Post by RNL on Apr 29, 2006 14:58:29 GMT
I don't know how many of you have seen this. I thought it was worth a read. It's directly copied from a relatively good translation posted on Truffaut's IMDb board.
To Jean-Luc Godard (May/June 1973)
Jean-Luc. In order to for you not to be obliged to read this unpleasant letter until the end, I shall begin by the essential: I shall not co-produce your movie.
Secondly, I shall return to you your letter to Jean-Pierre Léaud: I have read it and found it repulsive (dégueulasse). It is because of this letter that I feel the moment for me has come to tell you, at length, that according to me, you behave like a shit.
Regarding Jean-Pierre, so ill-treated since the Big Marie’s story and, more recently in his work, I find it disgusting (dégueulasse) to when in Rome, do as the Romans do de hurler avec les loups, disgusting (dégueulasse) to try to extort, by intimidation, money from someone who is 15 years younger than you, said someone that you paid less than a million when he was the center of your movies which would bring in 30 times to you.
Indeed, Jean-Pierre has changed since Les 400 Coups (a.k.a., 400 blows) , but I can tell you that it is in Masculin Féminin (a.k.a. Masculine, Feminine) that I realised for the first time that being in front of the camera could bring more distress to him than joy. The movie was good, and he was good in the movie, but the first scene, in the café was depressing for someone who looked at him with friendship and not like an entomologist.
I never said anything against you in front of Jean-Pierre who admired you so much, but I know that you often talked smut about me (balancer des saloperies sur mon compte), just like someone would tell a kid “well then, your father, he is drunk all the time, huh?”
Jean-Pierre is not the only one to have change in 14 years and if we would screen during the same night A bout de Souffle (a.k.a., Breathless) and Tout va Bien (a.k.a., All is well), the disillusion of the second movie would create consternation and sadness.
I don’t give a damn of your opinion on La nuit Amériacine (a.k.a., Day for Night), what I found appalling from you, is to go, again today, see movies like this one, movies which contents you know beforehand and which do not correspond to your idea of movies nor to your idea of life. Would Jean-Edern Hallier write to Daninos to tell him that he doesn’t agree with his last book?
You have changed your life, your brain and, nonetheless, you keep on loosing your hours in movie theatres, damaging your eyes. Why? To find food for your despise for us all, to reinforce yourself in your new certitudes?
It is my turn to say that you are a liar. At the beginning of Tout Va Bien, there is this line: “to make a movie, movie stars are needed”. Lie. Everyone knows your insistence in obtaining Jane Fonda who would try to escape, despite the fact that all the financiers told you to take anyone. You have gathered your couple of movie stars, à la Clouzot: since they have agreed to work for me, a tenth of their salary will be sufficient, etc. Karmitz, Bernard Paul need movie stars, you don’t, so, then again, lie. The press: movie stars were forced upon him. Another lie regarding your new movie: you do not mention the comfortable advance on incomings (avance sur recettes) you solicited and received and which would be sufficient, even if Ferreri, as you oddily accused him, spent the funds that were reserved to you. Indeed, he may do whatever he wants, this macaroni who comes to eat our bread, this immigrant worker, he must be deported, via Cannes!
You have always have the knack for passing yourself off as a victim, like Cayatte, like Boisset, like Michel Drach, victim of Pompidou, of Marcellin, of censorship, of distributors, whereas in fact you always managed to do exactly what you wanted, when you wanted, as you wanted and above all to preserve your hard-line image, even if it is at the expense of defenceless people, such as Janine Bazin. Six months after the Kiejman’s story, the two TV shows of Janine were cancelled, revenge cleverly differed. Kiejman, who cannot talk of political movies without interviewing you, your part -it is really a part here- would have been, once again to maintain your subversive image, thus the choice a little line well chosen. The line said, either you get away with it and it is lively enough so that no one can suspect you of soften, or you don’t get away with it and it’s stunning: Godard is definitely Godard, etc.
Everything goes as predicted: the show is not screened, you stay on your pedestal. No one notice that the line is a new lie. If Pompidou is staging France, you are staging the Communist Party and the unions which you maltreat, with circumlocution and derision, in Tout va Bien, movie that was first intended to the largest release.
I withdraw from the Fahrenheit 451 debate, at the time, in an attempt to help Janine Bazin, not because of a sympathy for you, that’s why I never returned your call at that time.
