The 2018 Cannes Film Festival is going to have to find a groove without a lot of US celebs.

For one thing, Andrew Garfield, one of the stars of David Robert Mitchell’s “Under the Silver Lake,” is stuck on Broadway where he’s performing six long shows a week of “Angels in America.” The newly minted Tony Award nominee is likely to win Best Actor, too, so it’s not like he can get away.

But now I’m told Garfield’s “Silver Lake” co-star Riley Keough isn’t coming to Cannes, either. And that’s a blow because Riley– who is hot as a pistol right now– is also in Lars von Trier’s controversial and violent “The House That Jack Built.”

Keough isn’t the only star from the von Trier movie not going to Cannes. Uma Thurman is also skipping the festival. And that means a lot less star wattage on the Croisette.

The von Trier movie will also be notable for something else. I’m told that the Danish director, who got himself banned from Cannes a few years ago after making comments about Nazis, will not have a press conference for “The House That Jack Built.” Since his banishment began at a press conference, I suppose the feeling is that it’s best to muzzle him.

Of course, at the press conference for “Melancholia,” von Trier also suggested to his female stars on the dais– Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg– that he “Make a porno” with them. I guess Keough and Thurman will be spared that kind of situation on a dais. (Keough’s publicist says she’s working at that time.)

Also not coming to Cannes is Jake Gyllenhaal, star of Paul Dano’s “Wildlife,” shows in the Cannes Critics Week. “Wildlife” was a Sundance hit, with Jake co-starring alongside Carey Mulligan. She’s likely not attending either as the British actress is going into an off Broadway play soon. Gyllenhaal may be rehearsing for his Leonard Bernstein biopic, so he must “conduct himself” very carefully!

PS All of this news is disappointing. These films are must-see attractions. Let’s hope one of these actors re-considers!

Jake Gyllenhaal is out there looking for Oscar material and he may have found it.

Jake has signed to play the late composer (with Stephen Sondheim) of “West Side Story” and conductor Leonard Bernstein in a movie tentatively titled “The American.” Let’s hope they change that once the film is being made.

Bernstein, of course, lived larger than life, with a wife, children, and a whole gay life. He lived it at the Dakota on the Upper West Side, which was the grandest setting he could find.

The movie is based on a book by Humphrey Burton. Says a press release: In five movements, like a symphony, “The American” follows Leonard Bernstein from conducting the New York Philharmonic at the impressive age of 25 through the meteoric rise to fame, all while struggling both personally and publicly to be everything that everyone expected him to be, most of all himself.

Cary Joji Fukunaga, of “True Detective” and “Beasts of No Nation” fame, is directing and producing along with Gyllehaal’s production company and Sierra/Affinity.

Gyllenhaal says in a release: “Like many people, Leonard Bernstein found his way into my life and heart through West Side Story when I was a kid. But as I got older and started to learn about the scope of his work, I began to understand the extent of his unparalleled contribution and the debt of gratitude modern American culture owes him. As a man, Bernstein was a fascinating figure—full of genius and contradiction—and it will be an incredible honor to tell his story with a talent and friend like Cary.”

The press release says the screenplay by Michael Mitnick is based on the Burton book but that it’s also “an original idea.” Two of the producers listed are married couple Adam Gopnick and Martha Parker; he’s an editor at  The New Yorker and she has credits in art departments as an assistant on a few films.

Mel Gibson can’t make regular deals in Hollywood– no one wants to work with him.

So for his next project, Gibson, 62, has hired his 27 year old girlfriend to write the screenplay. Rosalind Ross is also the mother of Gibson’s 9th child, born in 2015.

Ross, age-wise, falls about mid way through Gibson’s 8 other children. (Hannah Gibson, the eldest, is 38.) Her screenwriting credits consist of a short film and a single episode of a TV show no one’s ever seen.

“Destroyer” is based on a book called “Hell From the Heavens: The Epic Story of the USS Laffey and World War II’s Greatest Kamikaze Attack by John Wukovits.”

Gibson has been persona non grata in Hollywood since 2006 when he was arrested for a DUI and made several anti-Semitic, racist, and misogynist comments to the arresting officers. From then on it was a decade of scandals for Gibson, including his relationship with BabyMama Oksana Grigoreva, his inflammatory taped conversations with her, revelations about his father’s anti-Semitism and Gibson’s $70 million tax free foundation supporting a  private Malibu church that is not acknowledged by the Archdiocese.

“Destroyer” — if it’s made — sounds like another straight to video movie for Gibson.

Remember what Gibson said to conservative writer Peggy Noonan about the Holocaust: “it’s just a numbers game.”