{"id":12953,"date":"2013-01-16T03:43:42","date_gmt":"2013-01-16T03:43:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=12953"},"modified":"2013-01-16T04:39:33","modified_gmt":"2013-01-16T04:39:33","slug":"jean-genet-1981","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2013\/01\/16\/jean-genet-1981\/","title":{"rendered":"Jean Genet, 1981"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"genet.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Until watching Antoine Bourseiller’s film<\/a>, the only interview I’d seen with Jean Genet<\/a> was the one filmed by the BBC in 1985 in which a tetchy and evidently irritated Genet made a fool of interviewer Nigel Williams, and compared the whole experience to a police interrogation. (Williams and his interview are memorialised in Iain Sinclair’s Downriver<\/em> with the words “Is he the one who made a cunt of himself with Genet?”)<\/p>\n

Bourseiller’s 52-minute film is very different, presenting a warm and effusive writer who talks at length about lovers, friends (including Alberto Giacometti), posterity (which he dismisses), and his prison experiences. Between the interview sections there are readings from some of his texts. That this is as good as BBC films used to be shows what a wasted opportunity the actual BBC interview was. At the time it was impossible to tell whether Genet was simply a prickly character or whether Williams and company had severely pissed him off. Judged against\u00a0Bourseiller’s film I’d bet on the latter.<\/p>\n

(Note: The YouTube copy is in French but includes optional subtitles.)<\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Un Chant d\u2019Amour (nouveau)<\/a>
\n\u2022 Jean Genet\u2026 \u2018The Courtesy of Objects\u2019<\/a>
\n\u2022 Querelle again<\/a>
\n\u2022 Saint Genet<\/a>
\n\u2022 Emil Cadoo<\/a>
\n\u2022 Exterface <\/a>
\n\u2022 Penguin Labyrinths and the Thief\u2019s Journal<\/a>
\n\u2022 Un Chant D\u2019Amour by Jean Genet<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Until watching Antoine Bourseiller’s film, the only interview I’d seen with Jean Genet was the one filmed by the BBC in 1985 in which a tetchy and evidently irritated Genet made a fool of interviewer Nigel Williams, and compared the whole experience to a police interrogation. (Williams and his interview are memorialised in Iain Sinclair’s … Continue reading “Jean Genet, 1981”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[42,7,5],"tags":[4475,4474,425,218,751,4523],"class_list":["post-12953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-film","category-gay","tag-alberto-giacometti","tag-antoine-bourseiller","tag-exterface","tag-iain-sinclair","tag-jean-genet","tag-labyrinths"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-3mV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12953\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}