Anyhow, last month, Janine was in the hospital after being knocked down by a car during her last show, knee surgery (she was limping since she was a teenager, beurk, etc.) and she ended there, in the hospital, jobless, moneyless, and naturally, without any news from Godard who will only agree to get down his pedestal to amuse Rassam, from time to time. Therefore, I can tell you: the more you love the masses, the more I love Jean-Pierre Léaud, Janine Bazin, Patricia Finaly (this one has just been released from the sleeping hospital (clinique du sommeil) and it is necessary to stalk the Cinémathèque to obtain her late six months salaries), Helen Scott, whom you have met in an airport and refused to talk to her, why, because she is from the U.S. or because she is my friend? Shit behaviour. A girl from the B.B.C. calls you to talk of political movies in a TV show about me, I warned her in advance that you will refuse, but better than that you hang up on her without letting her finish her sentence, elitist behaviour, shit behaviour, as when you agree to go to Geneva, London or Milan and do not show up, just to astonish, to surprise, like Sinatra, like Brando, shit behaviour on a pedestal.
For a period, after May 1968, no one heard anything about you, or else, mysteriously: it seems that he is working in a factory, he has created a group, etc., and then, on a Saturday, it is announced that you are going to speak on the radio with Monod. I stay in the office to listen to you, to have some news from you, in a way; your voice is trembling, you seem very affected, you announce that you are going to shoot a movie called La Mort de Mon Frère (a.k.a., the Death of My Brother), on a sick black worker that was left dying in the basement of a TV manufacturing company and, while listening to you, in spite of the trembling of your voice, I feel (i) that the story is not true, in any case trafficked; (ii) that you will never shoot that movie. I said to myself: if this guy had a family and that family had to live hoping for this movie to be done? There was no part for Montand in there nor for Jane Fonda, but for a quarter of an hour, you gave the impression of well behave, like Messmer when he announces that the voting right is to be granted to all 19-year old. Fraud (fumiste). Dandy. You have always been a dandy, when you sent a telegram to de Gaulle for his prostate, when you called Braumberger “dirty Jew” on the phone, when you called Chauvet a corrupt (because he was the last one to resist you), dandy when you mix: Renoir-Verneuil, it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other (blanc bonnet et bonnet blanc), dandy again today when you pretend to show the truth on cinema, on those who work for it obscurely, unpaid, etc.
When you had a set prepared, garage mechanic or shop by the crew and you arrived: “I have no ideas today, we are not going to shoot” and the crew had to undo everything, it never occurred to you that the workers felt completely useless and despised, like the sound crew who waited in vain Brando in an empty auditorium of Pinewood, for a whole day?
Now, why do I tell you this today, and not three, five ten years ago?
For six years, like everyone, I have seen you suffer because of (or for) Anna, and all that was odious in you was forgiven because of your pain.
I knew that you had seduced (entrepris) Liliane Dreyfus (ex. David) by telling her: “François doesn’t love you anymore, He is in love with Marie Dubois who is in his movie” and I found that pitiful but moving, yes, why not, up to a point, moving! I knew that you were seeing Braunberger and telling him: “let me do the sketch that Rouch is to shoot, in his place” and I found that… let’s say, pathetic. I was walking with you on the Champs-Elysées, and you were telling me: It appears that Bébert et l’Omnibus (a.k.a., Bebert and the Train), doesn’t have any success, it is well deserved” and I said “come on, come on…”.
In Rome, I fought with Moravia because he wanted me to shoot Le Mépris (a.k.a., Contempt); I was there with Jeanne, to present Jules & Jim, your last movie had no success, Moravia wanted to change his horse.
For the same reasons of fellowship with you, I quarrelled with Melville who could not forgive you for helping in on Léon Morin, Prêtre (a.k.a., Léon Morin, Priest) and who was trying to prejudice you. During the same period, you voluntarily –or to please Anna- humiliated Jeanne (Eva), you tried a laughable blackmail on Marie-France Pisier (Hossein, Yougoslavia …on repeated occasions… “the alliance”), etc.. You used Catherine Ribeiro, whom I had sent to you, in Les Carabiniers (a.k.a., The Carabineers), and you threw yourself at her, like Charlot at his secretary in The Dictator (I didn’t come up with the comparison myself), I list all that just to remind you not to forget anything in you truth movie on the cinema and sex. Instead of showing X’s bottom and the lovely hands of Anne Wiazemsky on the window, you could do the contrary now that you know that not only men are equal but women also, including the actresses. Every shot of X…in Week-End was a wink to your pals: that whore want to shoot a movie with me, look how I treat her: there are whores and poetic girls.
