"Max Pécas, King of Turkeys" "Who's the asshole who made this?" "!" "?" "That's him!" ""A pathetic show" – Positif (magazine)" ""To be dumped into oblivion."" "The reviews were always bad anyway." "There really is nothing to add they were always bad." "Everyone was against him." ""The French stupidity of the week"– Télérama (magazine)" "I'll tell you : he didn't care" "He said "The important thing is they're talking about me... they can say whatever they want, as long as they talk about me"" ""An exemplary turkey" – Télépoche (magazine)" ""To be proscribed"" "He knew for a fact that he didn't work for " Les Cahiers du Cinéma "" "He suspected it." "Well, I say " suspected " : he knew it." "He said it." "He knew he wasn't appreciated at all in France." "They call me " The King of Turkeys "" "Not everyone is a king, are they ?" "I'm part of the aristocracy." "He felt no hate." "I did." "I always thought that, if I ever met a bloke writing such a review," "I would slap his face, because I was that kind of guy" "But not my father." "Critics were unfair with Max because I think" ":most of them wrote their reviews without watching the movie" "Max did it, so it couldn't be good." "I still fail to understand why he was crucified that way." "Can you imagine one of these guys writing" "Well, I had great fun for a while" "I was with beautiful girls on beaches, we rode some bikes..." "Can you imagine him writing that ?" "He's no more one of us." "He's crazy. "" "And sometimes, there was one who said..." "I can remember a reporter from " Libération "" "writing a whole page once, saying that... given Max's evolution, there was consistency..." "Well, it wasn't positive, but it wasn't negative either." "He said he was someone who existed and who deserved some credit for existing, period." "" Beautiful, Blonde and Tanned "" "" Engage the clutch, soldier, it's smoking "" "" I am a nymphomaniac "" "Who is hiding behind such titles ?" "Max Pécas : a somewhat forgotten French director." "He nonetheless directed 27 full-length movies which were distributed globally." "His name evokes smiles and chuckles and became synonymous with mediocrity." "From the late 50's to the 80's, he churned out crime movies erotic movies and comedies." "You can see from the start that this is no high-brow movie" "Absolutely not, indeed." "It's entertainment... a movie with young people." "A funny movie." "He always said he wasn't an intellectual and had nothing to tell but stories... for the cinema, and even exploitation..." "He wanted to make popular movies, successful movies." "He had his own style." "I mean... bad ?" "His scripts were bad." "It never was anything but sweet and nice." "I think he wanted to stay in a particular field because he knew that he could do it." "And he never talked about it like" "We're going to make a masterpiece, it will be successful." "You see ?" "It was just the movie he was making that year, and there would be another one the next year, and he wouldn't try to make it better than the previous one." "No, he was sincere.It was quite amazing." "There was a motto posted in my office" "I'm not making movies to make money," "I'm making money to make movies." "Let's calm down and have a cool drink." "His movies always were despised by critics, considered turkeys." "Nonetheless, some were successful." "I saw that, at the box-office, a Max Pécas movie was second only to Coppola's Apocalypse Now" "So I went to see him." "And I asked Pécas :" "Have you no regret when you walk in front of theaters showing Bunuel" "Resnais or Schlondorff movies ?" "and Max Pécas answered" "You know, cinema is like tennis :" "in the beginning, you always think that you're going to be Borg or Connors, and, as time goes by, you realize that you're not good enough, but you go on anyway, because you love tennis" "Ouch, my head !" "My head, ouch !" "Ouch, my hand, ouch !" "Are you OK, François ?" "They're not movies with a message ?" "Certainly not." "But successful movies ?" "Yes, successful movies, and..." "Yes." "And that's important." "Obviously." "He always did the best job that he could" "Well, here it is : he made movies with the means that he had and he produced them his way." "He also produced his own films, you must never forget it" "Which means he invested in himself." "He bet on himself." "That was another thing." "So you have a recipe : never any stars ?" "Oh, no, it's just the way it happened to be." "They're expensive and, all in all, the audience doesn't like them." "In order to master his budget and lower production costs" "Max knows all the tricks in the book. ;" "Beginning actors asking for a low fee." "It was my first movie." "It was my very first casting and my first rendez-vous." "And I was hired." "You see, it was the first everything for me." "A small, versatile and enthusiastic team." "There were what ?" "Fourteen of