Mailers daughter Kate would play Cordelia, the headstrong daughter who precipitates the kings downfall.
It was a really cool credit.
in heavily accented French), no one twigged.
Peter Sellars, right, in ‘King Lear’Cannon Films/Everett Collection
Despite the irreverent glee that heralded the inauguration of the project, Godard quickly went sour on the project.
I should never have gotten involved in this nonsense, he told BBC filmmaker Christopher Sykes in 1986.
They tried to con me, Golan and Globus.
They think theyre film producers but theyre just clumsy sharks, gangsters who want to be noblemen.
Golan tricked me into signing a contract on a paper napkin in a hotel bar at Cannes.
People were cheering and I thought, What the hell.
I need the money; Ill do the stupid thing.
Almost immediately, there was conflict.
Godard claimed that the first four checks from Cannon bounced.
And once production did start, it hit another rock.
Having filmed just one scene, the Mailers left.
He later scoffed at the claim that hed offended the writer.
Just a pretext, he said.
Besides, he wanted Cannons backing for hisTough Guys Dont Dancefilm.
Once he got it he left my movie with $350,000 in his pocket and his movie contract.
And there was still noKing Lear.
This is where Peter Sellars comes in.
Now an acclaimed director of plays and operas, Sellars was then an actor in his mid-20s.
So I became a worshipper of Jean-Luc.
This familiarity with Godards work proved useful.
Sellars met Godard when the director came to New York to film Woody Allen in the Brill building.
Recalls Sellars, Jean-Luc said to me, Talk to him.
Go teach it to him, but Woody said, I dont know what this is.
I cant say this.
I said to him, The person you need in this film is Molly Ringwald.
She has truly everything.
And the movies shes been in have all been captivating, but she has so much more in her.
And if she could actually touch Shakespeare, this would be incredible.
[Ringwald wrote of her experience forThe New Yorkerlast year.]
Burgess signed on, says Sellars, and then we were all set to go meet Jean-Luc.
They spent three days in the airport hotel then went to Nyon, where he was shooting.
It was quite intense.
The work situation was also intense.
At no point did anybody see a script, Sellars says.
They got a serious course because Jean-Luc was meticulous about everything.
And I learned a lot of the most important artistic lessons of my life during those days.
In particular: never point the camera at the view.
Point the camera in some place no one would ever think of looking.
But they found none of the usual niceties in Nyon.
It was all just literally sprung on him.
And he felt that as a humiliation.
It has a tragic stature that I think Burgess never realized was coming across in the footage.
Suddenly, after three days of shooting, Godard sent Ringwald and Meredith home.
He said, Im done.
I dont need to see anything more.
They thought they were being fired, but he said, I just dont need to see anything more.
All these readings are possible.)
In this case, this means cross-pollinatingKing Learwith Shakespeares Sonnets, Virginia WoolfsThe Wavesand a whole lot more.
Its quite a look.
Did Sellars know he was going to do that?
No, he says.
And then I have to come in and sit with him.
But, you know, it makes sense.
Its his way of saying that the future of film is going to be this high-tech, electronic manipulation.
Sellars got it, but not everybody would, as he found out when the film premiered at Cannes.
There was a torrent of that all the way through the film.
The press conference was similarly memorable.
It was one of the most vituperative press conferences in the history of Cannes, Sellars says.
It was a room of seething, carnivorous, animal energy.
People trying to tear him limb from limb and eat his flesh.
How can you possiblydareto present something so empty?
Have you lost all your talent?
Have you lost all your integrity?
It would go on for 20 minutes.
Then he would turn to me and say, Peter?
Hes on point over and over again in his super-brilliant aphoristic manner.
All of this alchemy happened in the course of less than two weeks.
Jean-Luc was one of a kind, Sellars says.
There will never be another.
No one can match those films.
Theyre in their own category, and you know youre with a master.
He created a language, a signature, and a handwriting that is totally, unmistakably his.
