The waiter was busy. He was always on the move but never came inside, his time taken up by the outside tables. Franck had to signal to get his attention. He asked for a double espresso and the Wi-Fi password. For years now, logging on to the internet had become completely automatic. He needed it as much as he needed coffee. He gulped down two double espressos in a row while browsing Facebook and Twitter to try to reconnect with the real world. From his faraway café, he imagined how this person on holiday was feeling, or that person posting photos of a shoot or releasing a trailer. Then he went to film industry websites to see ticket sales for new cinema releases. He looked at the box office for each day in France and across the world. He wasn’t worried by the figures as he didn’t have a film out at the moment, but he needed to understand the market and know which films audiences were interested in, and to evaluate the success – or failure – of others, as if there were conclusions to be drawn A film release is a cut-throat business. He knew some people had rejoiced when they saw him screw up twice in a row, especially since everyone knows everything nowadays. Everything is counted and added up, day by day, hour by hour, and a film that flops clears the way for its competitors. It’s completely brutal, just like unleashing a pack of carnivores on the same piece of land, knowing the amount of prey is finite, and the predators will first have to neutralise one another, or, put simply, kill one another off. There is no room for compassion in the distribution of a film. The only law that counts is the law of the jungle.