us, at the most." "Yes, there were..." "There was what was needed." "We sure didn't walk on each other's feet." "We acted in the movies, as soon as there was a somewhat distinctive shape, the majordomo type, a taxi driver or something.." "Max himself acted in his own movies... or had bit parts." "Max also pioneered advertising in movies." "Usually, in the room of Nicole, the production administrator, there were all the things we had to show on screen." "So, Julius ?" "How's your leg ?" "There are up and downs." "I'd like a Martini too, please." "Here you are." "In the beginning, we earned a lot of alcoholic products, since alcohol was allowed." "We all were given little Marti... well, alcoohol bottles when filming was over, things like that." "Did you ?" "You didn't ?" "I never had those." "It's normal." "You don't need to give those to sound engineers." "And that's how we could do business." "A little of this, a little of that, and we were on our way with a few bucks." "We made the movie." "When we reached the end of it we were dead broke, and that's it." "Max specialized in low-budget movies." "When he began his career, in the late 50s, that was characteristic of the " Nouvelle Vague "." "It's not just that it defined a film maker as an author, it's also that it suddenly allowed people to make movies with little money." "So why wouldn't someone like Max Pécas or others benefit?" ". well, why wouldn't they learn that lesson ?" "Once, with a friend who owned a production company, we were discussing the Nouvelle Vague." "It was a revolution in the movies." "You didn't use big spotlights anymore but little ones and so on.." "I said " It's no miracle to make a movie for such a price. "" "" Could you ? " " Yes, why not ? " Banco !" "And I did..." "I started my first movie that way." "It was called " The Vicious Circle "" "which wasn't vicious at all, but was about turning around without finding a way out." "It was a thriller." "Because I always was a great Hitchcock admirer." "Well..." "Hitchcock being the Himalaya while I am... 25.000 leagues under the sea, you know." "There's no comparison." "Just after that movie, he followed it with" "" Mind your own business, Daniela " and " Sweet violence ", two movies that will reveal Elke Sommer, a German starlet and a Brigitte Bardot clone, a genuine sex bomb who'll be a success in Hollywood." "" Sweet violence " was a rather sociological movie, one of those movies that, today..." "Today, people will make such a movie and be taken very seriously." "Because it reflects youth and so on... at the time, it... well, you can't say it was a huge success but it wasn't sneered at either." "Now with some experience in low-budget film making and wanting to be his own master, he founded in 1963 his production company :" "Les Films du Griffon" "Heeding the counsel of local distributors, he started on a series of sexy crime movies." "" Sexy " meant that, in an action or adventure movie, or maybe a character study, there were two or three scenes rather " risqué "... at the time." "The girl kept her panties anyway, often her bra" "Or we shot two versions : the version with a bra and the version without a bra." "Everything will happen up here." "He won't be mutilated." "Everything will happen up here." "He won't be mutilated." "At the time, you know, you only had to show boobs in order to get a -18 certificate." "Indeed, we seldom saw naked women and that may be what became the Max Pécas touch." "I don't know whether Max Pécas wanted to revolutionize morals or not." "I don't think so." "But there was indeed a wind of freedom." "Nothing, of course, compared to what happened later, it was really very chaste." "Compared to what you can see now, it was The Famous Five" "I had completely forgotten about that movie," "I thought it was just a small romance movie, and I was really surprised when I finally saw it, because I didn't expect that at all" "I had seen recent movies by Max Pécas and, to be honest" "I didn't think that he would revolutionize the movie industry, but that one, really, I thought was full of promise." "Not all of them were kept, but there was a really strange, very gripping, very poetic atmosphere." "It's very funny because, if this had been the first Pécas movie that I'd seen," "I would have thought : this is the birth of a genius, his production is going to be wonderful." "The beginning of his career was rather interesting because, indeed," "he discovered the possibility of making cheap movies and genre movies." "And the cheapest genre, all in all, is crime." "Max Pécas arrives at a time when cinema slowly liberates itself, mostly about the representation of male-female relations, and starts to expose the nudity of actresses." "We're in an era when society strives for liberation and the filmmakers, the producers, try to keep audiences in theatres." "And how to keep