Hal Raymond, a young tyro filmmaker fresh from graduate school, arrives in France to attend the Cannes Film Festival, where he hopes to sell a movie he has made about the life and times of famed murderer Gary Gilmore.
Unbeknown to him, he has failed to observe the proper bureaucratic procedures when bringing his film reels into the country, which forces customs officials at Nice Airport to seize them until further notice.
The following day, Hal returns to the airport to attend an interview at the customs agency with Lt. Montand, who tells him that the reels will not be released until the film censor has viewed them, which may not happen for another month.
Although distressed at having to deceive her husband, Maria asks Freddie if she can spend two days away in Paris prior to his film's gala premiere – a request to which the latter agrees without complaint.
Hal, meanwhile, having already found that Jackson has muscled in on his film and taken control of its publicity campaign – including changing the title from the bland "Choice of Ending" to the more lurid "Shoot Me Before I Kill Again" – now has to endure the censor's screening before he and Maria can meet for their planned few days together.
Hal is overcome with remorse by the next morning and returns to the Carlton, where he is able to follow Maria's limousine as it heads to the Barone family yacht for an outing prior to Freddie's evening gala premiere.
Upon learning of George Lucas's own experiences when in Cannes for the screening of THX 1138, Ritchie enlisted Don Petersen to help write a screenplay that captured the giddy euphoria of a young director attending an international film festival for the first time.
[2] As he later divulged to the New York Times, he chose to make the film "small-scale" and low budget so that he could persuade Paramount to let him assume the right to script approval and control over the final cut as a quid pro quo.
[3] Once a basic outline of the film's story was complete, Ritchie travelled to the 1978 Cannes Film Festival with a second-unit crew to shoot documentary footage that would provide some background flavour, encouraging his cameraman to mix with movie celebrities, eavesdrop on conversations, and record any interesting scenes that developed – such as, memorably, the sight of newscaster Rona Barrett slipping and falling while presenting an item directly to camera.
[2][4] (He recalled years later that when posters had been put up at the Festival advertising "Shoot Me Before I Kill Again", the fictitious movie at the heart of the film's story, many producers "popped up to try to invest" in it in the seeming belief that it was real.
[4]) The production crew, including veteran cinematographer Henri Decaë and art director Willy Holt, were based in France; as Ritchie could not speak French, he had to resort to using sign language instead.
Communication issues did not abate there, however, as Ritchie had to hire a dialogue coach so that Vitti (starring in her first Anglophone production since Modesty Blaise thirteen years earlier) could improve her command of English; he later reported that there were "still times one had to strain to understand her.
[7][8] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times concurred, noting that "Ritchie's unexpectedly acute and sensitive story" was adept at reflecting the glamour and "shady opportunism" of the festival.
[10][11] Frank Rich, writing in Time, even described Raf Vallone's portrayal of Freddie Barone (which many film critics suggested was based either on Dino De Laurentiis or Carlo Ponti) as "so appealing that it is hard to know why Vitti would forsake him.
According to Jon Gould, then Director of Marketing Administration at Paramount, the film had "no word of mouth" even though "there was a high awareness level for it and a striking campaign.