Take One (Nov-Dec 1972)

Mr. Truffaut was interviewed by Take One’s Donna Dudinsky as he passed through Montreal late last year. (Transcribed and translated by Peter Lebensold.) JUST PIECES OF PAPER. SLES REL SEAN DL PVT ITED TRIN RANE ERD ESTADO IERIE SE Generally, when | think of a subject, | start making notes on pieces of paper and | put these pieces of paper into a file. On the file, | write something — either a provisional title, or the name of an actor (if it’s a film for a particular actor). And when the file Starts to get fairly thick, | look through all the notes and if they seem to work well, | call in a secretary and start dictating — a few pages, perhaps five or ten. | ask her to type leaving a lot of space and when she gives me the completed typescript | do a lot of writing between the lines (in pencil or whatever) so that, if it's five pages the first time around, by the second time | have it typed up the outline might be a dozen pages or so. | always arrange things for myself so that | never get the impression that I’m working. | work a lot — | do nothing but work — but | always have the impression that | don’t need to work. La Nuit Américaine (Day for Night) started with a list of characters. | knew there’d be a young actor in the film who'd be Jean-Pierre Léaud, and that he’d play a young actor. So | put down — on one page — everything that would happen to him. Then, on another page, | took the actress, Valentina Cortese, and put down all of the details relating to her. Then, later, looking at all these sheets of paper, the actual construction of the scenario came quite quickly. It’s just pieces of paper — that’s all | can say — just pieces of paper. In writing the scenario, I'm already thinking of certain actors. Those, | ask right away. | ask, “Would you be free the month of September next year?” — | ask them a long time ahead, when | know who it is | want. As for the others — sometimes I’m not sure of who the actor will be; | write the character and it's only when the character is completely written that | think of a certain actor, or else | see a number of different actors. In La Nuit Américaine, there are some well-known actors — and generally-speaking | was thinking of them as | wrote — and then to play some of the roles of technicians there are some actors who aren't very well known — in fact, to play the role of a technician, a script-girl, it was important that they not be well known.’ So, for the role of script girl, | auditioned a dozen or so actresses, and | took the one that was best. At this point, the film is under way. If it is to be an inexpensive production, | can make it myself along with some Italian associates, a French co-producer, etc. But if it is to be more expensive, | prefer to make it with a major US company. | suggest the film to them — give them fifteen or twenty pages — and ask them to say yes or no. | REALLY BELIEVED THAT THE FILM WAS SCREWED. SAE AS ZT TS IES FSF WE PE I PTE 8 RES Te TY TE OE | Baisers Volés (Stolen Kisses) was one of my most thoroughly improvised films — to the point where | felt it would never get shown in a theatre. Two weeks before starting shooting, | wanted to abandon the project. Because, prior to Baisers Volés, | had wanted to buy the rights to a French novel, which was the story of a young man who had not known his father — a young man who was a bastard — and he goes to a private detective and manages to track down his father. And | liked that character a lot because he had a purpose. And the author of that novel was a very nice guy but the story was very autobiographical and he didn’t want to sell the rights. | sympathized with that because | have never liked those authors that sell the film rights to their stories and then complain that the movie’s no good — that’s very cynical; many writers are like that and | understood his refusal. But still, | had promised Jean-Pierre Léaud that we would make a film together that February and now | had nothing. So | said we'll make Jean-Pierre Léaud a private detective. Private detectives, in France, are nothing, very tame — a little office, with three secretaries — very nice people; their business is with women who want their husbands watched after work — little things, very little, but quite amusing. So, we made a scenario out of that, and the producer wasn't happy at all — he refused the 8 “...Francois Truffaut...”