post-midnight start did not deter hundreds of guests from turning up on the Cannes beach for the party following the world premise of The Van on Sunday night. The late hour was determined by the premiere's starting time of 10.30 p.m. To cope with the weather, the party was held in a covered restaurant on the beach.
More than a hundred hopefuls stood outside in the pouring rain as the invited guests streamed in. Given the theme of The Van, it was appropriate that waiters moved among the guests handing out cartons of sausages and chips, which were washed down with copious quantities of Jameson and bottled Guinness. It was assumed all round that the standards of hygiene would have been a very good deal higher than those of Larry and Bimbo's chipper in the movie.
Roddy Doyle was distinctly unimpressed by the pomp surrounding the official Cannes screenings, which are strictly tenue de soiree and involving a long, slow walk up the red carpet of the Palais steps before entering the cavernous auditorium. "It's stupid," he said, his black-tie removed for the party. "It's bollox."
Irish actor Donal O'Kelly, who had been on stage in Glasgow the previous night, flew into Cannes on Sunday afternoon and found himself faced with 20 interviews before the pre-screening dinner for the movie. His co-star, Colm Meaney, now a Cannes regular, was in exuberant form, as were the film's director, Stephen Frears and its producer, Lynda Myles, who is a partner with Roddy Doyle in Deadly Films, the company which made The Van.
Busy Irish actor Liam Cunningham turned up at the party, as did Eric Clapton, who co-wrote the music for the movie; Chris, Eccleston, star of television's Cracker and Our Friends In The North and the Cannes entry, Jude Jeremy Thomas, the Oscar-winning producer of The Last Emperor, who has two films competing at Cannes this year and Andrew Eaton, who produced Roddy Doyle's Family and will reunite with him on Famine, Doyle's screenplay based on the novel by Liam O'Flaherty.
The very lively party was still in full swing at 3 a.m. as guests answered in the negative to the query, "Have yis no hotels to go to?" By Tuesday afternoon, Roddy Doyle was Canned out of it. He turned up for a splendid BBC Films buffet in the Majestic hotel before heading for the airport in Nice. "I've had enough of it," he said. "I'm looking forward to going home to Dublin."