them ?" "By offering something more than" "TV for instance." "Of course, it's eroticism." "So he arrives at this time and, very opportunely specializes in sexy crime movies, erotic crime movies." "Which are really a product of that era." "1968." "The moral revolution." "You don't need an excuse anymore to show nudity" "Max Pécas turns openly towards eroticism" "He has fun playing with the censors." "In the late 60s, eroticism becomes a genre in itself, so you can see erotic movies in theatres." "Erotic cinema triumphs in the late 60s and early 70s to the point that it claims a whole lot of screens." "This is really a triumph of softcore eroticism and, of course, Max Pécas is perfectly in his element ;" "he goes on making low-budget movies, he knows all about eroticism since he began his career with sexy movies, so at this point, he dives fully into eroticism." "He made erotic movies, that's true" "" Erotic ", isn't that a laugh nowadays ?" "When you watch his erotic movies, it really is a laugh because, it's not even softcore." "Max made quality erotic exploitation movies, well, not devoid of quality anyway, and which are still... it's funny to watch today the movies he made then, which are really very personal." "It wasn't sex for sex's sake." "Eroticism was a bonus." "There always was a plot, even when the script wasn't stellar, there was always a story, something, with an added erotic angle, and he was really valued for that, he was loved for that." "He is, in France, one of the two or three... let's say bold filmmakers..." "You had to be bold, because, after that, you were branded with a red iron." "That's why I regretted that my father... and many of us told him that, tried to make him understand that, when he made those movies, he didn't take an alias because he was categorized." "For the CNC (cinema official authority) there was a red X near the name Max Pécas" "Even for him, during the second part of his career, when he started to make comedies, he wouldn't have met with such obstacles because of his name with such hostile reviews and sneers." "I tried to get out of it." "But each time I tried, each time I proposed another project between two movies, they told me : " Look, Pécas, your erotic movies thing is popular, why would you change ? "" "It wasn't exciting." "I mean, I did the best I could, like a good craftsman." "In May 1974, Valéry Giscard-d'Estaing, the newly elected President of the Republic, proclaims the end of all censorship." "Erotic cinema becomes more explicit love scenes are no longer simulated, hardcore cinema is born." "This new deal is going to change Max's smoothly running system." "From then on, there was a lot of people orbiting around those of us and there weren't many of us in France, four or five, who made erotic movies... they started to include pornographic shots," "I mean sexes, penetrations, well," "I won't make a speech about that." "The point is : if you released an erotic movie after that nobody was interested anymore, our usual crowd wasn't interested anymore." "The making of " Félicia ", a softcore erotic movie, was already well advanced." "In order to stay in business" "Max had to include unsimulated sex scenes." "The distributors asked for it." "Then the distributors said :" "Now that everybody does hardcore, you must have hardcore scenes." "So that's when my father started directing hardcore scenes." "He only did it... in my opinion he only did it in order to save his company" "At that time." "It was a turning point the time dictated its law." "So he did it, but I think he was ashamed of it." "He didn't have much choice, because should he have gone on making things like " Club Privé "" "or " Sexuellement Vôtre ", he would have taken the plunge" "No one would have paid to see Mr Max's small erotic movies." "He very carefully directed stories in order to make porn movies, but as soon as he had to get in the thick of things so to speak, he wasn't comfortable anymore" "He did it." "He did it the best way he could, and it so happens that he did it very well, which is very funny because..." "I would have imagined imagined him doing another handful of porn flicks..." "He didn't like it." "He had a kind of reserve which forbade him to go further than softcore." "He stopped immediately." "I remember that, one day, he was really embarrassed because he wanted to go on doing that job, which he loved so much, but at the same time," ", he didn't want to do that." "He wasn't interested." "So he turned to comedies." "When the opportunity arose for him to make a comedy, he was delighted to work again in the kind of cinema that he loved." "It's a pity." "Max Pécas was a great loss for hardcore cinema" "Of course, apalling comedies lovers are happy to meet Max Pécas on their way, but the fans of really good pornographic movies mourn his passing." "In order to save his