Matthew McConaughey’s comeback streak in recent years — the so-called McConaissance — hit a bump at the Cannes Film Festival premiere of Gus Van Sant’s The Sea of Trees. The film, about two men — played by McConaughey and Ken Watanabe — who find each other in a Japanese “suicide forest,” was greeted harshly by critics and was loudly booed in its initial screenings to Cannes media. McConaughey was sanguine about the reaction. “Anyone has as much right to boo as they do to ovate,” McConaughey told reporters Saturday. The Sea of Trees, which was picked up for U.S. distribution by Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions ahead of the festival, is about a man who wrestles with guilt over a bitter marriage (Naomi Watts plays his wife) and travels to Japan to kill himself. Variety called the film “a risibly long-winded drama.”
Bill Cosby said youths should separate what he has to say about their future from sexual assault allegations lodged against him. The actor and comedian was in Alabama on Friday to speak with high school students as part of a campaign to improve education in the south-central part of the state. In an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America, Cosby was asked how he would respond if a student pressed him about accusations that he drugged and sexually assaulted a number of women over a period of decades. “I think many of them say, ‘Well, you’re a hypocrite. You say one thing, you say the other,’” he replied. “My point is, ‘OK, listen to me carefully. I’m telling you where the road is out. You want to go here, or you want to be concerned about who is giving you the message?’” Cosby, 77, who has never been criminally charged, didn’t address assault claims made by more than 25 women and has largely maintained his silence since the allegations resurfaced last year. Cosby met with students at Selma High School before marching with them across the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge. The bridge was the scene of Bloody Sunday in 1965, when police beat peaceful demonstrators marching in favor of voting rights. The Selma Times-Journal reported that Cosby initially had concerns about making the school appearance. “They wanted to know if I would come and I said ‘Look, you’ve got to think about this situation that I’m embroiled in. That may not be cool,’” he told the newspaper. “I said I really don’t want people to get into trouble and start arguing and fighting over me when the children are very, very important.”