On Godard – Molly Ringwald in The New Yorker:

‘On a day off from work, I took a cab alone to meet Godard and the producer Tom Luddy uptown in a suite at the Sherry Netherland. Luddy greeted me at the door and led me into the living room, where we both sat making small talk—so small, I don’t even remember what it was about. The director made an entrance after a couple of minutes, and from then on I was aware only of his commanding presence. Godard paced the room, scrutinizing me through his glasses, which had thick, tinted lenses. His curly hair was wild and unruly on the sides, and he was mostly bald on top. He seemed old to me then, and it’s astonishing to think that he was actually only a few years older than I am now. I politely inquired if there was a script that I could read. As he puffed on a big cigar, filling the room with pungent smoke, he shook his head no but said that he would explain the idea to me.
For the next forty minutes or so, he outlined the film in his heavily accented but distinctive monotone. I tried my best to follow his interpretation (what he called “an approach”). He never sat down, but stopped pacing every so often to relight his cigar. Tom Luddy shot nervous glances at me as I listened. I gleaned that in Godard’s version Lear was an American mobster named Don Learo—which he pronounced “lay-ah-ro”—and so it followed that his youngest daughter, Cordelia, should be American as well. When he finished speaking, I asked only two questions. The first was: Why did he want me to play the part? He smiled as if he had anticipated the question. He replied that, as a young movie star, I was the closest thing America had to a princess. I suspected the more likely truth was that, based on the success of the John Hughes films, I was bankable and could help him secure financing.
The other question was where the movie would be filmed. The answer: either Switzerland or Malibu, depending on who would be cast as Lear.’ (…)

‘I had been told that Woody Allen, whose filmmaking clout was then at its zenith, was playing the Fool in “King Lear.” Accompanied by “The Pick-up Artist” ’s still photographer, Brian Hamill, who regularly worked with him, I stopped by Michael’s Pub, where Allen played clarinet with a jazz ensemble most Monday nights. After Brian introduced us, I mentioned that I had agreed to do the film with Godard and asked what his experience had been like, since he had already filmed his part. Allen described being draped in film strips while quoting Shakespeare and feeling like . . . well, a fool, although his character was referred to as the Editor. He told me that he hoped I would have a better experience. It was not encouraging.’

(…)

‘By this time, I had some sense of the plot, which seemed to have changed since my original meeting with Godard and even since the outline he had sent to me in Los Angeles. The narrative was now roughly this: The world has been destroyed, post-Chernobyl, and a puckish little man named William Shakespeare Jr. The Fifth is tasked with re-creating his famous ancestor’s work. The avant-garde opera director Peter Sellars was cast as Shakespeare’s descendant, and Godard inserted himself in a role that doesn’t appear in any Shakespeare play: Herr Doktor Pluggy—an inventor who wears a contraption on his head, with cables dangling, doing research in pursuit of something called “the image.” Before we started filming, I asked someone from the production team when I would meet makeup, hair, and wardrobe, and was told that I would be doing my own. I was also informed that Godard would be stopping by my room to choose Cordelia’s costumes from the clothes I had brought with me. It was the first I’d heard of this, and I suddenly wished I had been more selective in my packing. I went back to my room, picked out a nice sweater and skirt, tied a scarf in my hair, and carefully applied my makeup. Then I wrote postcards while I waited for Godard, the contents of my suitcase neatly arranged on the bed. When I greeted him and an assistant at the door, he took one look at my face and exclaimed, “No, no, no! Too much makeup! Take it off. If you must, just a little mascara, that’s all.” The “a” in “all” was pronounced as an “o,” articulated in the exact same way he later asked me to pronounce Cordelia’s answer to her father’s question about what she will say to prove her love for him. “Not no thing.” no thing. He split the word in two, and I could tell that this distinction was important to him, without really understanding why.’

(…)

‘Burgess had an easy, unpretentious sophistication that I admired. Unlike me, he was no stranger to the avant-garde. He had made his Broadway début in Eva Le Gallienne’s “Romeo and Juliet,” in 1930, and through the years had worked with everyone—Kurt Weill, John Steinbeck, James Baldwin, Otto Preminger, Jean Renoir. Still, Burgess found it disconcerting that he would prepare the lines Godard had given him the night before and then arrive on set to find that Godard had thrown them all out. Burgess didn’t mind the experimental—he only wanted to be let in on the process. These kinds of games can feel infantilizing to an actor, and it was only thanks to his good humor that he didn’t abandon the production the way Mailer had.’

(…)

‘My favorite anecdote was when, as a young man, he was “summoned” by Tallulah Bankhead to her suite at the Gotham Hotel, in Manhattan. “That’s when you really knew you’d arrived!” he told us with a roguish grin. He wore his nicest suit, thinking that he was going to have a tête-à-tête with Bankhead. She greeted him at the door completely naked, a champagne glass in hand and a bacchanal raging behind her. “Burgess, dahling!” she cried. He said that one thing led to another, until eventually he found himself with her in flagrante in one of the bedrooms.
“And then, just before the petite mort, she whispers in my ear, ‘Don’t come inside me, Burgess dahling—I’m engaged to Jock Whitney!’ ” he said. “And the champagne she was drinking was . . .” Honestly, he made the Brat Pack seem like a bunch of Mennonites.
Godard never dined with us. It’s a shame that he sequestered himself from everyone, because, considering how much he revered cinema and old Hollywood, I have a feeling he would have loved Burgess’s stories. Looking back on it now, I think he was actually a bit shy, trapped in his mind. Perhaps the only way he could make sense of anything was to film and edit it.’

(…)

‘These big film crews, c’est ridicule. . . .” he said, scoffing. “You don’t need so many people to make a film.” This may be partly true, but it’s also possible that by 1987 Godard didn’t command the kind of budget that would have allowed him to hire a large crew, even if he had wanted to. He was also essentially an introvert who didn’t like to be around too many people. Small crews are easier to control, and in order to work with him you had to submit to his vision absolutely. This couldn’t have been more different from my experience with other directors, particularly John Hughes, which had always felt collaborative.’

(…)

‘I saw the film with a couple of friends after buying a ticket to a showing in a mostly empty movie theatre in Los Angeles, where it played for a very short time. It was just as confusing to me then as it had been when I filmed it. Seeing the completed film didn’t clarify anything—even now, the fact that in 2012 Richard Brody put it first on his list of the “Ten Greatest Films of All Time” still bewilders me. In the theatre in L.A., I was surprised to see that Godard had kept the part with the Mailers, and I had to laugh at his nerve.’

(…)

‘That day, at the end of lunch, after we left the restaurant, we walked out on the Champs-Élysées together. The autumn sky had already started to darken, and the neon lights of the stores and restaurants on the boulevard were just beginning to fluoresce. He asked where I lived, and I told him in the Marais, across from the Winter Circus.
“Near Père Lachaise,” he remarked.
“Yes,” I said. “Not too far.” We strolled for a bit, as Belmondo and Seberg had on that same street thirty-six years before.
“What’s your favorite part of Paris?” I asked him on impulse. Without hesitation, he gestured toward the grand boulevard. “This. This is Paris for me.”’

Read the article here.

What a delightful article.

Respectful and still in the politest way possible skeptical about at least some parts of the genius of Mr. Godard.

I have the same attitude about his genius as Kafka had about hope.

Godard is a genius, just not for me.

And to be honest, what Mr. Godard did to Mr. Mailer was probably brilliant.