CLASSIC COMEDY STANDS ALONE PHILIPPA HAWKER

Sydney Morning Herald

Aug 4, 2011
Australia

FRANCIS Veber is the son of a Jewish father and an Armenian mother:
as a child born of two genocides, he says wryly, of course he went
into comedy. His parents were writers, but found it hard to make
money from their work, and were desperate for him to do something else.

Veber proved them wrong. He is a screenwriter, director and playwright,
responsible for some of France’s biggest comic hits, several of which
have been remade in Hollywood – La Cage Aux Folles and The Dinner
Game. His plays are performed around the world: Kenneth Branagh,
he says, is about to star in an adaptation of L’Emmerdeur in Belfast.

As a child, he recalls, “I wrote short stories, the way kids sneak
cigarettes in the toilet”. Obedient to his parents’ wishes, he spent
four years in medical school and two years studying science. Finally,
after military service, he found his way into writing. Sadly, they
didn’t live to see his success: “I lost them early.”

Veber is at the Melbourne International Film Festival giving talks and
masterclasses. He says his method is not telling people what to do,
but sharing what he knows. When he’s speaking with other writers,
it’s as if “we are doing the same work in different restaurants,
and we are meeting and sharing recipes”.

What he does know for certain is that “all writing is difficult,
you are always in a deep anxiety. It’s a strange job. It’s only if
you are mediocre, if you don’t care, that you are happy with what
you’re doing.”

Veber has an insider’s view of Hollywood; he spent six years there
as a consultant for Disney. He says this was far more relaxing than
writing, and he was surprised by how open-minded people were. “It
wasn’t that they thought their work was bad, or that they needed help,
but that they felt the need, sometimes, for a fresh eye. And there
was no ego. Not mine, not theirs.”

But there were bad experiences. He directed two movies while in
America; one, Three Fugitives, was based on a French film he had
written, and the other, Out on a Limb, on a screenplay written by
others. The latter “was a horrible flop, and the worst nightmare”.

He felt trapped in the script, unable to change anything, and he had
no support.

He had had positive experiences in Hollywood, but this was “so
negative, I decided not to work for movies any more”. He went back to
the theatre and wrote The Dinner Game, one of his biggest hits. It
became a successful film and was remade in Hollywood as Dinner For
Schmucks – with what Veber regards as distressing results.

“They kept on saying, we have to open it up, and I kept asking them
why. If it’s funny in a room, we don’t need the Grand Canyon.” Rather
than understanding what they have, “they take French foie gras and
put whipped cream on it,” Veber says.

Veber is giving a talk in French today at the State Library, and is in
conversation in English on Saturday at the Festival Club, Forum Cinema.