Skin will say goodbye to market legend Jerome Peylard

Jérôme Paillard is the perfect connoisseur of the film industry. As director of Cannes’ Marche du Film, the world’s biggest film market, the cheerful 66-year-old Parisian has seen the rise and fall of every major player in the independent business over the past three decades.

After capturing Marché in 1995, Paylar led the fur market with industry booms: the Miramax-led independent wave of the 1990s, the Netflix streaming revolution of the mid-2010s, and the collapse of the dot-com crash of 2002. and the 2008-2009 crisis. recession. (still in progress) against the COVID-19 pandemic.

But Paylard, who is leaving the aftermarket march this year, says music was his first love, not movies.

“I come from a family of musicians. My father was the famous conductor Jean-François Payar; my mother was a musician [renowned harpsichordist Anne-Marie Beckensteiner]. I was studying music and math. “It has nothing to do with the movie.”

However, music took him to the cinema. After graduating from the prestigious Conservatoire National de Paris in Paris, Payard worked as a professional musician, classical music aficionado, which led him to French classical music label Erato Disques, where he became sound engineer and chief financial officer. 1986. From there he moved to Erato Films, a film department created by legendary French producer Daniel Toscan du Plantier (cousin kuzin; the bohemian; The cook, the thief, his wife and his mistress).

I entered like them [Maurice Pialat’s 1991 biopic] van Gogh “And they made about 13 movies with them,” Paylar said. “The company closed in 1995 and I was looking for a new job. The leather market was looking for a new manager and Tuscany offered me to leave because he was supposed to join me in five years as the new president of Cannes.

Events didn’t go exactly as planned. When Pierre Vio, president of Cannes since 1984, resigned in 2000, he was replaced by Gilles Jacobs, not Di Plantier. Paylar was alone.

“However, I was lucky. “Pierre Vio was an incredible president,” Paylar said. “And for the first five years he gave me Carte Blanc to do whatever he wanted in the market.”

Your work has been cut. When Paylar arrived in the mid-1990s, the Cannes Film Festival and its official film market had little to do with each other.

“The film market was very small at the time; “These were some of the showrooms in the basement of the palace, under Cannes’ legendary red carpet,” recalled Paylar.

The movie business flourished on the surface. In 1994 Quentin Tarantino pulp Fiction It won the Palme d’Or and grossed over $200 million worldwide, an incredible amount for an independently financed film. European companies like StudioCanal ( Complete instinct) and the British company Working Title (Four weddings and a funeral.) With companies such as Miramax and New Line Cinema – both recently acquired by Hollywood studios, respectively, Disney and Warner Bros. – claiming that there was real money in cinema beyond the mainstream.

But all of this took place outside the swamp, in hotel suites and apartments along the cruise ship.

“My first decision when I arrived in 1995, just six months before the market, was to bring everyone to Marché, Pale and beyond,” says Paylar, “to recreate a great market for all players.” .”

Paylar made the changes as small as possible: he published a printed guide with photos of all market participants (known as the “Bible” for normal-skinned people) – and a revolutionary one, including the 1998 launch of the online site Cannesmarket. com , which eventually became Cinando. B2B platform for the global film industry. Under his supervision, the market expanded dramatically, moving to the Palace Ocean front with the addition of Riviera stands (in 2000) and expanding its appeal beyond the main focus of Cannes art films.

“We were always outside the palace, in the apartments,” recalls Brian Osh of The Exchange. “But whenever we had contact with Jerome, it was always easy. He was always welcome, always willing to help. ”

“Very little French” is the description of many international executives, whose benevolent nature and infectious charm come without a hint of Gallic snobbery.

“I’d say he’s a really ‘impossible’ guy if he doesn’t sound very American,” said Jonathan Kier, head of Upscale Productions, who has been in contact with Peylard since he was named intern on his team. At the US Pavilion in Cannes since 1996. “Just look at what they’ve done during COVID. In 2020, when the festival was cancelled, they were the first to launch an online marketplace, at a time when no one knew how it would work.

By all accounts, only the 2020 online march (Payard used the market’s Cinando platform as the basis for online testimonials, virtual meetings and industry conferences) was a resounding success. “He started the business when a lot of people thought everything might fall apart,” said a European sales executive.

Now, after 27 years at the helm, Peyard says it is the “right time” to step down and hand over market management to Guillaume Esmiol, a tech-savvy executive who joined the Marché du Film in 2020 to help transform it. A hybrid phenomenon.

Peylard’s future is literally in the air. In addition to spending time with his wife, two adult children and two grandchildren, ages 5 and 7, he plans to focus on his love of flying in retirement, working as a flight instructor on small aircraft. And to restore the love of music.

“I practiced more on the oboe and even started singing,” says Peylard with a smile. “All classical music, mainly French, from the 19th and early 20th centuries. So far from the movie business.