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Godard Spies on Menahem

LET ME TELL YOU™

Woody Allen in a Cannon Film shown at Cannes in 1987. Honest.

USA and Japanese posters (click for larger image)

Menahem Golan recorded secretly by Jean-Luc Godard and put in Godard's 1987 film King Lear.

I think we can safely assume that Godard had final cut :p The phone call was a 4-way link with Tom Luddy,

Norman Mailer, Menahem Golan (he's the "Let me tell you" voice) and Jean-Luc Godard.

"THE CANNON GROUP INC, BAHAMAS" title card, a joke by Godard (Bahamas is listed in several places as country of origin)? Either way it’s a great moment of cinema and gives us an insight into the frustrations of working with a director who likes to do things his way. There’s a word for that and it’s auteur. Not sure that’s a word Mehahem Golan would of used back then.

What about the film? I found King Lear an unwatchable rambling mess. I have no problem with the rambling mess bit (I’m a fan of Godard) but it was the unwatchable aspect that’s unfortunate. I still have the film however and I do intend to try and watch it again after 20 years -but I’m not expecting to form a new opinion.

Click image to hear the phone conversation recorded by Godard (link goes to YouTube)

[by Brad Stevens]

Godard’s next American project was born in May 1985, when Menahem Golan met Godard for lunch during the Cannes Film Festival and agreed to put up one million dollars for a film of King Lear, to star Norman Mailer as Lear and Woody Allen as The Fool. The contract was written and signed immediately on a restaurant napkin. Luddy was brought on board as the film’s producer.

[Brad Stevens interviewing Tom Luddy -extract]

[B.S] Do you know if the famous napkin still exists?

[TL] Last time I saw that napkin, Golan had it framed in his office.

[B.S] Do you know what Menahem Golan’s reaction to the completed film was? It’s pretty clear that King Lear is in some way a personal attack on him. The soundtrack of the opening scene seems to be a recording of an actual telephone conversation between Golan and Godard. Did Golan raise any objections to this being included in the film?

[TL] The opening was a phone conversation between me in Telluride, JLG in Rolle, Norman Mailer in Provincetown and Golan in LA. JLG recorded it without anyone’s knowledge or permission. Golan saw the film in Cannes and was very upset by it, but in the lobby after the screening Leah Van Leer from the Jerusalem Festival ran up to him and told him it was great and invited it for the Festival. This mollified him a little.

Review extract: Godard’s King Lear […] has the peculiar effect of making everyone connected with it in any shape or form – directors, actors, producers, distributors, exhibitors, spectators, critics – look, and presumably feel, rather silly.

-Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader, 8 April 1988.

The above text and image was taken from www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/07/44/tom-luddy-godard.html

More information about the “Bahamas” perhaps…

click both images for larger view

UK quad artwork

click for larger

Sadly, not part of my UK quad collection (thanks to Neil for the kind permission to use his photo), I really like this poster from the great hand

of Gerald Scarfe. Scarfe will be known to many people as the man behind some of Pink Floyd’s most memorable art.

Not a ‘lost Cannon film’ as many claim, as the rights reside with (the last I checked) the UK company Hollywood Classics and a French company

(who rereleased the film which led to legal problems (see below)). The film has had a terrible history and maybe it’s best if it were ‘lost’ as I

never gave it any value as a follower of Godard. It was really a poke in the eye to Golan-Globus which they should have seen coming.

THE PAY'S THE THING

22 January 2004

BY LIZA KLAUSSMANN

Publication: Variety

PARIS (Variety) --- A Paris court found Gallic helmer Jean-Luc Godard guilty Tuesday of copyright infringement, after the director used text by writer Viviane Forrester without her authorization in his troubled production of "King Lear."

"In reproducing and diffusing in this film a paragraph of the book 'The Violence of the Calm' without the authorization of the author and the editor, M. Godard and the company Bodega Films have committed acts of copyright infringement against Mme. Forrester and against Editions du Seuil," the court said.

The tribunal forbade Bodega to continue distribution of the film, which was penned by Godard, Norman Mailer and Richard Debuisne ("C'est le bouquet!"), until the passage is credited to Forrester.

Furthermore, the helmer and the French distrib were ordered to pay the author and the publisher E5,000 ($6,350) each in damages and interest.

The verdict must also be published at the expense of Godard in two newspapers or magazines.

The court's judgment is one in a long line of problems "King Lear" has faced since its conception. Godard agreed to do an adaptation of the Shakespeare play at Cannes in 1986, signing a deal on a napkin with producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, of the now-defunct production outfit Cannon Films.

But when Godard showed a work print of the pic the following year at the fest, the film was so far from the Bard's original that the producers threatened to sue the helmer. Godard, however, escaped a legal battle when Cannon folded a month later.

Pic, which stars Godard, Woody Allen (news), Peter Sellers, Burgess Meredith, Mailer, Leos Carax, Julie Delpy and Molly Ringwald, was later bought by Bodega from Hollywood Classics. The distrib finally released "King Lear" on a handful of screens in 2002, 15 years after it was first lensed.

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Bodega Revives Godard's 'lear' For France Debut

25 January 2002

By Charles Masters

Publication: The Hollywood Reporter

A new French theatrical distributor, Bodega Films, is to make its debut release in April with Jean-Luc Godard's 15-year-old English-language movie, "King Lear," which stars Woody Allen, Norman Mailer, Peter Sellars and Leos Carax.

Godard's outlandish "Lear," which is

anything but a direct adaptation of William Shakespeare's play, unspooled for the press at the Cannes film fest in 1987.

But following a legal wrangle between Godard and the production company, Cannon Films, which subsequently went out of business, the movie fell into a legal void, which meant it never had a French theatrical release.

"Lear" eventually wound up in the catalog of the United Kingdom's Hollywood Classics, from which Bodega acquired all French rights. Bodega plans to release the film with about 10 prints.

Bodega is owned by Jean-Pierre Gardelli, who operates an art-house circuit in southwest France. The company plans to release four to five movies a year.

Home Video

King Lear (1987) hasn’t got an official DVD AFAIK, I had seen it listed from China in that 49 DVD (!) boxset above but it seems to have been

removed. The film was passed by the UK censor in October 1987 as “KING LEAR - FEAR AND LOATHING”, but I don’t recall the Cannon

Film Distributors cinema release or home video release. Got some information on that? See the Contact Me page on the main menu

MGM list it as their property in the USA:

Got a better image, information or something I’m missing or I have wrong?

Like to add something? See the Contact Me page on the main menu

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