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21 Jean-Claude Carrière’s working relationship with Luis Buñuel produced six film classics, and he went on to write The Tin Drum (1979), The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988),Valmont (1989),Cyrano de Bergerac (1990), and many other films—over one hundred in all—in several languages (including English). In the year 2000 he became the only non–U.S. citizen ever honored by the Writers Guild of America with its Laurel Award for lifetime achievement. Not content with merely writing, Carrière has served as an unofficial dean of French film, written books on film and screenwriting, and hosted a debate program on French television. He is the thinking man’s screenwriter, well known for his philosophizing over not only particular screenplays but film in general. His relationship with Buñuel figures prominently in his career. Indeed, the collaboration between the two men, which began over a common love of wine, developed into one of the most prolific in European film history. Well-versed and well-spoken, Carrière is an old hand at interviews and the source of countless nuggets of wisdom and anecdotes. • • • It could interesting to hear from you how you got started in the film industry as a screenwriter. Well, I started as a novelist, as so many did back then. I wrote a novel at twenty-three and my publisher had a contract with Jacques Tati, the French film director, to publish novels based on his films. I took part in a contest, with two or three other novelists, where we had to write a chapter, like an essay, as a trial. Tati chose my chapter. He was very famous at the time and when I visited him in his production office near the Champs-Elysées, INTERVIEW BY MIKAEL COLVILLE-ANDERSEN JEAN-CLAUDE CARRIÈRE BREAKING THE RULES McGilligan_Ch02 8/7/09 11:36 AM Page 21 I was very young—twenty-four and still a student—but we got on quite well. I wrote two short stories: one from Mr. Hulot’s Holiday (Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot, 1953) and one from Mon oncle (1958). Through my contact with Jacques Tati, I met many other people. One of them was Pierre Etaix, who was Tati’s assistant, and Etaix and I started writing short films. But four or five years went by as I had to do my military service—there was a war in Algeria—and when I returned I was almost thirty. By chance we met a producer who wanted to do some short films. We did two of them in 1961 with both of us co-writing and co-directing. So, I started as a novelist and as a director. The second of these shorts, Heureux anniversaire (1962), won the Academy Award in Hollywood.We didn’t even know what it was.The producer told us we got the Oscar and we said, “What’s the Oscar?” After that he gave us the opportunity to write and direct a feature film. This film, called The Suitor (Le soupirant, 1962), won the Prix de Luc in France. It was very successful. However, I had chosen not to be co-director and to be solely the screenwriter because I had some other possibilities to write books and perhaps work in the theater. I didn’t want to commit myself totally to film direction. Once you have succeeded in becoming a film director you can’t do anything else.You are a sort of prisoner in a—hopefully— golden cage. Not always, you know. When you are a screenwriter, you are just a screenwriter, even if you collaborate with the director, but you can keep publishing books, novels, essays, and become a playwright. Which I did, a few years later, and have since been working with Peter Brook [the English theater director] for twenty-four years, as well as writing several other plays. So that was a sort of crossroads, at the very beginning of my career. When people ask me why I’m not a film director, that is my answer. Also, I believe I am less gifted as a film director than as a screenwriter—which doesn’t mean I believe I’m gifted as a screenwriter—but to be a director you have to have what we call in French an idée fixe. A sort of obsession to think every day and every hour of every day about the film you are going to make...

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