Sofia Coppola

You've seen the red carpet and the glamorous gowns, but Louis Vuitton is about to give you a cinematic look inside Cannes. Continuing the link between fashion and film, Vuitton spotlights this year's festival in a collaboration with director Jordan Schiele, one that takes us inside the hotels, the parties, the newly renovated Louis Vuitton store on the Croisette, and the Bling Ring premiere.

Between the bird's-eye view of the red carpet and face time with Sofia Coppola, Fan Bingbing, and Emma Watson, the film's nostalgic tour of the festival — set to the music of Maurice Chevalier's "You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me" — is maybe the most enchanting view of Cannes we've ever seen.

The sight of Paris Hilton’s jewelry covering the surface of a plain, wooden kitchen table was staggering. Diamond bracelets. Bangles. Expensive watches. Cocktail rings. Pearls. This was just some of the stuff the LAPD had recovered when they raided the homes of the teens and 20-somethings we’d later come to know as the Bling Ring. It was 2009, and I was a 25-year-old correspondent for a cable TV network, crouched on the ground in front of police headquarters, scribbling notes as Detective Brett Goodkin shared pictures and descriptions of the loot with me and the three or four dozen other journalists assembled.

It wasn’t surprising to me when, less than five years later, I found myself watching the story unfold again on the big screen in Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring. The fascination was already at a fever pitch in the Fall of 2009. The group was eventually linked to break-ins at the homes of Orlando Bloom, Rachel Bilson, and Lindsay Lohan, to name a few. TMZ was posting constant updates, Vanity Fair was investigating a big, splashy story on the crimes, and the teenage burglar bunch was a regular topic of cocktail-party conversation in LA. It was simple to track down the Bling Ring kids via social media in the early stages of the investigation, and — probably to his detriment — key suspect Nick Prugo had a used-car-salesman of an attorney who was a quick and easy source of information. Clearly it was questionable information, but it was something to go on, nonetheless. Detective Goodkin was talkative and quick to pick up the phone. In fact, his open-book approach has him in hot water these days; he was paid more than $25,000 for consulting on the movie and appearing in a cameo role, as an officer who arrests Emma Watson’s character, without asking for permission from his higher-ups. He’s being investigated by the LAPD as I write this and might lose his job.

For me, the Bling Ring story was a perfect Los Angeles tale. Nevermind that these kids lived in the suburbs of Calabasas, just an hour’s drive in traffic from the Hollywood homes they robbed. They may as well have been from Boise, ID, like me. They were total outsiders who just happened to be in close proximity.

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Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring tells an unlikely — but true — story: a group of suburban LA teens regularly rob a string of celebrity homes and, for more than a year, get away with it. The real-life bling ring managed to pilfer more than $3 million in clothes, jewelry, guns, and money from the homes of stars like Megan Fox, Paris Hilton, and Rachel Bilson before they were caught in 2009.

The case quickly became a media sensation. Not only did the kids target famous people, but they also seemed to want to be them, partying in Hollywood nightclubs in Paris Hilton's dresses and spending their stolen cash at celebrity-frequented boutiques like Kitson. Here are some surprising — and sometimes stranger-than-fiction — details about the case that you may not have heard:

1. They targeted Paris Hilton because she was "dumb": Nick Prugo, one of the core members of the group, later said that he and coconspirator Rachel Lee chose Paris as their first target specifically because they didn't think she was the sharpest tool in the shed. “Rachel's idea and, I guess, my idea, was that she was dumb," Nick later said in the Vanity Fair article "The Suspects Wore Louboutins." "Like, who would leave a door unlocked? Who would have a lot of money lying around? Logically anyone in America could probably figure out that if you were gonna do something to a celebrity it would be someone that wasn't, you know, that bright."

2. They're all out of jail: Despite ripping off an estimated $3 million in jewels, clothes, cash, and other personal effects, none of the members of the bling ring are still behind bars. Rachel Lee, the ringleader whom Katie Chang portrays in the movie, was released in March of last year after serving two years of a four-year sentence. Some of the more peripheral members of the group were sentenced only to probation and community service. Perhaps most surprisingly, Johnny Ajar — who resold stolen goods for the group — is apparently still living extravagantly. The convicted felon, whom Gavin Rossdale's The Bling Ring character is loosely based on, regularly posts pictures of stacks of cash, Rolex watches, and high-end meals at pricey restaurants on his Instagram feed.

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