Jean-Claude Carrière / Luis Buñuel

Luis Buñuel
Photo by Man Ray

Jean-Claude Carrière

LUIS BUÑUEL

He said he worked with me because he understood my voice. Everything I said was nonsense, but at least he understood.

Jean-Claude Carrière / Fame

Jean-Claude Carrière

Jean-Claude Carrière

FAME

If you want fame, and a beautiful statue made of yourself, don't be a screenwriter. The writer disappears. He works in the shade.

Jean-Claude Carrière / Honoring Oscar

Jean-Claude Carrière 

Honorary Oscar

Los Angeles, 2014

Jean-Claude Carrière

HONORING OSCAR

I would like to say something about the fact that this Oscar goes to a screenwriter. I'm very happy of this, because very often screenwriters are forgotten, or ignored. They are like shadows passing through the history of cinema. Their names do not appear in the reviews. Very sad. But still, they are filmmakers. That's why tonight I'd like to share this priceless little statue with all my colleagues, the ones I know, the ones I don't know, from all over the world. So we all thank you.

Jean-Claude Carrière / The dream of writer

Jean-Claude Carrière

THE DREAM OF A WRITER

by Jean-Claude Carrière

"The dream of a writer is to be surprised by his characters. All of a sudden, they are living their own lives; they are not prisoners anymore. . . . Tati taught me how to observe, how to sit in a cafe in Paris and to look at the passersby and to guess what their story is, even a little moment of their story . . .."

Jean-Claude Carrière / "The screenwriter is a filmmaker"

Añadir leyenJean-Claude Carrière

The Storytellers

Interview with Jean-Claude Carrière

"The screenwriter is a filmmaker"

At his home in Paris October 26, 1999

By Mikael Colville-Andersen

Jean-Claude Carrière is probably the best known of the six writers in The Storytellers series. His working relationship with Luis Buñuel produced six film classics and he went on to write The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Valmont, Cyrano de Bergerac, The Tin Drum and many other films, over 75 in all.

Not content with merely writing, Carrière has been the rector of the French film school, written books on film and screenwriting and hosted a debate programme on French television.

He is the thinking man's screenwriter, well known for his philosophising over not only the screenplay but film in general. His relationship with Buñuel figures prominently in his interview. Indeed, the collaboration between the two men, which began over a common love of wine, developed into one of the most prolific in European film history.

Well versed and well spoken, Carrière is an old hand at interviews and is the source of countless nuggets of wisdom as well as anecdotes.

Jean-Claude Carrière
Barcelona 2005
Photo by Carles Ribas

MCA: It could interesting to hear from you how you got started in the film industry as a screenwriter.

JCC: Well, I started as a novelist, as so many did back then. I wrote a novel at 23 and my publisher had a contract with Jacques Tati, the French film director, to publish novels based on his films. I took part in a contest, with two or three other novelists, where we had to write a chapter, like an essay, as a trial. Tati chose my chapter. He was very famous at the time and when I visited him in his production office near the Champs d' Elysee, I was very young - 24 and still a student - but we got on quite well. I wrote two short stories: one from Mr. Hulot's Holiday and one from My Uncle.

Jean-Claude Carrière
Ilustration by Triunfo Arciniegas

Jean-Claude Carrière: 'If you want fame, don't be a screenwriter'

Legendary French writer Jean-Claude Carrière has crafted strange, wonderful films with directors from Buñuel to Godard. He talks here about the art of creating cinematic enigmas

Ryan Gilbey
Thursday 28 June 2012 21.00 BST

Jean-Claude Carrière welcomes me into the former gaming house and den of iniquity that he has called home for nearly half his 80 years; the 19th-century building stands in a sun-dappled Parisian courtyard. It's a glorious afternoon, and I apologise for being so demonstrably English in remarking on that fact, but the legendary screenwriter – tall, with salt-and-pepper stubble and warm, alert eyes – waves away my words. "Why shouldn't we discuss it?" he chuckles. "At least everyone can agree on the weather." Imagine the sense of social rupture if they didn't. "I have a little of that," he confesses, settling into an armchair in a high-ceilinged living room where wooden sculptures stand guard over Persian rugs. "Coming from a farming family in the south, rain to me is beautiful. All my youth, I heard my father saying: 'Oh, it is so dry.' When I hear the forecast is rain, I say to the radio: 'Nice weather.'"