I tell you all that today because, all the same, in spite of dandyism darkened by some sourness that still showed through in certain declarations, I thought that you had changed a lot, I could think that before reading your letter to Jean-Pierre Léaud. If you had closed the letter, I would have given it to him without reading it, and I would have regretted it, may be you gave me a chance not to give him the letter….?
Today you are strong, you are considered to be strong, you not the lover in pain anymore, like everyone, you prefer yourself, you hold the truth on life, politics, engagement, cinema, love, all is really clear to you and everyone who thinks the contrary is a bastard (salaud), even if your opinion in June is different from your opinion in April. In 1973, your prestige is intact, when you enter an office, one looks at your face to see if you are on a good mood or if he’d better stay in his corner; sometimes you agree to laugh or to smile; the familiar terms (tutoiement) have replaced the formal ones (vouvoiement), but intimidation remains, the easy insult too, the terrorism. I want to tell that I don’t worry about you, there are enough wealthy kids in Paris, inhibited because they had their first car at 18-year old, who will be happy to be cleared of everything by saying: “I am producing the next Godard”.
When you wrote me, at the end of 1968, to claim 8 or 900 thousand Francs from me that I didn’t owe you (even Dussart was shocked) and you added: “anyhow, we have nothing more to say to each other” I took that literally; I sent you the money, and apart from two moments of pity (one on me unhappy in love, one on you in the hospital) I have only felt despise for you, when I saw in Vent d’Est (a.k.a, East Wind) the shot: how to make a Molotov cocktail and a year latter, you chickened out when we were asked to distribute in the streets, for the first time La Cause du Peuple.
The idea that men are equal is theoretical for you, it is not felt, that’s why you can’t love anyone, nor help anyone, other that throwing some cash on the table. A guy, of the Cavanna type, said “Money must be despised, especially small coins”, and I never forgot how you threw away small coins by sliding them behind the seats of the cafés. Unlike you, I never said anything negative about you, because you were so stupidly attacked and not for the “true” reasons, and also because I have always hated quarrel between writers or painters, doubtful settlings of accounts through newspapers, moreover, because I always felt that you were at the same time jealous and envious, even during your good periods –you enjoy so much competition, I hardly do- and there was from me admiration, I admire easily, you know that, and a will for friendship since you had been saddened by something I said to Claire Fischer concerning the modifications of our relationships after the army (for me) and Jamaica (for you). I don’t say much because I am not always certain the contrary could be also true, but if I say you are a *beep* it is because I saw Janine Bazin in the hospital, your letter to Jean-Pierre, there is no doubt on the matter. I am not delirious, I am not saying Janine was in the Hospital because of you, but her eviction, after 10 years on TV, is directly connected to you who don’t give a damn. Lover of gestures and spectacular declarations, haughty and peremptory, you are still settled on your pedestal in 1973, indifferent to the others, incapable of giving few hours of your time to help anybody. Who would say you are a genious, whatever you do, unless these famous elegant leftists, from Susan Sontag to Bertolucci, via Richard Roud, Alain Jouffroy, Bourseiller, Cournot and even if you appeared impervious to vanity, because of them, you mimicked great men: de Gaulle, Malraux, Clouzot, Langlois, you maintained the myth, you reinforced your tenebrous, unreachable, temperamental side (as Scott would say), letting servility take place around you. You need to play a part and that part must be prestigious , I have always had the feeling that the real militant are like housekeepers, ungrateful, daily, necessary job. You are, on the contrary, like Ursula Andress, 4 minutes of show off, just to give time to set off the flashlights, two, three sentences really surprising and vanishing, back to the advantageous mystery. Unlike you, there are little men, from Bazin to Edmond Maire, without forgetting Sartre, Buñuel, Queneau, Mendès France, Rohmer, Audiberti who care about the other, help them to fill in social security forms, answer the letters, they have in common to forget themselves easily and above all to be more interested in what they do than what they are or what they appear.
Now, all that which is written can be said, that is why I finish this like you: if you want to talk about it, OK.