company, he must direct another kind of movies." "Max couldn't wait to tell Claude that he saw a movie that completely overwhelmed him." "That was " Lâche-Moi les Baskets ", whose original American title" "I can't seem to remember." "And it was a movie with teenagers, beaches, and he really loved it so he wanted to do something like that." "So Max directs " Marche Pas sur mes Lacets "" "(Don't walk on my shoelaces)" "You can't make up a thing like that." "The plot is thin :" "the movie tells about young men mostly involved with chasing girls" "This is the first entry into a series of teen comedies hich will end with " Les Branchés/Deux Enfoirés" "On se Calme et on Boit Frais à Saint Tropez "." "In those, there was a still a somewhat... erotic touch." "Lots of nekkid chicks in the movie, yes, Sir." "He couldn't help it." "And he was a good selling argument." "Producers bought his movies because of the pretty girls he used." "It was great, wasn't it ?" "I'm completely exhausted." "Nice boards, don't you think ?" "Real curvy, just the way I like them." "Inge !" "Yes." "Damn !" "You must hear the bells of Saint-Tropez !" "Yes." "And those of Ramatuelle too." "It's nothing." "Just a nice bump." "How clumsy of us !" "We're really sorry." "Well, well, well." "Who, he ?" "No." "I'm Christian." "Are you on holidays ?" "Yes, we arrived one week ago." "Oh, we just got here." "How are you called ?" "I'm Inge." "I'm Leonore." "Karine." "Ouch, ouch, ouch, I'm hurt, hey !" "Oh, he's wounded." "Sure I am." "Ouch, softly." "You've got a nice bump." "Oh yes, ouch..." "Ouch... ouch." "When I met Max...." "You can't imagine for one moment..." "You can't associate him with sex." "I mean you can't associate him with an erotic movie or a pornographic one." "You couldn't because he was so honest, so elegant, even somewhat old-fashioned..." "He really wasn't like that in real life." "On the contrary" ", he was very reserved, very..." "He astonished me when he made those movies." "I remember a scene." "One day, I didn't have anything to shoot so I was sunbathing." "Max came to me and gently told me :" "" Now, really, you shouldn't be topless like this. "" "He was very, very prudish." "And I told him : " Hey, Max, come on, it's OK. "" "Max was a very nice person, very nice." "People can't imagine that." "I'm sure that half the people who think about" "Max Pécas do not imagine him like he was." "He was a bloke with some class." "Personal class." "Maybe not as a film director, but he was somewhat distinguished he had some noteworthy quality." "When you met Max for the first time, you wouldn't think of tapping his shoulder." "He was someone that people... most of the technicians said" "" vous " to him." "They had tremendous respect for him." "I never, never said " tu " to him, never." "And, anyway, when you saw him in the office, you didn't want to say " tu "" "But he nevertheless was very nice to us." "Saying " vous " came naturally." "He said " tu " to all of us." "Each time a young actor arrived and said " tu " to Max, everybody watched him with big eyes" "Max never asked for it, never scolded anyone for it, but " vous " came back automatically." "He had natural authority and bearing." "When he shot a movie, it was a serious thing but, at the same time, it was his pleasure." "He was happy to be there with his pals, his technicians – always the same ones." "When one was missing, that's because he was dead, as the song goes." "Or maybe he wasn't available, making another movie, but otherwise, he always hired the same people." "So, every year, we met with the same pals" "We were all happy to meet again." "Those were Max's movie." "It was a charming atmosphere." "Maybe that's why you can feel it in the movies, a very happy atmosphere." "And we all lived together in the villa, so there was an almost holiday camp feeling to it." "What matters, when you make a movie, is not only the resulting movie." "The atmosphere of the shooting is part of our life as technicians." "I know I sometimes refused movies... that you wouldn't believe, just to be with him." "Because what was important to me was to spend an enjoyable month and a half with him rather than to make one more movie." "He liked to shoot out of Paris, because he liked his crew to be happy." "We found ourselves in very nice places." "We always went to unlikely countries." "I mean :" "Mauritius, can you imagine ?" "At the time... we barely knew where it was on the map." "Mauritius..." "No, that's true, when he told us :" "" We're going to Mauritius ", we said : " Sure, Max, whatever "." "Then I went home, did some research – there was no Internet at the time, so you had to ask people : " Er, I say, where's Mauritius ? "" ":" "Action !" "Go..." "No, let's do it again." "What about the sound ?" "The text ?" ";" "I don't believe this." "Come on." "Go !" "Come on, sweetie, buttercups..." "No, you