Welcome To The Hotel Du Cap – Cannes’ Most Exclusive Hotel!
With the Cannes film festival underway, great stories are being told about this fabled area – the French Riviera…including one hilarious story about the Hotel Du Cap, an ultra-exclusive and expensive resort for only the biggest stars and Executives at Cannes…
Director Brett Ratner has been to Cannes many times, and he recounts his first attempt to stay at the exclusive Hotel – a disaster that is not only a hilarious story but a great inside look at what this festival is like!
The Price Of Fame!
The Director shared his Hotel du Cap story years ago, and he discusses again in Deadline.com, who is giving a lot of coverage of course to the festival. The Hotel Du Cap is twenty miles from Cannes, which helps it have a legendary exclusivity.
As Ratner notes in the story, the hotel is legendary for not only how expensive it is, but it had a history of being very difficult to pay for!
Here’s an excerpt from his story, where he explains the cost of the hotel and the methods of payment that used to be allowed:
“The cost is 33,600 Euros for the 14-day duration of the festival — gone, though, are the days when they wouldn’t take credit cards, when it was cash or wire transfers only. If one wanted a TV in the room, it came with a 500 euros a night price tag, again, payable only by cash or wire.”
We learned early on that the Hotel was legendary for only accepting cash!
Mandatory Credit: Photo by Jens Hartmann/REX/Shutterstock (453478i)
Serena Williams and boyfriend Brett Ratner
THE AMFAR AIDS CHARITY GALA DINNER AT LE MOULIN DE MOUGINS RESTAURANT, CANNES, FRANCE – 20 MAY 2004
This photo by Jens Hartmann/REX/Shutterstock shows Ratner and then girlfriend Serena Williams at a Cannes event in 2004….and there is a reason she is there – the Director was treated horribly when he arrived at the hotel for the first time, and Ratner was desperately trying to upgrade his coffin-like room! In his story, Ratner relates how he tried to use her name to get his room upgraded:
“I namedropped that my girlfriend and the reigning French Open champ would come—and train on the hotel courts, because I asked her to. I said her luggage wouldn’t fit in my room, and asked for something bigger. “I will do my best, Monsieur Ratner,” he said in his heavy French accent.
By the time I returned from the Croisette one day, Serena was playing her part: training on the clay courts. The entire hotel seemed to be watching. Did this sway the management into moving me? No way. Not even close. “Brett, you did it again,” Serena told me. “These people hate you. I had to walk down a back stairwell to find a room with a window that faces a brick wall. I have to crouch just to get under the shower head.”
This story is a hilarious look at Hollywood, the Cannes system, and the entertainment industry in general…especially because Ratner ended up banned for life from the hotel!
Yes, Banned For Life!
Ratner resorts to a very funny “loophole” in the hotel’s reservation system, which did in fact get him banned from the property for life.
It’s a very entertaining story, and if you want to find out how it ends, read the entire thing at “Deadline.com” – here is the link:
http://deadline.com/2017/05/brett-ratner-cannes-hotel-du-crap-controversy-1202091929/
My wife and I were lucky enough to attend the festival for years – many of them in a fairy nice hotel, albeit NOT the Hotel du Cap!
Here we are with E! Host Michael Castner, one of our many pictures of our wacky Cannes adventures…if you want to see Michael interviewing Arnold Schwarzenegger, or Jean-Claude Van Damme at the Hotel du Cap, click on my story here:
We also got to spend time in Cannes with a comic legend:
Here is my story about how gracious, warm and welcoming Robin Williams was when we met him at the film festival:
https://johnrieber.com/2014/08/12/rip-robin-williams-class-act-a-cannes-encounter/
It’s an amazing experience to attend the Cannes film festival, and I only wish we had ever been able to stay at the Hotel du Cap!
Categories: Action Films, Art, Awards, Books / Media, Cannes Film Festival, Comedy Movies, Cult Movies, Exotic Travel, Film Fight Club, Film Noir, Great Films, Memoirs, Movies, Talent/Celebrities, Travel, Travel Adventures, Travel Memoir
johnrieber 
After reading that story (and the link) I doubt I would ever stay there, even if I could afford it. Sometimes, those Frenchies can be very stuffy. Worse than the English, in fact!
Best wishes, Pete.
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Pete, it was notorious for how rude they were to “commoners” – we NEVER stayed during our 20+ trips to Cannes!
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