Fabrice Caro is a comic book author, novelist, screenwriter and musician. Known as Fabcaro in comics. For his sixth novel published by Editions Gallimard, he tells us the misadventures of a screenwriter close to the authors’ paradise who will end up in hell.
This could be the Fabcaro year. His famous Zai Zai Zai Zai sold 180,000 copies and he will be the next screenwriter of the new Asterix, The white iris to be released October 26. And as he never lacks black humor, Fabrice Caro is coming out this fall The diary of a scenariothe diary of a screenwriter who thought he had touched the sacred grail and who ended up in depression on his sofa due to concessions.
The story is that of Boris. The screenwriter wrote Silent servitudes, a year of love between two casualties of life. Joy and happiness, his project will be adapted for the cinema. A producer, Jean Chabloz, arranges to meet him after reading his text. An hour later, the deal is concluded: “We’re going to make a beautiful film.” Boris therefore writes the synopsis and dreams of the ideal casting: Louis Garrel is Ariel and Mélanie Thierry will be Marianne. (Slight spoiler warning). At the end of the novel: it will be the duo Christian Clavier and Kad Merad who will embody the couple in this fabulous romantic story that has become a school comedy. Journal of a scenario recounts the descent into hell with its share of concessions.
The diary of disillusionment
Fabcaro tells stories of disillusionment and resistance. Bruno, the screenwriter facing his producer, will not give in. He’s straight in his boots. His story will be adapted for the cinema as he imagined it. It will be auteur cinema, he dreams of Christophe Honoré directing. Its casting will please Telerama and to Inrocks. Patatras! The financing will come from a private television which only dreams of falsely popular, even vulgar, comedy.
Caro takes her reader on the small arrangements with the artist’s conscience, on the increasingly grotesque and burlesque retreats. And there lurks the despair that every creator can experience. Not giving in means not being brought to the big screen and disappearing from the panorama of the world of the 7th Art. To give in is to sell your soul to the devil. At what point do concessions to the vampires of money distort creation? And to make matters worse for Bruno, he is in love with Aurélie, a romantic film buff who believes in the strengths of art and swears by Martin Scorsese or Alain Cavalier. She is not going to be disappointed by her lover’s cowardice.
I just received this text. I’m troubled, flattered and, oddly, a little impressed. Surprised also I am always surprised that a person wants to see me again after the first meeting.
Fabrice CaroIn “The Journal of a Scenario”, Gallimard
The fall of the good guy
If The diary of a scenario is not a self-portrait of Fabrice Caro, as success seems to smile on him, the portrait of his hero, Bruno, resonates with what he declared at the start of the school year on France Inter: “When you are nice, you quickly become too nice. Kindness is often seen as a weakness in the collective unconscious. (…) I think I couldn’t write a villain because my characters are a lot like me . They are often a little cowardly, quite nice, and very easily influenced, out of kindness.” The best scenes in the book are the hesitations, the procrastination between Bruno’s firm refusal, anger and pride and in the minute or day that follows, the weakness, the cowardice which prevails. Bruno, from a valiant knight of the arts, becomes a sinister scribbler in the service of the television grinding machine. A treat from the one who declares love “the romantic beauty of failure”.
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“Journal d’un scenario” by Fabrice Caro published by Editions Gallimard/Sygne 19.50 euros 189 pages
Excerpt: The diary of a scenario (page 15)
Jean Chabloz assured me that we would find the ideal director to bring my script to life.
I asked him if he had any names in mind, he actually has some ideas but prefers not to say anything about them for the moment. He lets it ripen. And above all doesn’t want to give me false joy. But I feel that his tracks excite him. His eloquent silence gives free rein to my fantasies and I find myself dreaming of an Arnaud Desplechin, of a Leos Carax, of a Rebecca Zlotowski, of an Olivier Assayas, of a Maïwenn, or why not of a Louis Garrel himself, he has proven time and time again that he has no trouble being both in front of and behind the camera, his career as a director is rather flawless.
The idea crossed my mind for a while to direct my own film, an idea immediately abandoned. I don’t feel up to it.