A Zimmer-worthy Emmy adventure


A Zimmer-worthy Emmy adventure

02 May 2007

This just in: the Zimmer Twins won the International Interactive Emmy award! I'm still finding it hard to believe. Big congratulations and thanks to everyone at zincRoe - I was honoured to be our representative over in Cannes. Thanks also to Sandrine Pechels de Saint Sardos, our distributor at Bejuba, who was also at the gala and whose calming presence made giving an Emmy acceptance speech slightly less overwhelming for me.

The night started on a stressful note, to say the least. I was staying in Nice, about a 20 minute train ride from Cannes, and had planned to meet Sandrine at 7:30 pm at the storied Carlton Hotel where the gala was being held at 8:15. Upon arriving at the Nice train station around 6:30 pm, I discovered, to my horror, that instead of the regular Nice-Cannes train every 20 minutes, there were only two trains going to Cannes that night due to a train strike. Suppressing the urge to panic and completely lose my mind, I bought my ticket from an automated machine using Euro coins (seeing as all the tellers were closed) and waited, decked out in my suit and Converse runners with my super-uncomfortable dress shoes stashed in my shoulder bag. Around 7:25 pm, the train finally arrived, right around the time I was supposed to be meeting Sandrine. We had just started moving when we started slowing down again for the next stop. This proceeded to happen at every commuter stop between Nice and Cannes (seeing as it was one of the only trains that night), lengthening the journey by a precious 10 minutes...

Finally, around 7:55 pm, we made it to Cannes. The train had barely stopped as I burst out of the doors and started sprinting for the Carlton which was a good 10 minute walk away. Dodging expensively dressed people, palm trees and numerous tiny dogs, I ran down the sidewalk in the +20 degree heat, arriving at the Carlton right around 8:00 pm. To my relief, I saw the patio full of tuxedos and evening gowns, indicative that the gala hadn't started yet. So with a stitch in my side, I switched my shoes and stashed my runners in my bag (under the curious gaze of a few of the patio dwellers), composed myself as much as possible and strode into the Carlton, finding a very relieved Sandrine who had heard about the train strike and who insisted I have a glass of champagne to calm down. The ceremony started a few minutes later, and my head was still swimming when a beautiful Spanish starlet announced that there was a tie in the "Interactive Program" category bewteen Re-Genesis, a project from another Canadian company, Xenophile media, and the Zimmer Twins! So we all went up onto the stage, and after the guys from Xenophile had said their piece, I stepped up to the microphone and gave my little speech. And finally, once I sat down with a heavy Emmy statue in hand, I was able to start relaxing and notice the amazingly opulent ballroom for the first time.

The rest of the night was very enjoyable, albeit somewhat surreal for a prairie boy like myself. And upon leaving, we each got a cool loot bag (for lack of a better word) containing Emmy chocolates, a book about photographer Willy Ronis and two small bottles of Moet champagne. After a 72 Euro cab ride back to Nice (remember, no trains), I met up with my friend Steve Wilson who had accompanied me to France, and we each enjoyed a bottle of Moet on the pebbly beach beside the dark Mediterranean. Back at our hotel, not even the discovery of a large cockroach balancing delicately on the end of my toothbrush could ruin what turned out to be a truly unforgettable evening.

If you'd like to see a video clip of my acceptance speech, take a peek here.

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