When you’re a director like David Cronenberg at the Cannes Film Festival, and you’re movie stars actors such as John Cusack, Julianne Moore, Robert Pattinson, and Mia Wasikowska, it’s only natural to have a lot of attention get thrown your way. At the press conference for Cronenberg’s latest film “Maps to the Stars,” a movie that’s about the fear, desperation, and greed that runs rampant in Hollywood, the cast receives the same type of attention that the movie’s central characters are so desperate to obtain.
Now, when asked about how accurate the film is, as far as its depiction of Hollywood, the director and the cast more-or-less agree that it’s a heightened version of the truth. That said, Cronenberg notes that there is more to the film than what may initially meet the eye: “It’s not only about Hollywood. It could be set any place where people are desperate, ambitious, greedy and it would have the same tone and ring of truth.” Cronenberg then added, “seeing [Maps to the Stars] as an attack on Hollywood is short changing the movie.” Furthermore, Cronenberg thought the film explored themes that have been prevalent in many of his other movies. All of his films, to him, are explorations that ask what it means to be a human being. In the case of “Maps to the Stars,” the movie explores a human being’s innate desire to be seen and become famous.
Unfortunately, despite the abundance of interesting questions and answers tossed about the room, there’s a strong indication that the international press does not take the film’s most famous star, Robert Pattinson, all too seriously. One reporter from Japan merely asked him to say hello to his Japanese fans, while another reporter asked what he enjoyed more: having sex with Julianne Moore in this film or Juliette Binoche in “Cosmopolis”? Don’t worry, RPatz, you keep making movies with Cronenberg and those kinds of questions will start to die out … we hope.
And as you might expect, upon being questioned about what it’s like to work with Cronenberg, the cast had nothing but kind things to say about the director. They also talk about how there was no improvisation whatsoever. Bruce Wagner’s script was so detailed and structured that, as John Cusack says, “it was an exercise in precision.”
At any rate, it seems the positive chemistry between the actors and the director paid off as our own reporter from Cannes called the film “a real return to form for the filmmaker.” Meanwhile, Julianne Moore managed to take home a Best Actress award for her performance. There’s no word yet on a U.S. release date for “Maps to the Stars,” but a fall release seems most likely at this point.