Shame on New York Times scribe Elaine Dutka for mixing up her Nouvelle Vague auteurs. In an article about licensing film clips for documentaries (read about my own travails in this arena here), Dutka reported that an upcoming IFC documentary received a license to use a clip from seminal French New Wave flick Breathless for a pittance after producers made it known that it would otherwise resort to “fair use.”
One copyright holder, James Velaise, the president of Pretty Pictures, ultimately agreed to license a clip from François Truffaut’s “Breathless” for $1,000, a fraction of his usual asking price.
Truffaut’s Breathless? Quoi? Sure, the dude share’s story credit with Jean Luc-Godard, but going by the auteur theory of which both directors were fierce proponents, the film is clearly Godard’s. Always has been. The only thing Dutka could have done to be more ridiculous is to credit the film to Jim McBride who proffered a flaccid Americanized remake starring Richard Gere in 1983 by the same title (which itself is a bit of a misnomer seeing as the French release is titled Un Bout de Souffle — an idiomatic expression that roughly translates to “holding one’s breath,” “out of breath,” “breathless”).
Despite my protestations, the Times has yet to print a correction. I won’t hold my breath.
6 replies on “Winded by the Corrections Dept.”
À Bout de Souffle!
Oh, crap, you're right. Earlier, Levy had to correct me on how to spell Godard. New rule: No more blogging sans un bon nombre de café.
À Bout de Souffle!
Oh, crap, you’re right. Earlier, Levy had to correct me on how to spell Godard. New rule: No more blogging sans un bon nombre de café.
And while we're at it, "the dude share’s story credit" should slough off its apostrophe. But I want to weigh in on the meaning of blogging: I think it ought to be gramatically rough. It shouldn't be line-edited except by retentives like myself in the appropriately footnotey comments section. I mean, go back and change it, for fuck's sake, but blog freely and creatively, as you are inspired to do so, regardless of your state of caffeination. Although I did used to have a friend, Jed back then and Traci now, who claimed to only have two moods, "regular or decaf."
And while we’re at it, “the dude share’s story credit” should slough off its apostrophe. But I want to weigh in on the meaning of blogging: I think it ought to be gramatically rough. It shouldn’t be line-edited except by retentives like myself in the appropriately footnotey comments section. I mean, go back and change it, for fuck’s sake, but blog freely and creatively, as you are inspired to do so, regardless of your state of caffeination. Although I did used to have a friend, Jed back then and Traci now, who claimed to only have two moods, “regular or decaf.”