I remember the week that my dad appeared on Hey Hey It’s Saturday. He did the macarena (because it was the 90s) and his pants fell down (because that is what was funny in the 90s). The mix of shame and pride my sister and I felt going to school on Monday—all the kids running up to ask us if in fact that was our dad’s tighty-whitey clad ass on their television. Yes, that was him… on the telly.

My dad was an actor—a working actor. Throughout the 90s, if the people of Ramsay Street came under threat from a slick-talking American agent, that was my dad. When the Stingers arrested some greaseball car salesman, inevitably that was my dad. When an alien auditioned to a loudmouthed yank in a Hawaiian shirt, that yank was he. And it can’t be understated the warping effect on the mind of a child that is induced by seeing their parent on television from a young age. I truly believed that everyone ended up on television.

When I was eight, my dad got us tickets to go and sit in the studio audience for a taping of the comedy sketch show Big Bite. I took my best friend, Alex. He was a Seventh-day Adventist, so I think he felt the same way about heaven as I did about the screen: if you waited long enough, you and everyone you loved would get there. But I wouldn’t have to wait until after death—I was going to be on screen that very day. A large crane camera flew over us in the audience and I squished my little body across to make sure it caught me.

A month later my family was gathered around the television to watch our episode, MY episode. The sketches played. They’d cut to the audience cheering. I waited patiently, even faking a few generous laughs at the jokes I’d already seen. Finally, the crane shot, MY shot appeared on screen. The camera slowly panned the audience. There was my friend Alex, and soon it would be me, I was sitting right next to him. But then the camera stopped just short of where I’d been sitting. You couldn’t see me at all. The episode ended and I hadn’t been in a single shot. I sat sobbing at the television. I had been right there, but as far as anyone knew I’d never been in the room at all. Suffice to say that I didn’t speak to Alexander for a week. The betrayal.

As an adult, I saw Alex on Facebook sharing a video about his life—we’d lost touch after primary school. He was talking about his death metal band and sword making hobby. It seemed like he was no longer actively practicing as a Seventh-day Adventist. Though his faith had waned, mine had not. If anything, my devotion to the screen had deepened, finally coalescing around my appearance on a reality competition show—Drag Race Down Under.

The program is a regional spin-off of the far more famous RuPaul’s Drag Race. Both shows see gangs of cross dressers battling for supremacy and the title of ‘The Next Drag Superstar’—a title which, I am proud to share, I now hold, alongside a suite of fabulous prizes ($50,000 cash, a frame TV and $2000 worth of eco-glitter).

Finally, I had silenced the hunger that had rumbled deep inside me since childhood. I had been on screen—even those little screens on the back of plane chairs, if that one tagged pic on instagram was to be believed. I was free to pursue a more noble path. I would write and direct a film. I would be behind the screen. I started work on a feature film script.

That’s how I ended up at the Cannes Film Festival: the world’s most prestigious film festival, the three kilometres of seaside road annually reupholstered in red carpet, the only place on earth where Juliet Binoche out ranks Tom Cruise. Me and my producers, Annie and Lauren, had been selected to propose our film at a prestigious pitching event. It was going to be all business. Our distributor had let us know there may be a chance to secure tickets to a red-carpet film premiere. But that’s not what I was here for, so nothing worth getting my hopes up for.

Tickets to Cannes red carpets are almost impossible to get. So much so that when you walk through the city, you’ll see swathes of people dressed in full black-tie regalia holding up signs for the film premiere they want to go to. It’s so chic—glamorous old French women with fur stoles begging for tickets to see Mission Impossible, like extras out of a Toorak production of Oliver Twist.

But there are fixers who acquire tickets and hold them for industry professionals. And it so happened that on our third day in Cannes, an actual famous person had cancelled their ticket and a spot became available. The ticket was offered to our film’s distributor at 4pm who immediately called and asked ‘How quickly can you be ready? I have a ticket for you for the world premiere of Eddington at 6pm.’

Prior to this call, I had not been living the most glamorous life in Cannes. My producers and I had spent the days schlepping between the hotel suites of studios, begging for meetings like extras out of a Ringwood production of Oliver Twist. So when the call came in, I was sweaty and haggard and in no shape to hit a red carpet. Besides, I had been cured of my affliction; my craving for attention was gone. I didn’t need to appear of screen. I was at Cannes for the selfless cause of becoming a successful filmmaker—humble and self-sacrificing.

So we run back to our accommodation and I chuck all my makeup on the floor and just pound my face into it. I reopen my ear piercings with cheap convenience store jewellery. My producer hastily paints me a set of press on nails. From my bag I pull the dress I’d had made ‘just in case’. Through some miracle I manage to get in drag and out the door by 5:50pm. Now we are hoofing it through the crowds of festival goers. I’m sprinting ahead in my sandals, followed by Annie with my heels and handbag.

In the lead up to premieres at Cannes, the whole street becomes jam packed with bodies. Spectators will wait all day in these little sectioned off areas directly in front of the red carpet. I am told the industry vets referred to these as ‘the pig pens’. Looming above everybody is a giant jumbotron with a live feed of the red carpet. But I get to shove past all of this, because I have a ticket. I’m pushing those fabulous old French women out of the way—'not tonight darling, I’m not like you’.

We make it to the entrance of the holding pen for the red carpet. Annie hands me my heels, takes my sandals and wishes me luck with a seriousness typically reserved for WW1 soldiers going over the trenches (I can only assume). Annie now has the equally important duty of going to film the jumbotron so that we can prove this did in fact happen. She disappears into the seething mass of cinephiles. I walk straight ahead— noticing or at least imagining the look of shock from the security guards as they see that I do indeed have a red-carpet ticket. ‘Yes… it’s me.’

Suddenly I am just out there on the carpet. And there is a wall of photographers suspended on a scaffolding of step ladders and they’re shouting for me to look at them and now over here. Then just as quickly one of the red-carpet supervisors is at my back telling me to move along. You aren’t allowed to dillydally on the carpet, so I move along and then I’m off.

I get into the cinema—The Grand Théâtre Lumière. I’m in the mezzanine. I grin at the young French woman next to me with an expression that says ‘Can you believe we’re here and we got on the screen?’ She gives me a pitying look and continues to type on her phone. It’s so fabulous.

Then I get the message from Annie: I’m back at the jumbotron. Are you about to go? She’d missed it. The moment was gone. There was no footage of my European red-carpet debut. Hours of flying and sewing and sweating, the unimaginable odds that I’d gotten to Cannes and been given this ticket, and it was all for nothing. I sat with my organs crushed by my corset.

Back at the accommodation, Annie offers her condolences. At least she’d also gotten some good photos for instagram.

Now I was left to face the real question. Why did I care? Honestly, what did it matter? I’d had this surreal experience. Why did I need a document to feel like it had really happened? Furthermore, was my ego so brittle, so frail, so small that I wanted to be congratulated for walking a hundred metres in a funny outfit? I’d not made the film, or starred in it—I’d just been there to see it. What could I be upset about? That I’d missed out on my god-given right to appear on a screen for a fleeting moment? No. It needed to end. I was not an eight year old crying on the floor of my family home. I was an adult. I’d killed my ego. I’d let this stupid notion die. I am real, the screen is not.

That night, as my producer Annie slept in the bed across my mine, I went through 9689 photos of the Eddington premiere. Buried in the depths. I found two of myself. I am on screen. My ego death can wait.