Cannes staffer breaks silence on red carpet run-in with Tom Hanks

Asteroid City explosion: Tom Hanks is noticeably ABSENT from today’s photo-call with cast of new Wes Anderson movie – as Cannes red carpet manager breaks his silence on last night’s run-in with the actor and his wife

• Vincent Chapalain has worked as a ‘red carpet manager’ at Cannes for 10 years 
• He says Hanks and Wilson were asking if they should go back to join the rest of the Asteroid City film crew when they were photographed
• Because the cries of surrounding photographers were so loud, they yelled it 

Tom Hanks was notably absent from this morning’s Asteroid City photo-call in Cannes after clearing up the red carpet run-in he and his wife had with a staffer at the movie’s premiere last night. 

Hanks, one of the world’s biggest stars, and his wife Rita Wilson were photographed with  pointed fingers in the face of Vincent Chapalain at the Wes Anderson film premiere last night.

Rita was last night quick to clear up the confusion, insisting she and Tom simply couldn’t hear what the man was saying.

Shortly afterwards, Chapalain – who has worked at the festival for ten years – came forward to corroborate her story. 

‘Nothing happened at all, the photo is totally misleading,’ Chapalain told DailyMail.com on Wednesday morning, adding that the couple asked him if they should go back to the start of the red carpet with the other stars. 

Innocent as the run-in may have been, Hanks was notably absent from the well-attended photo-call where co-stars Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Bryan Cranston and others lapped up applause today. 

The movie, in which Hanks plays a supporting actor role as Schwartzman’s character’s father-in-law, is in the running for the Palm D’or. 

And while the red carpet interaction wasn’t as tense as it first appeared, Hanks has been known to have a short fuse in the past.

Where’s Tom? Hanks was notably absent from the Asteroid City photo-call and press conference 

Hanks did not take part in the press conference after the photo-call, where his co-stars answered questions about the film

C’est une misunderstanding! Vincent Chapalain, the Cannes staffer who was photographed in a tense moment with Rita Wilson and Tom Hanks, says the couple were merely asking if they should return to the start of the carpet

Last June, Hanks was seen screaming at photographers to ‘back the f*** off!’ after a tense interaction in Manhattan, where a paparazzi bumped into Wilson in a media scrum. 

Tuesday’s interaction might have been innocent – but Hanks was notably absent from the Asteroid City photo-call on Wednesday. 

Chapalain has worked as a ‘red carpet manager’ at Cannes for ten years

Co-stars Bryan Cranston and Scarlett Johansson were seen checking their phones at the event. 

‘Is that Anderson giving the finger to those who sneer at the stylized dysfunction of his characters? “You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep,” goes a mantra repeated by the cast in another scene.

‘Is the director referring to the importance of forgetting your cynicism and surrendering to the whimsy? If so, where do I sign?’

The film has received rave reviews.

In his four-star write-up, The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw wrote: ‘Asteroid City’s eccentricity, its elegance, its gaiety, and its sheer profusion of detail within the tableau frame make it such a pleasure. So, too, does its dapper styling of classic American pop culture.

Chapalain is shown at the 2018 premiere of Burning in Cannes

Chapalain explained Hanks and Wilson were asking if they should return to where the rest of the film’s crew were

Hanks and Wilson were struggling to hear him, he said, because of the loud cries of photographers 

‘With every new shot, your eyes dart around the screen, grabbing at all the painterly little jokes and embellishments, each getting a micro-laugh.

‘The movie rattles cleverly and exhilaratingly along, adroitly absorbing the implications of pathos and loneliness without allowing itself to slow down. It is tempting to consider this savant blankness as some kind of symptom, but I really don’t think so: it is the expression of style. And what style it is.’

The Time’s Ed Pottom gave a four-star review which read: ‘Some lines feel like pops at Anderson’s detractors. Johansson’s femme-fatale actress, recovering from an abusive marriage, says she and Augie are “two catastrophically wounded people who don’t express the depths of their passion . . . because they don’t want to”.

‘Is that Anderson giving the finger to those who sneer at the stylized dysfunction of his characters? “You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep,” goes a mantra repeated by the cast in another scene.

‘Is the director referring to the importance of forgetting your cynicism and surrendering to the whimsy? If so, where do I sign?’

Last year, Hanks was seen screaming at photographers to ‘back the f*** off!’ after a tense interaction in Midtown 

Impressive: The film was showered with rapturous reviews after its premiere at the 76th Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday

Reviews: The first reviews for Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City have lauded the 1950s sci-fi as an ‘exhilarating triumph of pure style’

In his impressive five-star review, The Independent’s Geoffrey Macnab said: ‘In its own offbeat way, Asteroid City is an Anderson patchwork of Cold War paranoia and American family values in all their often hypocritical glory.

‘It is every bit as arch as his best work, while still managing to tug hard on the heartstrings.’

Deadline’s Todd McCarthy branded the film ‘fresh, original and disarming creation unlike anything else you might have seen’.

He said: ‘Scene after scene has a snap and urgency to it that matches the speed of the dialogue delivery and gives the film a sort of stylized urgency that is both distinctive and funny. 

‘Sometimes it’s hard to keep up, and yet somehow it doesn’t matter at all, as one feels welcomed into a weird world.

‘On the other hand, the show-within-a-film conceit doesn’t really pay off; arguably, it complicates the work with little to show for it, and general audiences, as opposed to art film aficionados, will be baffled as to what’s going on. 

‘There is even one more layer to the proceedings that, arguably, is more of a bother than a plus.

‘But otherwise, this is a fresh, original and disarming creation unlike anything else you might have seen with a degree of stylized storytelling that is notable and often exciting.’

Source: Read Full Article