must not speak before." "You speak too soon." "(something indistinct then) ... in the loo." "No, we have to do it again." "You speak when you're back there." "Sure, sweetie, sure." "All of it was really enjoyable." "The night clubs scenes were like the beach scenes." "There were a whole lot of girls with us..." "And usually, they were beautiful girls." "Yeah." "We were surrounded with a lot of beautiful girls." "So, between scenes, I was always trying to seduce one of them." "I made the most of it." "Talking to this one and that one," ", with all of them." "And, of course, when it was time to shoot, we were like : " Oh, yeah, right, we have to shoot. "" "I was really having great fun." "The main goal of assistants and technicians, when we had a bunch of girls, was not the movie but the chicks." "And then the shooting." "Some of them stayed a while with some technicians, by the way." "At least two or three." "We had great fun." "No, really, we had some great moments." "Hey, it's not easy to shoot on a beach." "To walk in the sand all day." "Your legs hurt afterwards." "We used to put on our bathing suits and then we were ready to shoot." "We had cabins on the beach..." "I never knew any other shooting sessions such as Max's." "They're among my fondest cinema memories." "Well, I rather missed them." "I would do some more." "And on my right, the ravishing little bitch with pear-shaped breasts :" "she's Heidi." "Heidi !" "Renaud, Patrice..." "And on my left, the velvet-eyed queen of whores : she's Ingrid." "Don't make such faces, guys : they're Finnish, they can't understand one word of French." "Yes." "Good morning, Miss." "You really can't understand a thing ?" "Tak-Tak." "We had to respect a few things." "He was the master, nonetheless." "Max couldn't stand to hear his technical proficiency questioned." "If we started to talk among ourselves, for instant about a link shot" "I once discussed with Hugues de Haeck about a link shot, saying : " it wasn't this way, it wasn't that way... "" "After a while, he began to be upset and he said : " Look, children... cause we were all his children..." "Children, I'm the boss here, you just do as I say and stop bugging me." "That's enough, I decide, things will be like this, period !" "It's like this and not otherwise !" "And you could feel everyboy going..." "And I experienced that too, because the fact that I was his son didn't shield me from it." "And it's something that I heard" "He was a master ruling his court." "So, could it have been his pleasure ?" "Could he have done all of that, could he have spent his money in order to have fun playing that part ?" "Because it was in fact a part he was playing." "He didn't want to really be part of the team, but he was always around us." "He liked to play patriarch" "He wanted to shoot in a friendly atmosphere." "He really liked that." "And the movies were very professionnal." "Patrick Aubrée is a great script-person and we all did very well what we had to do." "He really wanted people to have fun but to work seriously anyway." "Motor." "Silence !" "And, one day, he wasn't happy with my work on the movie, and he told me something that I never forgot and that followed me everywhere, including in my career as a writer :" "he told me : " Cinema is not a serious job but you have to do it very seriously, or you're dead. " So, even his silly tidbits, his two-bit comedies, his things were always planned carefully." "On the other hand, as soon as he said " Cut ! ", you know, his famous " Cut ! " which meant " let's call it a day, Gentlemen "" "everybody was playing pétanque or tennis ten minutes later." "Oh, tennis !" "Max was playing it often and very seriously" "So, on a shooting, working overtime was out of the question :" "the court was booked for 6 p.m." "Once a young studio manager comes into my father's office with a huge folder about possible locations, lots of pictures.." "So my father looks at the picture, then says :" "" Yes but... in all these pictures, I couldn't see either a tennis court or a pétanque yard. " So there's a big silence, you know." "The guy was really terrorized." "He said :" "" But it's not in the script. " " Who cares ? " says my father." "" What I want is to be able, after I say Cut !" ", at 6 p.m., to play tennis with my pals the technicians, or to play pétanque." "Or both." "Both is better." "So find me a place where's there's a pétanque yard and a tennis court, and we'll see about the rest. "" "It's true that he asked his assistant, in the late afternoon :" "" What time did we book the tennis court for ?" "5 : 30 ?" "Oh, that's fifteen minutes left, OK, let's call it a day." "Meet me on the court. "" "But we never exceeded our work schedule by a single day." "No, but it was enjoyable His were always very well planned productions." "...He knew exactly where to put his camera, and