My very first Cannes report is up on the NOW site — or, more specifically, on the subsite dedicated to my Cannes reports, complete with the logo you see here.

It sort of brings it all home in a way I hadn’t expected. Because, obviously, if John was still around, I wouldn’t be covering Cannes for NOW. In all likelihood, I wouldn’t be covering Cannes at all — I’d be reading his dispatches along with everyone else’s, snickering quietly at a particularly trenchant takedown of the local officiants (who are, it must be said, awfully good at being officious), and perhaps wondering whether I’d ever get out to the festival myself one day.

Well, here I am — staying in the little out-of-the-way hotel he loved, walking past his favorite boulangerie, and wearing a press badge that should in any reasonable universe still have his name on it.

Yeah, life goes on and I’m sure I’m doing fine and making the job my own, blah blah blah, but some days we can’t help but be more aware of absent friends. Yesterday was one of those days.