How I conned Cannes

I'm having a bit of a Cannes moment: it's Saturday morning, I am hung over and have just climbed into a taxi with a female producer I've never met. When I tell her I'm here to flog my new script, she asks me to pitch there and then. I have 50 seconds before we arrive at the Festival Palais to convince her I'm the real thing; if I don't I will never see her again.

By the time Jane, who works for G-Force Films, climbs out of the car, she has handed me her card, said she loves the sound of the script and perhaps I would be right for doing a rewrite of a screenplay for a film that Brenda Blethyn is lined up to star in. Apparently, Emma Thompson is too busy. This is it, I'm going to hit the big time.

In reality, I won't contact Jane again. I don't have a script and until a couple of days ago hadn't planned to visit Cannes. It's the largest film festival in the world, and every year 35,000 people descend on the tiny Riviera resort.

Most are wannabe directors, producers and writers whose aim is to blag their way to the 4,000 film buyers and film sellers who hold the key, and the money, to unlock their Hollywood dreams. It's a human cattle market.

This year I have decided to join them, to see if for 48 hours I can convince everyone that I've written a potentially Oscar-winning script. I have brought a huge suitcase full of glam outfits to look the part. Naturally, a meeting with Harvey Weinstein, head of Miramax Films, is my goal.

But let me rewind to last Thursday. It's the inaugural day of the 56th Festival de Cannes and I have managed to get a last-minute flight to Nice and a hotel room 20 minutes' walk from the Croisette, the main seaside drag where all the red carpet action takes place.

I write my pitch; it has to be short and sweet. I end up with: "St Trinian's with knives - an exclusive English boarding school descends into Lord of the Fliesstyle anarchy after a series of arson attacks."

It's short, yes, but I have a sinking feeling Cannes is going to be anything but sweet.

9pm: I am at the Soho House party held in a large white castle in the hills. Meg Mathews is face down on a table - one too many cocktails. No big execs here yet; the only people I have met are like me - desperate.

There's something of the hyena about everyone, voraciously scrubbing around for titbits. Once people find out you don't have any money to finance their film, they mentally shake you for contacts and frisk you for tickets. I have been asked three times if I have a spare to the hottest bash of all, the MTV Terminator 3 party at Pierre Cardin's house on Saturday night.

I am feeling smug because I have two. What I don't have are tickets to the Matrix Reloaded party, which is about to start. Meg Mathews does, but then she looks as if any party will do tonight.

The impossibly good-looking boy band Blue arrive, girls in tow. I tell their manager that one of them would be suitable for the love interest in my film; he steers me back to the bar. Happily, I find a geeky-looking guy who introduces himself as Kevin Loader, the producer of Captain Corelli's Mandolin and The Mother, a film that is the talk of Cannes.

With him is his female star, 68-year-old Anne Reid, a former Coronation Street actress, who gets to have lots of raucous sex with hunky actor Daniel Craig. No wonder she tells me, with a huge grin, that she's having the time of her life. I blag a seat for the Friday premiere.

1am: I am practically mugged in the lift by a drunken young man after mentioning I have tickets for MTV. "How?" he cries, shaking me. "I will give you lots of money." I run to my room and lock the door.

FRIDAY morning: All the big film companies have their offices in hotels along the Croisette, in particular the Majestic and the Carlton. The plan is to get inside and pitch away. Quite frankly, I'm terrified. Inside the Majestic, everyone is yabbering into their mobiles and all the women are blonde with Louis Vuitton bags. I ring home and tell friends to start calling so I look important.

I sneak upstairs and march straight into the HBO office (producers of Sex and the City and The Sopranos). Not one but two officious PAs block my way.

I ask to see Colin Callender, the head executive of their London office, HBO Films. They laugh and tell me to post my script to their office in LA. I get the same reaction down the corridor at Miramax International (Harvey's place). Mr Weinstein never comes to the suite; he takes meetings at Hotel du Cap, I'm told, where Nicole Kidman and the rest of Hollywood will be holed up.

Unless you have an appointment, you don't get past security at the gates. I say I'm on the list for the Miramax lunch on the Majestic Beach in one hour but have lost my ticket. More laughter.

1pm: Ha! I may not have an invite to Miramax but I do have a ticket to the HBO dinner on Saturday night, blagged off a publicity office I had wandered into by mistake. I think my nose is growing. At the gates to the Majestic Beach, there is a media scrum as Ewan McGregor and Emily Mortimer slip inside. All I get is a glimpse of Harvey's head.

Good news, however, as a friend, a member of the Oscars Academy, has promised me a meeting with British producer Jeremy Thomas (he won nine Oscars for his film, The Last Emperor) and perhaps a lunch at the Hotel du Cap on Monday. Harvey, he says, is a personal friend ...

