METALLICA Drummer On 'Cannes' Festival: It's 'Everything You Thought It Would Be, Times 10,000'

METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich is at the Cannes Film Festival in France, where he has done a couple of video interviews to talk about the band's movie, "Metallica Through The Never", which is due for release this fall. Ulrich is at the festival to help sell the film to international distributors.

Asked for his first impression of Cannes, Ulrich told Vulture.com: "It's insane. Everything that you thought it would be, times 10,000. I mean, it's great and it's overwhelming. Everything is just sort of accelerated and everything is exaggerated and it just moves so fast. The only bummer about the whole thing is I've come to the realization that when I leave Cannes in two days, I will not have seen a single film. And as a film fan, someone who's passionate about film, that kind of bums me out a little bit, because I was sitting with the schedule a couple days ago, like, 'I'm gonna see Noah Baumbach's new film ['Frances Ha'], I'm gonna see Lynn Shelton's new film ['Touchy Feely'], and I wanna see this film,' and it's just like, uggggghh. I wanted to see Sofia's film ['The Bling Ring'] last night. Actually had tickets for it.

"There's always something that comes up. There's another dinner I have to go to or some other interview I have to do. The one thing that I didn't realize about Cannes is that this place is basically all business. When you just hear about Cannes, you hear about movie stars walking down the red carpet. But that's not really Cannes. Cannes is business and financing and deals and distributions. The whole infrastructure of the movie business is here, and I didn't realize it was at that level, which is I guess also why I'm here, or why I was flown here. [laughs]"

Regarding METALLICA's current search for international distribution for the "Metallica Through The Never" film, Ulrich said: "What we're going for is independent distribution in each of the major territories. So we have Picturehouse [representing us] in America and then Exclusive Media representing us for the rest of the world. And what they do is go into each territory and get the best deal and hook up with the people that understand our film, that understand who METALLICA is.

"With each territory, it's different. We are fighting fiercely to keep this as independent as possible. We're financing the film ourselves. We're not taking any money, we don't owe anybody any favors or anything like that. This is as self-contained and autonomous as it gets around here, which is obviously a great thing. But because of that, then we have to micromanage more rather than just hand it over to one entity."

"Metallica Through The Never" will open on IMAX screens in the U.S. on September 27, with a wider release following on October 4.

The movie stars Dane DeHaan has a member of the band's road crew who is sent on a mysterious mission while the group headlines a concert at an arena. The film is said to mix a conventional storyline with concert footage.