François
If I had, like you, failed to the promise of my ordination, I would prefer it to be for the love of a woman than for what you call your intellectual evolution. Le Journal d’un Curé de Campagne (a.k.a., Diary of a Country Priest)
To Jean-Luc Godard (May/June 1973)
Jean-Luc. In order to for you not to be obliged to read this unpleasant letter until the end, I shall begin by the essential: I shall not co-produce your movie.
Secondly, I shall return to you your letter to Jean-Pierre Léaud: I have read it and found it repulsive (dégueulasse). It is because of this letter that I feel the moment for me has come to tell you, at length, that according to me, you behave like a shit.
Regarding Jean-Pierre, so ill-treated since the Big Marie’s story and, more recently in his work, I find it disgusting (dégueulasse) to when in Rome, do as the Romans do de hurler avec les loups, disgusting (dégueulasse) to try to extort, by intimidation, money from someone who is 15 years younger than you, said someone that you paid less than a million when he was the center of your movies which would bring in 30 times to you.
Indeed, Jean-Pierre has changed since Les 400 Coups (a.k.a., 400 blows) , but I can tell you that it is in Masculin Féminin (a.k.a. Masculine, Feminine) that I realised for the first time that being in front of the camera could bring more distress to him than joy. The movie was good, and he was good in the movie, but the first scene, in the café was depressing for someone who looked at him with friendship and not like an entomologist.
I never said anything against you in front of Jean-Pierre who admired you so much, but I know that you often talked smut about me (balancer des saloperies sur mon compte), just like someone would tell a kid “well then, your father, he is drunk all the time, huh?”
Jean-Pierre is not the only one to have change in 14 years and if we would screen during the same night A bout de Souffle (a.k.a., Breathless) and Tout va Bien (a.k.a., All is well), the disillusion of the second movie would create consternation and sadness.
I don’t give a damn of your opinion on La nuit Amériacine (a.k.a., Day for Night), what I found appalling from you, is to go, again today, see movies like this one, movies which contents you know beforehand and which do not correspond to your idea of movies nor to your idea of life. Would Jean-Edern Hallier write to Daninos to tell him that he doesn’t agree with his last book?
You have changed your life, your brain and, nonetheless, you keep on loosing your hours in movie theatres, damaging your eyes. Why? To find food for your despise for us all, to reinforce yourself in your new certitudes?
It is my turn to say that you are a liar. At the beginning of Tout Va Bien, there is this line: “to make a movie, movie stars are needed”. Lie. Everyone knows your insistence in obtaining Jane Fonda who would try to escape, despite the fact that all the financiers told you to take anyone. You have gathered your couple of movie stars, à la Clouzot: since they have agreed to work for me, a tenth of their salary will be sufficient, etc. Karmitz, Bernard Paul need movie stars, you don’t, so, then again, lie. The press: movie stars were forced upon him. Another lie regarding your new movie: you do not mention the comfortable advance on incomings (avance sur recettes) you solicited and received and which would be sufficient, even if Ferreri, as you oddily accused him, spent the funds that were reserved to you. Indeed, he may do whatever he wants, this macaroni who comes to eat our bread, this immigrant worker, he must be deported, via Cannes!
You have always have the knack for passing yourself off as a victim, like Cayatte, like Boisset, like Michel Drach, victim of Pompidou, of Marcellin, of censorship, of distributors, whereas in fact you always managed to do exactly what you wanted, when you wanted, as you wanted and above all to preserve your hard-line image, even if it is at the expense of defenceless people, such as Janine Bazin. Six months after the Kiejman’s story, the two TV shows of Janine were cancelled, revenge cleverly differed. Kiejman, who cannot talk of political movies without interviewing you, your part -it is really a part here- would have been, once again to maintain your subversive image, thus the choice a little line well chosen. The line said, either you get away with it and it is lively enough so that no one can suspect you of soften, or you don’t get away with it and it’s stunning: Godard is definitely Godard, etc.
Everything goes as predicted: the show is not screened, you stay on your pedestal. No one notice that the line is a new lie. If Pompidou is staging France, you are staging the Communist Party and the unions which you maltreat, with circumlocution and derision, in Tout va Bien, movie that was first intended to the largest release.
I withdraw from the Fahrenheit 451 debate, at the time, in an attempt to help Janine Bazin, not because of a sympathy for you, that’s why I never returned your call at that time.
