The Song of the Century

There is a big Bofinger at Bastille - this is the little
one in Montparnasse.

French Car Chosen 'Car of the Century'

Paris:- Sunday, 5. December 1999:- As usual I have not been diligently reading the papers bit by bit, day by day as I am supposed to be doing. When I thought up Metropole, I really thought I would sit in a café every day and read - a - paper. A little bit at least.

To be honest, the good part about the idea was the 'sitting in a café' part. I've read the papers without fail for decades and at one time I thought I was getting good at it - good at reading 'between the lines' I mean.

What has happened I think, I got so good at it that I have learned all the 'between the lines' so things I read in newspapers hardly surprise me anymore. What is actually printed are just recombinations of stories that have appeared before.

Maybe this is why the better French papers only devote minimum space to 'news' and reserve the majority of their columns for 'culture,' and intellectual arguments.

At this very moment I realize I could be writing a very interesting column today - if I had caught the current big argument when it started.

This has to do with a group of film makers who produced some sort of 'open protest' - no, they didn't parade, not yet - against French film critics who routinely say that new films are boring.

The film makers are annoyed because they invite the critics to pre-opening screenings and some of the critics go to the trouble of rushing their opinions of the film into print, before it opens in the cinemas.

This is dirty pool indeed if the reviewer chooses to think the film is a dud. Most French producers do not have huge promotional budgets for all sorts of TV-ads, to entice the folks away from the comfort of their living rooms; to go out in the cold winter air and plunk down 45 francs or so.

The big budget films do have a publicity splurge, plus they somehow get the film booked into 500 cinemas for its launch. This gives them the advantage of getting out the free word-of-mouth publicity pretty quickly.

However, to show how this is really done, you just have to watch the Americans. With a 'really big show,' they book 850 cinemas at once. When the first week's receipts are in, the score is invariably Americans '1,' French '2' - because more people fit into 850 cinemas than into just 500.

But the current argument isn't about big-budget blockbuster films. It is about the small-budget 'auteur' films, some of which are major gems.

Anyhow, I came in late and missed the beginning and this is fatal because French newspapers assume their readers are paying attention, so there is no 're-cap' anywhere in the first five paragraphs.

Without this, you may read the whole piece and get to the end before figuring out you don't know what it's about, and never will.

However, in Chaudio's barbershop and Shampoo Salon last week, I met a real film actor - over 70 films! - and he surprised me by expressing an unwillingness to make any more films. I mean, somebody has to play older characters, or films will look lopsided.

He said more or less, that nobody writes stories anymore. They just write sketches; and string them together, more or less with cellotape.

This is not a particularly French problem.

I do not have the TV-cable anymore so all I receive are the stations that broadcast via the airwaves in Paris. I get the two state-run stations, two commercial stations, and the French-German 'cultural' channel, Arte.

Lacking a TV-guide I rely on the papers for the program, but as I've written above, I don't read them in the café like I should. Usually on Mondays I don't buy a paper at all.

Seven times out of ten if I try the two state stations and the two commercial stations I am going to get some 'amusement' show, where the principal entertainment consists of the insanely-verbl host leading the studio audience in applauding. Actually, it isn't really applauding, because there is nothing to applaud - it is mere hand-clapping.