The funny French connection

A much-mimicked Gallic king of comedy tells PETER CALDER why he lets his good films be made into bad ones.

If imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery, Francis Veber is the most highly regarded man in Hollywood.

The prolific French writer-director has been more ransacked by the American moviemaking machine than anyone.

Five Veber scripts - all sparkling comedies that were hits in France - have been picked up, and a sixth is in the works.

And even before it has finished its worldwide cinematic run, Miramax has snapped up the remake rights to his latest comic intrigue, The Closet.

Quantity doesn't make for quality, of course. The Toy (1982) was a dismal, tasteless Richard Pryor vehicle and The Man With One Red Shoe, a 1985 mistaken-identity comedy, took Tom Hanks in his comic prime and made him unfunny.

Three Fugitives (1989) was highly amusing - perhaps because Veber himself directed - and the presence of Gerard Depardieu kept 1994's My Father the Hero afloat.

But all four flopped at the box office. Only The Birdcage, based on Veber's adaptation of his own screenplay for La Cage Aux Folles, pulled audiences.

Yet, even as his recent The Dinner Game is remade as Dinner For Schmucks, the man professes no regrets. Indeed, although he writes for the French screen he lives in Los Angeles. It's easier, he explains down the line from his Hollywood home.

"It's a quiet city, except for the earthquakes. I am sitting here and writing while I look at the pool, and when I tire of writing I take my bike and go for a ride in the hills.

"I prefer that to Paris in the winter where it's so cold and jammed and sad and where I am always invited to something or other."

But the choice of residence does highlight the cultural gulf - almost as wide as the geographic one - between California and Paris.

"I was aware of the differences when they were making remakes of my films and I was surprised to see how different we were.

"We think we are alike. We have their music and movies ... but our sense of humour is not the same."

He quotes, by way of example, a scene from the remake of The Dinner Game, which is a film about Paris yuppies who compete to find the stupidest dinner guest. When one tormentor's wife gets wind of the plan, she walks out and stays away for the night.

"We don't know where she has gone or if she will be back. But the Americans didn't understand that. In America, if the wife is pissed off with her husband, she divorces him.

"That's why I am never involved in the remakes. I always run into the same thing. They say, 'This is not American'. That, I can't fight against."

If it seems hard to understand why a filmmaker allows his good movies to be made into bad ones, bear in mind that Hollywood pays handsomely for screen rights. And writers like their work to be seen.

"If you are a French language writer," explains Veber, "the only way to reach a mass audience is to have your film remade."

Reaching what he calls with unconscious irony "the deep America" means making movies without subtitles.

Veber is writing a comedy featuring two of French cinema's heavyweights, Gerard Depardieu and Jean Reno. It is a process he freely admits he detests.

"Writing the screenplay for a comedy is a nightmare because you never know if you are funny - not until the first preview.

"And the challenge here is that usually I have a weak guy and a strong guy when I am writing, and here I have two heavyweights."

Veber is encouraged by Depardieu's subtle performance in The Closet, in which he plays a homophobic rugby fan forced to befriend a man he thinks is gay.

For those who missed Peter Weir's Green Card, in which the Gallic hulk showed his great comic touch, it's a revelation.

"It is astonishing," says Veber, "that a man who can play Cyrano de Bergerac can be such a pure comedian. He has a real feel for the tempo of comedy. He knows when and what to do."

* The Closet opens on Boxing Day.