The Da Vinci Code in Cannes

When we drove through Cannes, the entire town was preparing for the film festival. This was no small feat: The town is actually quite small, only 70,000 people. They were getting ready to absorb a total of 130,000 expected guests. The town is beautiful.

The most prominent and noticeable feature of the preparations was the massive presence of giant posters advertising the movie The Da Vinci Code with Tom Hanks, which is currently in process of breaking box office records. The Catholic Church was immensely helpful, contributing to the success of the movie by telling its faithful to avoid seeing the movie since it was offensive to the Catholic religion. The faithful took the cue and bought every single advance ticket they could get, especially in countries like Spain, Italy and Mexico, guaranteeing that the movie was not just a smashing success, but rather a stellar success in the countries dominated by the Vatican. If I would have been involved in the making of the movie, I would have sent flowers and Thank You notes to the vatican.