he knew exactly the camera work he had to do in order to make a scene more interesting, and so on, and when you watch his movies... they're always" "weak scriptwise but the movie in itself is always... always well-made." "You can't criticize his technical skills, because everything is where there is the required number of shots." "He knew his job." "...and when they pass, we must get back, in order to have, at the end of the shot, a reminder of the car on the right and their two arses just in the middle..." "He has his technical schedule and, based on that, he improvised." "He organized the shooting on the spot." "But he shot like only millionaires could shoot." "Only they don't and that's the reason why they're millionaires." "I mean that Max shot his scenes almost in sequence." "I was the first time that I saw anyone shooting one sentence one way, then move the camera on the other side in order to to the countershot," "I mean move everything, including the lighting, in order to film the next sentence, and so on..." "And he couldn't shoot any other way." "He never wanted to shoot except in sequence." "Maybe because he improvised so much, he wanted to shoot in sequence." "I tried at one time to convince him to shoot otherwise, and he told me to go to hell." "And, of course, if you shoot one way then the other, you work faster." "You do everything in the same light, then everything in the other one." "He knew quite well where to put his camera." "Beyond that, when it came to directing actors, he was somewhat on the weak side." "Max, well..." "No, no, no, he said : " Stand here, go there... "" "But, actually, I think when I hear..." "I heard Marlène Jobert, yesterday, talking about Pialat and other directors, and I had the impression that most directors do not really direct actors." "Once, Max told me. " You know, you just do it the way... just the way you did last year. "" "Max was like most directors, that is we propose and he decides, but he usually takes." "The actors brought things, maybe more than in another movie, but he was really eager, Max was really eager for that." "So, of course, sometimes it may appear not so subtle, but he could see" "When it was too much, he said : " No, children, no, no "" ":" "I never heard Max telling me : " Daniel, please don't overact. "" "I never heard Max say such a thing." "Some people in the industry told me : " Why are you doing this? "" "What they meant was that I sold my soul to the Devil." "I think he had a reputation because people in this business, sometimes, tend to classify people too quickly." "Once my agent told me : " Hey, there's Mr Max Pécas who wants to see you because he'd like you for a movie." "Of course, we won't go. "" "I said : " Hey, first, who's he ? " I didn't know him." "So I ask who he is and I'm told : " Look, he's this guy who makes terrible B movies "" "and so on, you see, he really wasn't even worth talking about." "When he wanted to hire me, I thought twice about it," ", because there was the label " blue comedy "." "So I read, of course, the script that was given to my agent." "My agent" "" Come, I've got to talk to you. " He gave me the script and he told me :" "" Well, this way, you'll know everything that one should never do it will be very good for you. " And I think it's unfair, because what Max and I've now made movies with a lot of people," "what Max did was quite neat." "Although he defected to comedies, comparatively successful movies," "Max will always have a bad reputation in the field." "His cinema was subject to all kinds of disparagement." "The " pin-up girl " image." "I didn't much like the fact that people saw me that way, it was a little too..." "I've been labeled that too much, and it didn't help me :" "I would probably have been offered more interesting roles if I hadn't been labeled." "Yes, of course, some people even held it against me." "But I didn't care at all, because I'd been a very young father," "I needed to work and it wasn't unpleasant." "I know that, at the time, not long after that, I met Zulawsky, and a movie almost got made, and he told me : " Look, the distributors won't hear about you because... because too much Max Pécas. "" "But I think that I'm the only one responsible." "I mean, if I had stolen the limelight, if I had what it took to be successful, I think I would have been in spite of Max Pécas." "In spite of the poor image, some young actors that Max discovered will become stars and have great careers on TV and in the movies." "How is it ?" "I've had better." "Stop for a while." "It suits you." "Yes, only it's a little too large, so I should stitch it at the waist." "Yes, yes, hey, that's enough, OK ?" "Who do you think I am ?" "I know a lot of actors began with him." "It's great, when you're a young actor, to be the leading man in a movie where you don't have to think too hard, you have