Movies...

I have read a lot of quotes about cinema to explain or understand its essence, but none of them really satisfied me ...
so I stopped looking and I watched a very good movie.

I have dreamed of the cinema since I was young, but scriptwriting won me over because it gave me the power—the power of a god—to decide on the unfolding of a story. It was very attractive to me from the start, but it wasn’t until many years later, after making several short films, that I got serious about writing them. I was living in France at the time. I remember reading the advice of Michel Chion (Writing a Screenplay, 1985), Syd Field (several of his books), Jean-Claude Carrière, and Michel Audiard, of course.

I also remember discovering the journal Synopsis, which, unfortunately, no longer exists, but which I read avidly during my three-hour daily commute to work. This review inspired my passion for scriptwriting, and, in its pages, I learned that some classics of French cinema had recourse to dialogue writers, which is very rare. The review went beyond simple technical screenwriting advice by communicating a passion for the profession. I saw in scriptwriting a way to build everything, instead of being seduced, like most directors, by a film set crowded with people in catastrophic situations. I told myself that, at this stage, it didn’t cost anything to come up with ideas. It didn’t cost anything to rewrite a script 25 times if you had to.

My favourite directors are Steven Spielberg, Franco Zeffirelli, Giuseppe Tornatore, François Truffaut, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Jean-Claude Lauzon, James Cameron, Paul Almond, Sofia Coppola, Christopher Nolan, Robert Zemekis… well ok, I’ll stop there!