Made it to the plane and am on my way. Naomi Watts and Valerie Plame are already at Cannes. Naomi is in Woody Allen’s film, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger and Valerie is in an incredible documentary called Countdown to Zero. I hope they like French food because they’re both there for the duration. Joe Wilson will be going over, and Sean Penn, who is in Haiti as I write this, is going to be in Washington testifying before Congress about Haiti while we’re celebrating Fair Game.

Though I’m hugely disappointed that Sean Penn won’t be in Cannes with us, it’s hard to fault the guy for having the priorities to stick with Haiti as opposed to partying in France. Having been in Haiti, I can see how it’s hard to celebrate a movie right now, given what he’s dealing with on a daily basis. In fact, I was in Haiti with Sean when I got the call on the cell phone saying that we’d gotten into the Cannes Film Festival. The person on the phone said, “Of course you’re going to make it, but do you think Sean Penn might be able to make it?” As I’m on the phone, I’m looking out across the squalor of the Petionville Country Club in Port-Au-Prince, where 60,000+ Haitians have taken refuge in makeshift tents after their homes were destroyed, and I’m watching Sean running around with a huge knife strapped to his side (probably for something as banal as opening boxes of medical supplies). At that moment, I’m thinking it’s hard to imagine him in a tuxedo walking down the Croisette. As it turns out, that instinct was right because he’s gonna be dealing with Haiti (testifying to Congress) at the same time we’re having our champagne toast, which just precedes the screening.

Sean is as serious an actor as I’ve ever come across — and almost as serious a person as I’ve ever come across. For a lot of actors, the set is kind of like a party and they’re the host and there’s a lot of storytelling and jokes. Sean is 100 percent about the character and his role and the movie. He’s really serious about his hours — you can keep other actors on set longer than you can keep Sean — but the flip side is that he clearly saves all the playtime and jokes for outside the workday. So it’s a slightly shorter workday, but it’s more focused. You can obviously tell he puts that same effort into his work in Haiti. Other people in the camp are having fun at the same time. Usually people’s tour of duty in Haiti is a week or two weeks so every week a couple of different doctors and nurses come through the camp. Sean, Allison, and Oscar are the exception obviously — their commitment is measured in months and years — but new doctors come in every couple of weeks, and there was one guy (probably my favorite guy) in the camp who is availing himself of the opportunity that every week there’s these cute nurses from Washington State and the Midwest and Oklahoma who are in Haiti for the week and then they’re never to be seen again. That guy was having a blast.

Sean is just about the work and getting the work done and you celebrate after. I come at movies the same way a little bit. I don’t like to celebrate that we got the movie into production, or even to have a party to celebrate when we’re done shooting. I’m really only comfortable celebrating if the movie’s actually good. Some directors have a party for each step along the way, but we have yet to actually have a Fair Game party of any sort. The first party we’re having for the movie is going to be at the Cannes film festival. I wasn’t always like that, but I am now.

Related posts on 30ninjas.com:

• Doug Liman Blog: My First Afternoon in Haiti
• Doug Liman Blog: Sean Penn Has the Movie Star Role But Naomi Watts’ Steely Performance May Be Her Finest Yet
• Doug Liman Blog: Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson to Watch Naomi Watts and Sean Penn Play Them in Fair Game
• Doug Liman Blog: With Sean Penn’s NGO in Haiti, Hearing the Song of Need in One of the Poorest Places in the World
• Doug Liman Blog: Haiti Part Deux — Breaking Curfew, Making Pancakes and Trying To Do My Part
• Doug Liman Blog: Day 2 in Haiti, Scouting Locations and The Cutest, Tone-Deaf Girl In All of Port au Prince