Anyhow, last month, Janine was in the hospital after being knocked down by a car during her last show, knee surgery (she was limping since she was a teenager, beurk, etc.) and she ended there, in the hospital, jobless, moneyless, and naturally, without any news from Godard who will only agree to get down his pedestal to amuse Rassam, from time to time. Therefore, I can tell you: the more you love the masses, the more I love Jean-Pierre Léaud, Janine Bazin, Patricia Finaly (this one has just been released from the sleeping hospital (clinique du sommeil) and it is necessary to stalk the Cinémathèque to obtain her late six months salaries), Helen Scott, whom you have met in an airport and refused to talk to her, why, because she is from the U.S. or because she is my friend? Shit behaviour. A girl from the B.B.C. calls you to talk of political movies in a TV show about me, I warned her in advance that you will refuse, but better than that you hang up on her without letting her finish her sentence, elitist behaviour, shit behaviour, as when you agree to go to Geneva, London or Milan and do not show up, just to astonish, to surprise, like Sinatra, like Brando, shit behaviour on a pedestal.
For a period, after May 1968, no one heard anything about you, or else, mysteriously: it seems that he is working in a factory, he has created a group, etc., and then, on a Saturday, it is announced that you are going to speak on the radio with Monod. I stay in the office to listen to you, to have some news from you, in a way; your voice is trembling, you seem very affected, you announce that you are going to shoot a movie called La Mort de Mon Frère (a.k.a., the Death of My Brother), on a sick black worker that was left dying in the basement of a TV manufacturing company and, while listening to you, in spite of the trembling of your voice, I feel (i) that the story is not true, in any case trafficked; (ii) that you will never shoot that movie. I said to myself: if this guy had a family and that family had to live hoping for this movie to be done? There was no part for Montand in there nor for Jane Fonda, but for a quarter of an hour, you gave the impression of well behave, like Messmer when he announces that the voting right is to be granted to all 19-year old. Fraud (fumiste). Dandy. You have always been a dandy, when you sent a telegram to de Gaulle for his prostate, when you called Braumberger “dirty Jew” on the phone, when you called Chauvet a corrupt (because he was the last one to resist you), dandy when you mix: Renoir-Verneuil, it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other (blanc bonnet et bonnet blanc), dandy again today when you pretend to show the truth on cinema, on those who work for it obscurely, unpaid, etc.
When you had a set prepared, garage mechanic or shop by the crew and you arrived: “I have no ideas today, we are not going to shoot” and the crew had to undo everything, it never occurred to you that the workers felt completely useless and despised, like the sound crew who waited in vain Brando in an empty auditorium of Pinewood, for a whole day?
Now, why do I tell you this today, and not three, five ten years ago?
For six years, like everyone, I have seen you suffer because of (or for) Anna, and all that was odious in you was forgiven because of your pain.
I knew that you had seduced (entrepris) Liliane Dreyfus (ex. David) by telling her: “François doesn’t love you anymore, He is in love with Marie Dubois who is in his movie” and I found that pitiful but moving, yes, why not, up to a point, moving! I knew that you were seeing Braunberger and telling him: “let me do the sketch that Rouch is to shoot, in his place” and I found that… let’s say, pathetic. I was walking with you on the Champs-Elysées, and you were telling me: It appears that Bébert et l’Omnibus (a.k.a., Bebert and the Train), doesn’t have any success, it is well deserved” and I said “come on, come on…”.
In Rome, I fought with Moravia because he wanted me to shoot Le Mépris (a.k.a., Contempt); I was there with Jeanne, to present Jules & Jim, your last movie had no success, Moravia wanted to change his horse.
For the same reasons of fellowship with you, I quarrelled with Melville who could not forgive you for helping in on Léon Morin, Prêtre (a.k.a., Léon Morin, Priest) and who was trying to prejudice you. During the same period, you voluntarily –or to please Anna- humiliated Jeanne (Eva), you tried a laughable blackmail on Marie-France Pisier (Hossein, Yougoslavia …on repeated occasions… “the alliance”), etc.. You used Catherine Ribeiro, whom I had sent to you, in Les Carabiniers (a.k.a., The Carabineers), and you threw yourself at her, like Charlot at his secretary in The Dictator (I didn’t come up with the comparison myself), I list all that just to remind you not to forget anything in you truth movie on the cinema and sex. Instead of showing X’s bottom and the lovely hands of Anne Wiazemsky on the window, you could do the contrary now that you know that not only men are equal but women also, including the actresses. Every shot of X…in Week-End was a wink to your pals: that whore want to shoot a movie with me, look how I treat her: there are whores and poetic girls.
