Cannes Film Festival director Thierry Fremaux made international headlines when he instituted a ban on selfies on the Palais red carpet in 2015. “You never look as ugly as you do in a selfie,” Fremaux said at the time.
While the ban never really got enforced, his comments have (sort of) been given new life on a button pinned to the badge lanyards handed out to journalists as part of the official Cannes press bag.
“I’m so pathetic: I took a selfie on the red carpet,” reads the button, one in a series that has many journalists doing double takes over the tongue-in-cheek gags.
According to a Marche du Film staffer, a festival employee came up with the phrases, some of which were translated to English while others were kept in French. The playful lines include: “It’s the latest by what’s-his-name, the guy who did that other movie”; “What can you do with your badge?”; “What won the Palme d’Or last year?”; “But we do work in Cannes”; and, in an apparent reference to 2015’s “Flatgate” scandal revolving around improper footwear at gala premieres: “My dream: To walk the red carpet in flip-flops.”