no pressure..." "You're not paid a lot but you don't care, you're having fun... and, that's the way you can learn your job : working." "I really learned a great deal." "It was my first movie." "I was discovering just what a script was, what it was to make ars stop in a street." "I didn't know what tape on the floor meant," "I didn't know what keeping your place was, I knew nothing." "And I think I'm not the only one : all the actors who began like me..." "I began in the movies with a leading part." "It's delirious." "Let's keep calm and drink our bromide." "Look, I'll give you everything that you want." "This flat, if you want." "We'll hide our love in it, just you and me." "But I'm not a woman." "I f*cking don't care." "I'll take you to Brazil, you'll have an operation." "That's impossible." "I'm afraid to fly." "Ok we'll go by pedal boat then" "You know, it's the first shooting..." "A first shooting is important, you can kill an actor." "If the actor doesn't see the approbation of his work in the eye of his director, and he's fragile because it's his first time, you can destroy things." "He made me confident." "What are you both doing for a living ?" "I, nothing." "What about you ?" "I'm helping him." "Some directors, for more difficult movies, are torturers." "So I was lucky to begin with a man like him, that's for sure" "I know of some people who made movies with him but didn't include them in their filmography." "It's their choice :" "I'm not criticizing or judging them" "But I included mine because I was happy that I worked with him." "I must confess that, during many years, I didn't include" "" Deux Enfoirée à Saint-Tropez " in my filmography." "And Max... well, I met him far later and told him." "Because my agent said :" "" Oh, come on, don't you realize ? " and so on, then" "I changed agents but the new one said the same thing, they all did, so I didn't include it." "But the problem is : this is the one movie, the one big screen movie of mine which has the most reruns on TV." "So, even when I didn't include it in my filmography, people saw it, and they knew, or people told them : " I saw him in that "" "So, after a while, I told myself : first, why don't you take responsibility for what you did, what you chose to do, so I put it back into my filmography..." "Some actors would have prefered their beginnings with Max to be forgotten, but no one would have dreamed that Max's little movies would still be aired on TV 25 years later." "They started to be aired on TV and he became a star." "People stopped me in the street, saying :" "" Hey, in "Belles, Blondes  Bronzées", are you... are you the guy.. ? "" "" Hey, it's you, in "Belles, Blondes  Bronzées", yes, it's him, hey, come and see ! " You see what I mean. ;" "And the movies are... are funny." "And movies reflecting a certain era are really working well." "A light era when you just had to let yourself go, to have fun, and it wasn't... we felt no remorse about it." "I mean, we were real wankers." "We thought only of having fun." "Life was here, why should we bother to worry about things." "We didn't have the pressure that twenty years old kids have today." "Of course, they think : " Damn !" "I've got to build my life. "" "On the contrary, it was an era where... " Do what you will "" "And it sure did change." "We didn't take ourselves seriously and it was done in a... we were all happy to do it, really, so I think there's an energy, a buoyancy, a gentleness, well many things coming out of those movies." "Right, my darling." "That's it :" "I like when you talk nice to me." "She may be nervous but she's got a great butt." "The script is sometimes simple but it works because there are pretty girls life looks easy, and all of that is meant to last for only 90 minutes." "And, during 90 minutes, they forgot all about their problems, they didn't have to think for a while, and they saw the sun the sea, boats, pretty girls, that's all." "It's cute, it's... there are no drugs, no guns, no firearms, no murders there's no violence, it's always nice, if not always subtle." "But I'm always happy to see you, buttercups." "Kissy, kissy, give a kiss" "Yes, yes, all right, all right, girls." "There's enough for everybody." "That's it." "That's it." "Enough for everybody." "So, if that's what's needed to be liked, I'll do the same : " So, sweetie !" "What's your size ?" "Look." "How does it look on me ?" "(then something indistinct)" "He did !" "He did reveal it !" "I felt sure he was one of us." "It's corny." "It's even more corny now, it's funny..." "That kind of cinema also exists." "You do not make only intellectual movies for art-houses and old farts." "And it's the sun, holidays, the joy of living." "You've got to bring a little sun to people, you know." "The man who's now known as the master of beach movies will try, in 1985, a return to his favourite genre : crime." "It will be a disaster." "He did a movie called " Brigade des Moeurs "" "a movie far outside the scope of comedies." "for which we earned a -18 certificate, because of violence, not the sex which deprived us of many viewers... and, somehow, the people who liked Max for his comedies were completely lost when" "Brigade des Mœurs was released." "Because they didn't understand that... they went to a Max Pécas movie in order to see beautiful girls on the beach and a comedy with more or less slapstick, and sometimes more or less subtlety, and people were having fun... so the crime movie" "didn't... didn't work at all." "I lacked insight, you know." "I had a subject... a golden, wonderful subject, and either because I was pushed by my distributors or pushed by..." "I put too many things in it and I insisted too much on the graphic side." "I thought there was no censorship anymore, so I pushed the limits, I shot drug users, I also added some gore you know..." "I did a mix of different things, and that's where I erred." "I lacked insight just when I had an subject of iron... of steel." "And it was fatal to him because, since the movie earned a a -18 certificate, people thought : " It's another sex movie, it's this," "it's that... " It didn't work." "So it became necesary to make another movie to compensate for that one and... out of the frying pan into the fire... he went down." "I think he knew that his system was at an end: an independant producer" "TV channels were starting to participate in productions ; you couldn't do a movie anymore without a channel backing you, you couldn't" "You know, it was... well, it really was of the past, his system was." "" On se Calme et on Boit Frais... ", released in 1987, will be" "Max's last movie." "It's the end of his production company." "One year later, he'll close his offices on the Champs Elysées and devote himself to the video exploitation of his movies." "On February 10th 2003, radios will announce his death during the morning news." "He was 77." "He died like he lived." "That is : with class." "One day, he goes to the doctor for a knee problem." "And he says to the.." "it was a radiologist.. he says " lately, I've had some trouble breathing "" "and the guy says : " Well, Max, we'll take an X-ray of your lungs "" "So they do, and my father sees that the X-Ray is black all over, except for a white dot, and he says : " Oh, I see, the problem is is the white dot. " And the radiologist says: " No, the rest is the problem" "The white dot is what's left of your lungs." " Oh..." "And what do you think it is?"" Well, I'm no specialist but I think you've got cancer, Max." " Oh, I have, do I? " So he went home, stopped at a" "delicatessen, bought a bottle of Champagne, went home, put the bottle of Champagne on the table and said : " OK, I've got cancer." "That calls for celebration. " And he died... one month later." "That's when they said he was dead, in the morning, on the radio :" "" Well, Max Pécas, the great director of turkeys or Z-grade movies just died ", and so on. " In our noon edition, we'll talk longer about his his career and his character. " But, late that same morning," "Toscan du Plantier (high-brow producer) died too, so... bye bye Max." "They only talked about Toscan." "But Max Pécas didn't disappear into oblivion." "He, who thought that nothing would remain of his work, would be surprised to learn that he became a reference in cinema." "From jack-of-all-trades in Z-grade movies to film spoiler, he's been called many things." "Today, a new generation discovers his movies." "Today, people sometimes tell me : " Say, you worked with Max Pécas." "He's a cult director. "" "That is Max's revenge." "His movies became cult movies." "The DVD box set sold incredibly fast." "Lots of French directors would be jealous to know that Max Pécas' box set sold... just like that." "His movies..." "In a way, you could say he's an author, because all his movies have things in common." "You can feel some personality behind them, some..." "Well, I don't think that trying to put him with the greats would be doing him a favour, but it just goes to show that... merry movies last longer than pretentious ones." "In spite of everything, he has his place in the history of French cinema." "I mean that, after a while, he represented something beyond the quality of the movies, or lack thereof, he represented one era of the history of French cinema, which we remember with all the more nostalgia that it's now lost." "It's gone, it's history, it won't come back." "In the end, even if he were not a good director, the time when he could make the movies he made was really neat." "I knew that I wasn't Hitchcock, but I made movies." "I made 27 movies in my career." "If I made 27 movies, it must be that audiences were somewhat interested in me." "That's all." "For Mamour and Babychou"