I tell you all that today because, all the same, in spite of dandyism darkened by some sourness that still showed through in certain declarations, I thought that you had changed a lot, I could think that before reading your letter to Jean-Pierre Léaud. If you had closed the letter, I would have given it to him without reading it, and I would have regretted it, may be you gave me a chance not to give him the letter….?
Today you are strong, you are considered to be strong, you not the lover in pain anymore, like everyone, you prefer yourself, you hold the truth on life, politics, engagement, cinema, love, all is really clear to you and everyone who thinks the contrary is a bastard (salaud), even if your opinion in June is different from your opinion in April. In 1973, your prestige is intact, when you enter an office, one looks at your face to see if you are on a good mood or if he’d better stay in his corner; sometimes you agree to laugh or to smile; the familiar terms (tutoiement) have replaced the formal ones (vouvoiement), but intimidation remains, the easy insult too, the terrorism. I want to tell that I don’t worry about you, there are enough wealthy kids in Paris, inhibited because they had their first car at 18-year old, who will be happy to be cleared of everything by saying: “I am producing the next Godard”.
When you wrote me, at the end of 1968, to claim 8 or 900 thousand Francs from me that I didn’t owe you (even Dussart was shocked) and you added: “anyhow, we have nothing more to say to each other” I took that literally; I sent you the money, and apart from two moments of pity (one on me unhappy in love, one on you in the hospital) I have only felt despise for you, when I saw in Vent d’Est (a.k.a, East Wind) the shot: how to make a Molotov cocktail and a year latter, you chickened out when we were asked to distribute in the streets, for the first time La Cause du Peuple.
The idea that men are equal is theoretical for you, it is not felt, that’s why you can’t love anyone, nor help anyone, other that throwing some cash on the table. A guy, of the Cavanna type, said “Money must be despised, especially small coins”, and I never forgot how you threw away small coins by sliding them behind the seats of the cafés. Unlike you, I never said anything negative about you, because you were so stupidly attacked and not for the “true” reasons, and also because I have always hated quarrel between writers or painters, doubtful settlings of accounts through newspapers, moreover, because I always felt that you were at the same time jealous and envious, even during your good periods –you enjoy so much competition, I hardly do- and there was from me admiration, I admire easily, you know that, and a will for friendship since you had been saddened by something I said to Claire Fischer concerning the modifications of our relationships after the army (for me) and Jamaica (for you). I don’t say much because I am not always certain the contrary could be also true, but if I say you are a *beep* it is because I saw Janine Bazin in the hospital, your letter to Jean-Pierre, there is no doubt on the matter. I am not delirious, I am not saying Janine was in the Hospital because of you, but her eviction, after 10 years on TV, is directly connected to you who don’t give a damn. Lover of gestures and spectacular declarations, haughty and peremptory, you are still settled on your pedestal in 1973, indifferent to the others, incapable of giving few hours of your time to help anybody. Who would say you are a genious, whatever you do, unless these famous elegant leftists, from Susan Sontag to Bertolucci, via Richard Roud, Alain Jouffroy, Bourseiller, Cournot and even if you appeared impervious to vanity, because of them, you mimicked great men: de Gaulle, Malraux, Clouzot, Langlois, you maintained the myth, you reinforced your tenebrous, unreachable, temperamental side (as Scott would say), letting servility take place around you. You need to play a part and that part must be prestigious , I have always had the feeling that the real militant are like housekeepers, ungrateful, daily, necessary job. You are, on the contrary, like Ursula Andress, 4 minutes of show off, just to give time to set off the flashlights, two, three sentences really surprising and vanishing, back to the advantageous mystery. Unlike you, there are little men, from Bazin to Edmond Maire, without forgetting Sartre, Buñuel, Queneau, Mendès France, Rohmer, Audiberti who care about the other, help them to fill in social security forms, answer the letters, they have in common to forget themselves easily and above all to be more interested in what they do than what they are or what they appear.
Now, all that which is written can be said, that is why I finish this like you: if you want to talk about it, OK.
François
If I had, like you, failed to the promise of my ordination, I would prefer it to be for the love of a woman than for what you call your intellectual evolution. Le Journal d’un Curé de Campagne (a.k.a., Diary of a Country Priest)
