Pretty much every other year since 2002, Graydon Carter — first as editor of Vanity Fair, then as founder and editor of Air Mail — has hosted a party during the Cannes Film Festival that has reliably been the most coveted invitation in a week packed with star-studded affairs. Hosted at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes, the bacchanal was long a Mediterranean corrolary to VF’s Oscar Party, where A-listers were less likely to talk business and more likely to jump in the pool fully clothed.
The bash last made headlines when Carter’s then co-host — basic cable exec turned Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav, whose self-enriching stewardship of the studio earned him few friends in Hollywood — drew mockery for aping Carter’s style. This year, on May 19, Carter will co-host his first Cannes party since leaving Air Mail last October. His co-hosts this time will be the ultimate Hollywood insider, CAA co-chairman and CEO Bryan Lourd, and an industry outsider: the ascendant Silicon Valley tycoon Dario Amodei, CEO of the AI company Anthropic.
Carter and Amodei may seem an odd pairing: the worldly, print-worshipping, bon-vivant old-media titan and the socially awkward, studiedly unflashy scientist presenting himself as the safe, responsible contender the race to shape the future of AI. Unlike his more extroverted rival and former boss Sam Altman of OpenAI, whose ill-fated forays into Hollywood have been well documented, Amodei seems to have no interest in breaking into the entertainment business. But the bedfellows are less strange when you remember that Carter launched the Vanity Fair New Establishment, and annual ranking of the most powerful people in tech and business, which later turned into an annual San Francisco summit of the same name, gathering the biggest names in Silicon Valley. And with Altman’s reputation having suffered a few dings lately, there is arguably no bigger name than Amodei at the moment.
“AI has more or less become a driving force in today’s culture,” Carter told The Hollywood Reporter in an email interview. “Dario came to dinner last year and honestly, after talking to him, I felt like I had been working in wood. He’s been among the most thoughtful and candid voices engaging with the questions AI raises and seems to genuinely want to hear from people outside of tech.”
Following that evening in New York, Carter reached out to Amodei with an offer to co-host and help pay for the party at the Hotel du Cap. Both stand to benefit: Carter proves he still has the swagger and clout after his contentious departure from Air Mail (following its acquisition by Puck, the media outlet founded by his former assistant and protégé Jon Kelly) to keep throwing his signature Cannes party and to team up with one of the most powerful young CEOs in the world. Amodei, meanwhile, will be given the chance to break out of the Silicon Valley bubble and be introduced to cultural movers and shakers.
There’s little risk of Amodei pulling a Zaslav and ripping off Carter’s wardrobe. Though he presumably owns a tux at this point, he was influenced early on by effective altruism, a philanthropic movement known for scorning frivolity (e.g. black-tie galas, or, well, Hollywood parties) in favor of more data-driven ways of helping the afflicted (e.g. by creating safe AI).
“He reminded me more of a philosopher than a tech leader,” says Carter of his dinner with Amodei. “I found him to be deeply thoughtful, curious about the world, and — a rarity for Silicon Valley — honest.”
Aside from the presence of Amodei, the party will likely feel familiar to those who have attended in the past. “I’ve given this dinner at the Hotel du Cap off and on for the past 25 years. And it’s one of the few big events that I’ve actually enjoyed,” says Carter. “Many of the old Vanity Fair hands are involved — so it doubles as a sort of reunion. And the guest list is stellar.” Carter won’t share names, but given his track record, he wouldn’t bandy the word “stellar” about lightly.
One confirmed attendee is Lourd. “I’ve known Bryan for decades and he’s the closest thing Hollywood has to a mayor,” says Carter. “Who wouldn’t want to partner with him?” (Carter, a producer on several films, says he remains involved in the business, with a number of documentary and TV projects in the works.)
Carter has made no secret of his fondness for all things analog, from film to paper, another reason his partnership with Amodei might raise eyebrows. But he admits to using Anthropic’s flagship chatbot, Claude, on occasion. “I’ve found Claude to have a sort of pen-and-paper quality to it. It functions like one of the best assistants I had back in the Vanity Fair days — except that it doesn’t need water and doesn’t dream of becoming an editor one day.”
Asked what the last thing he’s used it for is, Carter says, “Drumming up appropriate answers to really difficult questions like these.”
