Picture the scene. A journalist flying to the Venice film festival earlier this week is wheeling her luggage through the duty-free shop on her way to the gate. Pausing to glance at the illuminated perfume ads gazing at her from among the whiskey bottles and the Toblerones bigger than cricket bats, she sees the face of Zendaya, the 27-year-old star of the Spider-Man and Dune franchises, her hair rippling against a violet sky as she sits astride a white steed to promote Lancôme’s fragrance Idôle.
It is an eye-catching image, but also a bittersweet one. The journalist finds herself dabbing away a tear as she realises that this is the closest she will get to Zendaya for the foreseeable future. She scurries off to catch her flight, pondering the strange and starless universe she is about to enter.
Melodramatic? Only a little. After all, it was the prospect of Zendaya’s no-show at Venice this year, in accordance with the Sag-Aftra strike, that led Amazon Studios to remove her new film, Luca Guadagnino’s tennis drama Challengers, from its slot as the festival’s curtain-raiser.
Without her promotional push, there was no point proceeding. (The film’s US release, originally set for mid-September, has been shunted to April.)
Zendaya isn’t the only one who won’t get an Italian stamp on her passport this autumn. Emma Stone (the star of Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things) and Michael Fassbender (David Fincher’s The Killer) are among those absent from the festival. Adam Driver and Penélope Cruz, the stars of Michael Mann’s drama Ferrari, are permitted to attend because Mann’s film has been awarded a waiver due to its status as a non-AMTFP production (that is the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents all the big studios and streaming platforms).
There is a general feeling, though, that the optics of promoting a movie during a widespread strike are unflattering; there is always the chance that Driver, Cruz and others will opt out of the usual round of magazine interviews rather than risk looking like scabs. The way things stand, it may be weeks or even months before many A-list actors hear the question: “So, what attracted you to this project?”
Patrick Heidmann, a freelance film journalist for Zeit Online and Berliner Zeitung, has already noticed the difference on the ground this year. “It’s definitely not business as usual,” he tells me from Venice on Wednesday evening. “On a regular opening day, crowds start gathering at the red carpet in the morning. If the Guadagnino film had been opening the festival, there would’ve been hundreds of Zendaya fans here this morning. Instead, it was more like 20 people.
“Also, everybody is talking about the strike. Journalists are complaining about the lack of eyecatching interviews. Buyers seem to be very worried about the lack of interesting US films, which we’ll feel next year. And all the PR people I’ve spoken to are annoyed, because they still don’t know if any of their talent is coming and if so what they’ll do.”
Film festivals are about movies, but stars are considered an essential part of the ecosystem, generating interest far beyond cinephile circles. “What they chiefly bring is publicity and, because of publicity, sponsorship,” says the film critic and writer Hannah McGill, who ran the Edinburgh international film festival from 2007 to 2010. “They bring in high-level press attendance, which in itself raises the profile of your event, which means you have a wider choice of content. I was never wholly convinced stars were as important for audiences – it’s more like a quick way for press to judge a festival without being on the inside of it and watching its films. Still, it mattered because it was seen to matter and, of course, it did make for excitement and glamour.”
The Venice lineup has plenty of recognisable names this year from behind the camera: Richard Linklater, Sofia Coppola, Ava DuVernay, Harmony Korine and Ryusuke Hamaguchi are some of the film-makers joining Lanthimos, Fincher and Mann. There was a ripple of excitement this week when Bradley Cooper was snapped arriving on the Lido, although it later came to light that he was there only to complete checks on his film Maestro, which he wrote and directed and in which he also plays Leonard Bernstein. If it’s headlines the festival is after, the inclusion of films by the #MeToo-tainted trio of Woody Allen, Roman Polanski and Luc Besson will guarantee those, for good or for ill.
But can any of these names compensate for the dearth of movie stars? Heidmann thinks not. “As hyped as cineastes are about Fincher, Mann and so on, nothing beats the silly hysteria of Harry Styles or Timothée Chalamet being here last year,” he says. “It’s a different sort of fandom and a surprisingly large number of press and festival audiences are also excited by that.”
Venice isn’t alone in dealing with the celebrity shortfall. Other festivals, such as Toronto, Telluride and London, are just around the corner and will probably face the same issues.
But, as McGill points out, the festivals can hardly be blamed. “Everyone knows the reason certain stars aren’t attending, so it can’t be seen as a failing of the event,” she says. “In a way, it’s a great leveller. It also massively reduces costs and hassle, although there’s a dismal knock-on in terms of lost work for publicists and people who work in festival guest services – usually a crucial part of guest festival management – as well as journalists.”
