Based solely on the large number of sequels, prequels, remakes, adaptations and out-and-out rip-offs mounted each year by the major studios, imitation not only would appear to be the highest form of flattery, but also the easiest way to make movies.
Judging from the stunning view of Los Angeles that greets visitors to writer-director Francis Veber’s sun-drenched Mediterranean-style house in the Hollywood Hills, imitation also can be highly rewarding, especially if the creative debt is duly acknowledged and adequately reimbursed.
Veber, whose delightful “The Dinner Game” opens Friday in Chicago, may not be as familiar in his part-time homeland as he is in his native France. Nonetheless, his works have provided hours of amusement for foreign-film buffs here and precise blueprints for several American producers.
Not that they’ve felt compelled to follow the diagrams all that closely.
“When an American producer decides to buy a European film, he may look at it 10 times before he knows what to do with it,” Veber observes, reclining on a plush white couch in his living room. “The first time, he’ll laugh, but after that he might get tired of the jokes. So he’ll hire new writers, who bring in their own material.
“Eventually, the producer forgets what pleased him in the first place, and why he bought it.”
Veber movies that have been remade for American audiences are “La Cage aux Folles” (here, “The Birdcage”), “Les Comperes” (“Father’s Day”), “L’emmerdeur” (“Buddy, Buddy”), “La Chevre” (“Pure Luck”), “Le Jouet” (“The Toy”), “The Tall Blond Man With One Black Shoe” (“The Man With One Red Shoe”) and “Les Fugitifs” (“Three Fugitives”). While “The Birdcage” became a huge hit here and got mostly respectful reviews, many of the other remakes, a couple of which he directed himself, have been savaged by critics.
“They’re right, but there are explanations for that,” the amiable 61-year-old filmmaker and playwright says. “I’ve had seven of my movies remade here. Only one was good, `The Birdcage,’ and that was because Elaine May is a very good screenwriter. She told me that she wanted to stay very close to the original script, and, of course, Robin Williams and Nathan Lane were excellent.
“With `Father’s Day,’ I felt bad, . . . but what could I do? I was not consulted at all, and I didn’t own the rights to the film.”
Based on the phenomenal success of “The Dinner Game” (“Le Diner de Cons”) on stage and in French movie theaters (It finished second only to “Titanic” at the box office last year.), DreamWorks has decided to take a shot at yet another remake. Still undecided is whether Veber will direct the picture again or how the original screenplay would have to be adjusted to accommodate an American setting.
In the film, effete book publisher Pierre Brochant (handsome Thierry Lhermitte) has joined a group of successful Paris businessmen who regularly meet at dinner and try to outdo each other by inviting the “biggest idiot.” Pierre thinks he’s landed the prize turkey after finding the well-meaning, but hapless accountant Francois Pignon (rumpled Jacques Villeret), who constructs models of French landmarks with toothpicks.
Moments before this odd couple leaves for the restaurant, however, Pierre pulls a muscle in his back and is incapacitated. Ironically, he now must rely on Francois to help him get around his apartment and — not incidentally — make things right with his wife, who has just announced that she’s leaving him.
Pierre’s immediate fate rests in the hands of his hand-picked moron.
It certainly wouldn’t require much of a rewrite by American screenwriters to make the story believable or funny (imagine Jim Carrey, or a much-younger Jerry Lewis, in the role of Francois). Moreover, such obnoxious contests, as previously documented in Nancy Savoca’s “Dogfight,” in which a group of soldiers wager on who can bring the ugliest girl to a party, practically are a rite-of-passage on college campuses, and locating idiots in Hollywood is about as difficult as finding cheese in Wisconsin.
“It’s a real game in Paris, and it’s very cruel,” Veber says. “I have a few friends who did it, so I wanted to punish those people. I thought, what if one of those guys who is very rich, famous and sophisticated had a bad back and his wife is angry at him . . . and the only person who can help him is a man he has chosen because he’s stupid?
“I thought, the premise was perfect: The guy would be destroyed by this jerk. In Paris, this game is still going.”
Part of what makes “The Dinner Game” so appealing is that we never know quite what to make of Francois. We feel sorry for him, of course, yet no one in their right mind would want to spend more than a few minutes with a guy who could so easily and inadvertently ruin their life. (Again, think back to any number of Jerry Lewis movies.)
American audiences are conditioned to believe that the inner beauty of all ugly ducklings will be revealed by the end of the last reel, but Francois’ constant bumbling, while hilarious to everyone except Pierre, would test the patience of a saint.
“In Europe, you can use an antihero in your films,” says Veber, whose early influences include Billy Wilder, Woody Allen, Preston Sturges, Leo McCarey and Frank Capra. “When a man is weak, he can cry in front of a woman, like Mastroianni used to. That can’t exist here, unless the character starts out as a wimp, but ends up like Rambo. . . . Then it’s OK.
“In France, we don’t have to milk the characters as much as you do here, or endure the horrible scenes in which the cop arrives home and his wife complains that his job is too dangerous.”
Even though he doesn’t consider himself to be a particularly “optimistic” person, almost all of Veber’s 19 screenplays have been comedies. The onetime journalist started out writing for the theater in the ’60s, turned to film in 1971 and began directing in 1976.
“In France, it’s not like here, where you write five scripts and only one gets made,” he says. “We write screenplays to be shot and released, not to sit on a shelf.”
Veber is confident “The Dinner Game” will do well as a film because it did very well on stage in France. What he probably couldn’t have anticipated, however, was how much better it would do at the box off than his previous biggest hit “La Cage aux Folles” — 9.3 million tickets sold vs. 5.8 million — and “Les Comperes,” with 4.8 million.
“There is a feeling now that writers and directors are only interested in pleasing themselves, not be entertaining, which is what I’ve always tried to be,” Veber says. “For this reason, I was underrated by the critics, who considered me to be a merchant, instead of an artist.
“Based on what I saw at Cannes this year, 90 percent of the directors in Europe feel as if a film can’t be a masterpiece unless it’s only seen by 10 persons. I think it’s very dangerous, and it explains why our films aren’t received as well as those by Fellini and Bergman were 30 years ago.”
Still, he was heartened by the success here of “Life Is Beautiful,” which demonstrated that American audiences would support a subtitled film if they thought it would be sufficiently entertaining.
“It is very important for us Europeans, because it means that maybe American audiences will start to be interested in the rest of the world,” he says. “Americans don’t like dubbed films. So either they will accept subtitles or our films will have to be remade.”
Either way, Veber is happy to spend half the year in Los Angeles. While he need only look outside his back door to glimpse the offices of the filmmakers who have felt compelled to tinker with his creations, he feels productive in his lofty perch overlooking the Sunset Strip.
“This isn’t a real city, . . . not like Paris, Rome or New York,” says Veber, who was preparing to fly to Paris with his wife of 35 years to attend the wedding of one of their two screenwriter sons. “People go to bed very early and wake up early to go to the gym, which is very strange. There’s no nightlife here, so that’s good for my writing.
“I love to take my bike and ride around the hills. This is the perfect place for me.”
