- guardian.co.uk, Sunday May 20 2007 00.36 BST
Naked temptresses adorn the posters. I wonder if I could get Martine McCutcheon on board...
I get lost in the market behind the Palais at Cannes. I've been coming to this particular section of the festival for three years now, strangely drawn to its gaudy merchandise, its slaloming buyers and general air of freewheeling optimism. But I've never actually been unable to find my way out again - until today.
Sandwiched between the Croisette and the coast, the Marché is enormous. It occupies three vast tracts of floorspace (possibly more) and the area is divided into carpeted rat runs that thread their way through a bewildering array of stalls flogging movies from around the globe.
Some of these movies actually exist, but many do not and never actually will. All we see are the mocked-up posters advertising demon-monsters, gimlet-eyed yakuza and the bared backs of female temptresses. Some of the stalls are literally stalls, the ones you might find in a city bazaar. Others are like open-plan offices, with sofas to crash on, water coolers and coffee machines.
I suspect the place has spread since the last time I visited. It seems to go forever, and many of the stalls seem to be sporting the same posters, which makes it impossible to get your bearings and retrace your steps. There are electric lights overhead and obscure signs that lead nowhere; I can't see daylight and the stairs only seem to lead me to another section of the Marché.
A woman smiles brightly from one of the stalls. "Which country are you buying for?"
I tell her that I'm not a buyer, I'm press. I don't tell her I'm lost. I'm too embarrassed to mention it.
Finally I reach the far corner of the Marché, a weird hinterland where the bustle subsides and one can spy a blank wall in the distance. Out here there are fewer stalls, but plenty of vacant lots; small carpeted areas where one might conceivably set up shop.
And it sets me wondering. If I had simply picked up a few freebie posters on the way, I could do just that. I could sit on one of those chairs, tack the posters to the wall and demand that passers-by told me which country they were buying for.
Better still, I could mock up my own posters. I could dream up monsters and crashing cars and a putative cast of C-list talent. Martine McCutcheon! Gary Stretch! Would anyone actually know? How long would it take before they found me out and kicked me on to the street?
Maybe it wouldn't be such an illegitimate exercise. Is it really so different from what a lot of these sellers are doing? Is it really so different from what a lot of producers are doing? There is an old maxim that pretty much anyone can refer to themselves as a film producer, because we pretty much all have some vague project in some vague stage of development. Even if it is just a semi-autobiographical wisp of an idea about an idiotic London journalist who got lost in the Super-Marché.
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