Heidmann confirms this. “Quite a few of my outlets are less interested in Venice coverage this year because I can’t offer A-list interviews,” he says. “Even British and French actors are refusing to do interviews out of solidarity.”
Away from the festival circuit, the strike has eaten into productivity, with shooting halted on studio pictures such as Gladiator 2, Beetlejuice 2 and the next Mission: Impossible. Entire press campaigns and releases have been scrapped and premieres hastily brought forward, cancelled or else stuffed with stand-ins; the recent unveiling of Haunted Mansion was attended by performers in Disney mascot costumes in lieu of the movie’s stars.
All this comes at a time when the lustre of the star itself has dimmed. These days, IP rules: intellectual property, that is, with established brands, from Barbie to Spider-Man and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, hogging the limelight that might once have been reserved for flesh-and-blood stars.
Actors and directors have been sounding the death knell for some time. “There are no movie stars any more,” said Anthony Mackie, who plays The Falcon in Marvel’s films, in 2018. “Like, Anthony Mackie isn’t a movie star. The Falcon is a movie star. The evolution of the superhero has meant the death of the movie star.” Quentin Tarantino made the same point last year: “You have all these actors who have become famous playing these characters, but they’re not movie stars. Captain America is the star. Thor is the star.” IP has replaced the VIP.
But not everyone sees the looming drought of stars as a reason to despair. Lizzie Francke, a consultant executive producer who preceded McGill as the head of Edinburgh film festival from 1997 to 2001, regards it as an opportunity to be seized. “Film festivals have become too top-heavy with stars. We had stars when I was running Edinburgh, but if we couldn’t get anyone I’d fudge it by saying: ‘The film is the star.’
“I had Dancer in the Dark opening the festival with not one person representing it – no Björk, no Catherine Deneuve, no Lars von Trier. But it’s such an amazing film that no one cared; it spoke for itself. When we showed The Blair Witch Project, we turned the whole cinema into a gothic forest and people remembered that as much as the film. There are always ways you can ‘eventise’. It just requires imagination and a bit of sticky-back plastic.”
McGill knows this only too well. “In my last year at Edinburgh, there was a film that was tailor-made for the festival: The Illusionist, Sylvain Chomet’s gorgeous love letter to the city, which lots of local animators had worked on. The distributor, knowing they had a gem, quite annoyingly, but rightly, insisted it be opening night or nothing. But it had no stars, not even voice talent, since it’s wordless. I had no one for my opening night red carpet! This really did seem fatal.
“So, in keeping with the themes of the film, we made a spectacle. We invited musicians and circus performers – jugglers, strongmen, stilt-walkers – and had them parading, along with all the guests of honour we could rustle up.”
Francke thinks the impasse represents a chance to celebrate every aspect of the film-making craft, rather than just the most extravagantly remunerated one. “I’m being a bit Pollyanna-ish about the whole thing,” she says. “But isn’t it exciting that we can focus on other aspects of cinema? During my time at Edinburgh, we often did that. People used to ask me what it was like to hang out with Sean Penn or whoever, but what sticks in my mind are the queues we had for the composer Angelo Badalamenti, or the mile-long line of kids with skateboards waiting to see Dogtown and Z-Boys.”
A more utopian, democratic festival model that is not so reliant on stars could be years away – and the old model certainly won’t die without some kicking and screaming. Heidmann says: “In theory, the current situation should mean that smaller films and those not in English could shine more. Then again, almost all the Hollywood films still hoard media attention here even without talent in attendance.” Still, that may change if the strike rumbles on and there are no more studio movies coming down the pike to monopolise the schedules.
Ever optimistic, Francke sees a way that this could expand the perspective of festivals and at last make what we refer to as “world cinema” properly representative of the world. “Let’s actually celebrate the great international contribution of incredible actors around the world,” she says. “Let’s give the spotlight to them.”
She recalls coming back to Edinburgh in 2002, the year after she stepped down from running the festival, and witnessing an event with the Bollywood megastar Shah Rukh Khan.
“It was the most amazing thing. It was as if the Beatles were in Edinburgh. After he’d left the auditorium, people were going up and touching the stage where he’d stood. We get so America-centric that we forget there’s a whole world of superstars beyond North America. There’s too much emphasis on US stars at festivals. It’s time to rejig things. There’s a great, big reset button on everything.” The question now is: will the culture be brave enough to press it?
• The Venice film festival runs until 9 September
