14 octobre 2005
english version
Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man
THE SYNOPSIS
In 1951, the Bostonian George Whitman opened a bookshop-commune a stone's throw from Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. George, 93, still runs his "den of anarchists disguised as a bookshop." He offers free, dirty beds to poor literati, cuts his hair with a candle, glues the carpet with pancake batter, explodes in fits of anger and cuddles pretty guests. More than 40,000 travelers, writers, poets, students and political activists have slept among the books in the Shakespeare and Company bookstore, nicknamed the Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart. Guests repair sagging shelves, tend the till, lug books, mop the floor with newspapers, spot shoplifters, throw parties and make soup or love. George asks them to give poetry readings, read books off the shelves... or write their own. Many have. Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, Pablo Neruda, Julio Cortázar, Paul Bowles, Jacques Prévert, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlingetti, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes and Peter Matthiessen, among others, have all eaten, slept and written at George's. Welcome to the makeshift utopia of the last member of the Beat Generation.
THE SHOOTING AND THE SETS
The film offers an unprecedented insiders' view of this haut lieu of free-spirited anglophile and bibliophile culture in the heart of Paris. The filmmakers enjoyed complete access to the site (Benjamin Sutherland, who has lived and worked in the store, has known George since 1994). To film the action, the team slept on the shop floor by night and followed shoppers, the owner and guests by day.
Most sequences are shot in the shop, among the bookcases, beds, and piled-up books in the ground-floor store and antiquarian book annex, in the labyrinthine cellar and reading room, in the book-lined stairwell toilet (the pages double as toilet paper) and in George's bedroom and kitchen in the bug-infested forth-floor apartment, reserved for illustrious guests. Once George is in bed, the camera follows bookstore guests as they swim in the Seine, throw parties, eat supper in the reading room and drink wine while strumming a guitar at the till.
Additional interviews with well-know writers are filmed in Paris, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles and Essaouira (Morocco). Historic locations include San Francisco's City Lights Bookstore and, in Paris, interiors of the buildings of Sylvia Beach and Albert Camus and André Gide (where Jean-Pierre Faye now lives). Greek poet Nanos Valaoritis speaks in his Paris party flat (where Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Gregory Corso got high and discussed insects).
THE CHARACTERS
George
George continues to bustle about, lugging books to-and-fro "like a devil in his box," according to the café-owner next door. George boasts about his daughter, Sylvia Beach Whitman, that he fathered 20 years ago. He trims his hair with a burning candle (it's faster than a barber, he says) and occasionally washes his ruffled, stained velvet suits in the bathtub. George enjoys barking at customers, blaming travelers for bringing in bed bugs and charming girls. He sponsors Monday-evening poetry readings, cosmopolitan Sunday tea-parties and, during summer, dinner parties on the sidewalk out front. George hasn't installed a shoplifting alarm; instead, he marks up prices and cuts costs elsewhere. He repairs shelves with scrap wire, refuses to buy shopping bags and rummages through the trash. Literary historian Noël Riley Fitch recounts the morning she saw a proud George return with meat and "discarded food objects" pulled out of trashcans behind restaurants. He cooked up the booty to feed himself and his guests.
George's Guests
Bookstore guests are everywhere, and early-morning customers mingle with travelers crawling out of their sleeping bags, washing at the Wallace fountain out front or wolfing down George's famous pancakes while they cover their mats with books for sale. (One guest complains George's pancakes taste like cleaning products.) No need for alarm if you see a backpacker pouring pancake batter under the carpet, either. It's cheaper than store-bought carpet glue and works just fine, George says.
Not all guests claim to be writers, but everyone has to write a short autobiography before getting a bed (five crates full of the dog-eared life stories collect dust up on the forth floor). Some travelers just stay for a night; bona-fide writers usually stay longer. Canadian journalist Kathleen O'Hara stayed for five weeks to write anti-globalization political tracts; Ablimit Kerim, the Chinese Muslim and student of French, has been camping in the upstairs library for two years; Simon Green, a British poet, translator and fierce Don Quixote has lived in the rare-book annex for five years, ignoring (or insulting) customers.
George's Illustrious Friends
George has befriended, lodged, fed and encouraged generations of writers, including Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, Paul Bowles, Bertolt Brecht, Arthur Miller, Graham Greene, William Styron, Ray Bradbury, Howard Zinn, Lawrence Durrell, Jacques Prévert, Louis Aragon, François Truffaut, Philippe Sollers, Peter Mattiesson, Barbara Tuchman, Howard Zinn, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes and the Beat Generation icons William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Most are mentioned by a third party in filmed anecdotes; others are represented by inserts of their letters to George. (The late Gregory Corso, furious at George for losing the only copy of a manuscript left as loan collateral, retaliated by carrying off sacks of books. Treasure hunters have yet to find the unpublished Corso poems.)
