Jean Luc Godard and me: three decades, three scenes

SCENE THE FIRST

Early winter, 1968. 26 Ranger Road, Dumont, New Jersey

GLENN KENNY, nine years old, is sit­ting at the din­ing room table, por­ing over the Grove Press “film book” of Godard’s “Masculine Feminine.” His moth­er, AMELIA, is dust­ing around the din­ing room and liv­ing room. 

GLENN (look­ing up from the book): Mom, why do think it is that Godard wears sunglasses all the time?

AMELIA (con­tinu­ing to dust): I’d ima­gine it’s some sort of affectation.

GLENN: What’s an affectation?

AMELIA (not unaf­fec­tion­ately): Go look it up. 

SCENE THE SECOND

Fall, 1977. The Show Place, 347 South Salem Street, Dover, New Jersey

RICHARD HELL AND THE VOIDOIDS have just com­pleted a set, in sup­port of their recently released debut album “Blank Generation.” GLENN KENNYem>, just recently turned 18, hov­ers around the dress­ing room just off the main bar of this strip club turned part-time punk rock ven­ue. Entering the dress­ing room, he intro­duces him­self to HELL, who is loun­ging on a couch between two bottle blondes, and ROBERT QUINE, the Voidoids’ gui­tar­ist. GLENN sput­ters a good deal of fan­boy effu­sion before get­ting to a ques­tion that’s been much on his mind. 

GLENN: So, why did you put those pic­tures of Godard on the inner sleeve of Blank Generation? Is he, like, a really big influ­ence on you?

HELL (one should be able to see his eyes rolling, even though he’s wear­ing dark glasses): I don’t know, man. I just thought he was a cool guy…

(The bottle blondes laugh. Sensing a blind alley, GLENN turns his atten­tion to QUINE.)

GLENN: Hey, you put your Berklee School of Music ID on the inner sleeve, I’ve gotta couple of friends who are going to Berklee and they’re all into Chicago and stuff…

QUINE: Not surprising…when I went there every­body wanted to end up play­ing in the Tonight Show Orchestra…

They step off to the bar to con­tin­ue their chat.

SCENE THE THIRD

Late Spring, 1986. The north foy­er (not even the lobby!) of the Parker Meridian Hotel, West 56^th Street entrance, New York, New York

GLENN, 25, newly hired as an Associate Editor at Video Review magazine, is unchar­ac­ter­ist­ic­ally early for a break­fast meet­ing with a con­sumer elec­tron­ics exec­ut­ive. He sits on a bench in the foy­er, enjoy­ing a cigar­ette, a copy of Bely’s “Saint Petersburg,” a book he will not fin­ish until sev­er­al years from now, on his lap.

Enter JEAN-LUC GODARD, from the lobby. Slightly dishevelled, wear­ing a tweed blazer, tight plaid shirt and dark blue slacks, car­ry­ing an unlit che­root, he gazes out into the street, nervously. 

GLENN (interi­or mono­logue): Holy shit. It’s Godard. Man, he must be in town to work on that pro­ject with Mailer I read about…is his English any good? Should I try to talk to him? Maybe he’ll be impressed that I’m read­ing Bely…I won­der if he needs an assist­ant or some­thing? Oh, crap, what am I saying…I just got this job, and it was­n’t easy. Still, how cool could that con­ceiv­ably be…and even aside from that, I should tell him some­thing about the fact that I’ve been such a fan for so many…

GODARD re-enters the lobby. GLENN con­tin­ues on the life path which has brought him to his cur­rent status as an unem­ployed film critic.