Check Book: Cannes You Dig It?
A look back at some iconic festival moments
Surprise! Blank Check has started a newsletter! Your favorite connoisseurs of context are gonna go on even more tangents, commit to even more bits, and share opinions on even more pieces of entertainment industry news because - hey, why not. Thanks for joining us!
IN THIS WEEK’S EDITION:
THE BARDI PARTY REPORT
It’s mid-May, the sun is shining, and another Cannes Film Festival is upon us. In just a few weeks time, we’ll know ALL of the politics of Ari Aster’s Eddington. I’ll know if the new Julia Ducournau movie will make me feel physically ill like her previous two. And we’ll probably all be obsessed with a German film directed by some woman I hadn’t heard of before a month ago.
But - what we really have to look forward to is my favorite aspect of Cannes - the absolutely unhinged celebrity photography.
A brief look back at some of my favorite snapshots:
I can’t wait to see what stunts get pulled this year!
LET’S CRACK OPEN THE DOSSIER
I opened this week’s dossier—for Amy Heckerling’s third feature film, National Lampoon’s European Vacation—with the following disclaimer: “Welp, this is gonna be a short one, folks.” And now that I’m writing this section of the newsletter—which is theoretically supposed to contain interesting factoids and stories that didn’t make it into this weekend’s episode of Blank Check with Griffin and David, which was about Amy Heckerling’s third feature film, National Lampoon’s European Vacation—I feel like I need to offer another disclaimer: Welp, this is gonna be a short one, folks. But, I should say, it’s not for a lack of effort! Notice the way I mentioned our show by its full title: Blank Check with Griffin and David. Or how I will not ever refer to the movie National Lampoon’s European Vacation in brief: its name is National Lampoon’s European Vacation, and National Lampoon’s European Vacation its name shall forever be!! I haven’t obviously extended a substance-less writing assignment this tortuously since some of my worst graduate school term papers, like “‘I Guess They’re More Electronic’: The Critical, Commercial, and Aesthetic Impact of Camera Choice in the Films of Andrew Bujalski” or “‘I Don’t Want Faster. I Enjoy Waiting.’: The Close-Up in Classical Film Theory and the Reception of Cinemax’s The Knick” or “Organ-ic Branding: On In-Arena Music in the Modern NBA.” (That last one should have been much better, actually—nailed the title, at least.) Ok, I'm already up to 241 words, so I think I can move onto the next—and last—bullet point.
You know, another person who once really struggled to finish the task that had been assigned to them was director Amy Heckerling, who oversaw the profoundly dissatisfactory production of her third feature film, National Lampoon’s European Vacation. (Enough of that, I’ll start calling it “the film”.) As she told Flavorwire in 2015, Heckerling was “was not very happy” while making the film. In fact, she claimed that she “couldn’t go on the set” without “a physical ticket to New York” in her possession so that she “could just go at any time”: “I had to hold it in my hand so I knew that I had a way out.”1 The production, in her view, was a “trainwreck” and “impossible.” More specifically, per Heckerling, “some of the people I had to work with were impossible.”2 It’s difficult to know who she might mean, especially when she has offered quotes like “I don’t like saying bad things about people” when asked about Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo by Taffy Brodesser-Akner for The New York Times in 2018.3 And it’s just implausible to even begin unpacking the meaning of this quote Heckerling shared with IndieWire in 2016: “I feel like you’re not supposed to bad-mouth your own stuff, because you’re the director. You should take blame for everything, you know? So, I take the blame for Chevy Chase and everything else.”4 Earlier this year, Heckerling told Empire magazine that she would take time during the shoot of National Lampoon’s European Vacation—sorry, I did it again—to “call the studio head and say, ‘I want to come home. You should find someone else to do this — a monkey could direct this better than I could.’”5 Still, though Heckerling was quite clearly “extremely miserable working on” the film, she “figured they would market it and put money into it to try and make it do well.”6 But even that stuff didn’t matter in the end, per Heckerling: “The theory that I had really didn’t hold up, [which] was that you could be a female [filmmaker] and could do something that makes money, but they still could say, ‘We don’t like it.’ You could go, ‘Well, I don’t like it either,’ but that doesn’t count. That was that.”7 And dislike it, Heckerling did: “Oh my God, I despise that movie. I just felt very, like, I don’t know if I even want to ever do this again.”8 Ok, let me do a quick check ... 663 words, seems pretty good! God, a monkey could write this better than I could. See you next week, when we unpack one of the most fascinating movies we’ve ever covered for the show. (Genuinely!)
WHAT IS THE TEAM INTO THIS WEEK?
Everyone: We’ve still got art from Blank Canvas on sale via Mutant! Don’t you want to own a custom figure of the fucked up baby from Trainspotting???: https://www.madebymutant.com/blank-canvas-exhibition
David Sims, Host: “I recommend Dead Outlaw on Broadway! Sweet! Macabre! Loud! Truly one of the best musicals i’ve seen in years!! GO”
Marie Bardi, Social Media: “I just finished reading Laurent Binet’s Perspective(s) - an epistolary comic-mystery set within the Medici court. A painter is found dead in front of his unfinished fresco! The teenage daughter of Cosimo de Medici is having an illicit affair with her father’s page! Michaelangelo and Bronzino are characters! I also saw Dead Outlaw (separately from David) and had a great time!”
AJ McKeon, Editor: “I recommend reading a novel, loving it, and then—two years later—finally watching the HBO adaptation that was already out when you first read it. Because you only vaguely remember the details, it’s like enjoying Station Eleven for the first time... all over again!”
JJ Bersch, Researcher: “I’m playing Death Stranding again.”
Alan Smithee, Pseudonymous Editor: “As the weather is getting nice in New York, I’m going to recommend my perennial nice-weather read: Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe novels. Line for line, RC might be the most entertaining writer in history. You really can’t lose with the Marlowe novels, but I’ll semi-arbitrarily recommend The Big Sleep as a starting place.”
THIS WEEK ON THE PODCAST
We’re going on a Vacation to Europe with Jon Gabrus as we discuss National Lampoon's European Vacation.
And over on Patreon, we’re cracking open the mailbag we recorded on a snowy February evening at On Air Fest. WATCH IT (that’s right, there’s video).
COMING SOON:
Flavorwire, October 19, 2015.
Empire, February 2025.
New York Times, December 5, 2018.
Empire, February 2025.
The Ringer, February 16, 2017.
New York Times, December 5, 2018.
OUTSTANDING job with those Cannes photos. God knows how many you went through. Great curation.
> As the weather is getting nice in New York, I’m going to recommend my perennial nice-weather read: Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe novels.
And then when it gets hot, you switch over to James Ellroy. Both write L.A. but you really feel the heat with Ellroy. Suit-clad detectives sweating their asses off in pre-A.C. times.
Promptly added Perspective(s) and the Station Eleven blu-ray which I bought because I loved the book and still have not watched to my list of things to do.
Thanks!