Interviewed personalities include Lawrence Ferlinghetti (friend of George and publisher of the Beat Generation poets), Karl Orend (publisher and former employee), Noël Riley Fitch and Thirza Vallois (two historians of American literary life in Paris), Jean-Pierre Faye (French author and leader of the literary movement Change), Robert Cordier (French member of the Beat Generation and friend of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Gregory Corso), John Baxter (Australian biographer), Christopher Cook Gilmore (writer and lifelong friend of Paul Bowles) and Nanos Valaoritis (Greek poet and friend of Nikos Kazantzakis, André Breton and William Burroughs). All speak of their relationship with George and his mad, extravagant institution.
George and the Gossip
What do the neighbors say about a man who runs a crumbling bookstore with no telephone, no computer, a leaky, fire-blackened ceiling and visitors sleeping on the dirty carpet? They say George exploits guests for free labor, yells and insults to stay fit, hoards money and sells off valuable editions for peanuts. A habitué complains George urges him to cut down the trees out front (they block his view of Notre-Dame).
THE DOCUMENTARY'S STRUCTURE
As a young man, George dreamed of traveling and writing. With a degree in Russian and Spanish from Harvard, George set off to Central America. He planned to walk around the world, filling notebooks, for seven years. He didn't. In 1946, George stopped in Paris and hasn't left since. Today, George has become famous, but in spite of himself. Holed up in his castle of books, George has encouraged, fed and housed much of the literary Gotha of the second half of the 20th century.
The documentary begins here, with the story of a shopkeeper, troublemaker and literary cult-figure. As the film develops, the filmmakers draw closer to the man himself. George the historical figure fades; George, the eccentric and solitary bookman steps to center stage. The film begins with George's lifework and legend; it ends in the intimacy of an old man nearing death.
At the beginning of the film, we spy George lording over the writers camped throughout his dilapidated shop; George abuses, pampers and insults them all. We film him among his writers; they in turn talk about George. Other writers, now older, tell stories of George's legendary hospitality, fits of greed, altercations with hapless customers and guests. We witness the intimacy of daily life; guests flirt, write, picnic on the sidewalk, swim in the filthy Seine River, go to bed. Guests scrub the floor, repair the shop and cook--amid a daily fare of literary discussions, poetry readings and political debates. George, omnipresent, is at times overbearing, at times permissive.
George laments his unfinished wanderings, but takes solace in the travelers that have come to him, the world he never explored that knocks on his door. He also regrets his unwritten books. But, according to former employee Karl Orend, George has become an author, of sorts. Not a novelist manipulating characters, but a master of puppets luredinto his real-life theater. As the film draws to a close, George cuddles with two of his favorite girls, tells them a story, recites a poem of his youth and, once again, misbehaves (he sets his hair on fire to avoid an ordeal at the barber). George then hugs the girls and proclaims that the most important thing in life is love and friendship.
The film is a portrait of George Whitman and his bookstore-commune, an extension of the old man himself ("half-angel, half-demon," as George describes himself). The documentary captures the last moments of George's life; the film is our testimony of love for a mad, latter-day saint.
THE HISTORY
The rue de la Bûcherie is one of the oldest streets in Paris. Previously spelled Buscherie and Boucherie, the street was drawn during the 600s when it led to the port aux Bûches, or lumber docks. The cellar dates from the 900s, but the building itself was erected in the 1500s, then called the Maison du Moustier and inhabited by monks. In 1951, George bought the dilapidated ground floor from an Arab grocer and opened up shop. Previously, George sold books out of his room at the Hôtel de Suez, boulevard Saint Michel. The door didn't lock, so when returning home George was often greeted by students stretched out to read. In 1959, George installed electric lights and sales dropped: part of his clientele missed the candlelight atmosphere. Today, the shop is officially open noon to midnight every day of the year; in practice, the doors open when George lumbers down the stairs in the morning.
THE MUSIC
The score is written and performed by Michael Galasso, the American composer featured on the soundtracks of In the Mood for Love and Chungking Express, two films by Hong Kong director Wong kar-Wai. To hear samples of Galasso compositions, or to read a short biography of the composer in English or French, log on to www.michaelgalasso.com.
LANGUAGES
Eighty percent of the film is in English; 20 percent is in French. One version is subtitled in English and another in French.
THE DOCUMENTATION
The filmmakers filmed articles from the Panama press on George's
travels as a young man, original Shakespeare and Company publications
and vintage photographs of habitué writers posing in the shop, gleaned
from private collections in Paris, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Handwritten notes to George from Anaïs Nin, Jacques Prévert, Langston
Hughes, Julio Cortázar, Paul Bowles, Lawrence Durrell, Allen Ginsberg,
and Howard Zinn have also been filmed. Historical data was researched
at the National Archives, at the Forney Library and at the Historic
Library of the City of Paris.
Commentaires
Dr.Du.Design.Ind.
Dear Gonzague,
what ever happened to you??
Did you get lost in the mauretanian desert selling bashed cars???
U missed a great party @ Lago Maggiore in Italy with the Boromean Mafia and the Fernet Branca Clan.
Try to contact me there will be more later on this Year!!
Call me if ur not to broke ;-)
I can give u a call back!
+49 17661086257 mobile
+49 30 47006652
Ciao Bello!
ow
what a man
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