It's the beach tea time launch party of Calendar Girls, a film based on those nice ladies at the Women's Institute who posed sans clothes for a charity calendar. It stars Helen Mirren and Julie Walters. This is a "Hot Ticket".

Mirren walks past looking incredible, chic in a tight white suit. Once inside the tent, there are raspberry martinis and champagne. It's blissfully cool. No sign of Mirren and Walters there so I prop up the bar and act confident.

Deepak Verma, the actor who played Sanjay in EastEnders, wanders over. Now he's a playwright and producer, he explains, eyes hidden behind huge wrap-around sunglasses. Nic Powell, who is only one of the biggest producers in Britain, he continues, is looking after his Bollywood feature. I nod appreciatively, then pitch my script. "What genre?" he asks. I stumble. "Thriller, I think."

After more persuasion, he offers to help, says maybe he will be my producer. But I think he is lying - he's already asked if I have a spare ticket to the MTV party.

I wander outside, where I am introduced to a man with lanky shoulder-length hair, called Stephen Woolley, who's very important, apparently. "I need a producer," I blurt. He looks bemused. "I know now isn't the time to pitch my script," I continue nervously. He shakes his head, horrified. "It's St Trinian's on acid."

Now I have his interest, or is he being polite? In Cannes, people are rarely rude in case you do have an Oscarwinning script. Only when your telephone starts ringing and they offer you money do you know you have a "Hot Script". He hands me his number and says to get in touch next week.

There is a horrified silence when I later admit to an assorted group of movie types that I have no idea who Woolley is. He only produced The Crying Game, Little Voice, The End of the Affair... Doh!

9.30pm: I manoeuvre myself next to Kevin Loader during his premiere, with actor Daniel Craig a few seats away. The sex is shocking. Loader is pleased. He says I made, "all the right noises, in all the right places". I think I'm in there!

1am: Back in the Soho House castle above Cannes, everyone is guzzling champagne. I approach Loader's assistant, Kate, and tell her the BBC want my script. She yawns: "I hate it when people try and pitch me their scripts." Right then. I'm introduced to a Very Big Director but not told his name. He pulls off his shirt to show me his tattoos. We end up having a nipple twisting contest. I win. I'm not sure this is the best way to get to Hollywood.

Saturday afternoon: The doorman at the Variety party has twice barred my way. And my Academy friend was all empty promises - no lunch with Harvey. But I'm feeling buoyed because of my success that morning with producer Jane, and earlier I shared a glass of wine with Ian Scorer, who finds, among other things, scripts for a Japanese company that was behind last year's big hit, Amélie. He likes my idea "a lot", he says. "Perhaps you should set it in America to make it more commercial?" he adds and then asks to see a treatment. I tell him I'll pop it in the post.

Now, what to what wear tonight? Perhaps a pale cream silk number or a rather short skirt ...

9pm: Andie MacDowell is close by, puffing guiltily on a cigarette. I'm pleased to see she has crow's-feet like the rest of humanity. I grab a member of the paparazzi and slip him some euros to take my photograph so I appear to be a somebody. But the only person who takes any notice is another photographer who rushes up to ask who I am. "Hot scriptwriter," I reply grandly. He shrugs. I sidle up to Stephen Fry, give him an awkward hug and congratulate him on his new film, Bright Young Things. He looks confused. After all, we've never met.

11pm: Time is running out. I still haven't signed a deal. Then I sit myself down next to the producer Barry Navidi. His partner, Cary Brokaw, joins us. He really is a Hollywood hot shot, the executive producer of Drugstore Cowboy, The Player and Robert Altman's Shortcuts.

This is as good as meeting Harvey. Navidi says he went to Charterhouse, a British boarding school. This is my chance - I conjure up images from my script, of a dark, claustrophobic atmosphere, with highly sexed teenage girls running out of control. They both nod. Navidi says I clearly have passion and hands me his personal mobile number and email address, "Get in touch."

1am: Finally, the MTV party. It's taken an hour to get here and now I'm stuck in the queue. Even Adrian Brody, who won the Best Actor Oscar for his role in The Pianist, is having difficulty getting in, though he is wearing a green cap over his eyes.

Brody gets pulled out of the queue and I sneak in behind him. The house is a series of concrete bubbles, with narrow paths winding from room to room. I slip and fall waist-high into a mini swimming pool. Everybody laughs, ha, ha, ha.

My shoes are ruined. I'll never get into the VIP section now, although Arnie Schwarzenegger left hours ago. I think it's time to go home.

So have I conned Cannes? Well, I managed to meet those who really mattered and have 20 business cards in my pocket, as well as half a dozen tentative meetings. Now all I have to do is write that script ...