François Busnel is a journalist, producer and host inseparable from the weekly program The Great Bookstore on France 5, which he has hosted since 2008. Impossible not to mention the daily show The big interview of which he was the producer on France Inter, or the magazine Read, of which he was editor-in-chief. He was also founder and editorial director of the quarterly French Mooc America from 2017 to 2021.
Since Wednesday March 23, at the cinema, we can see the documentary he co-directed with Adrien Soland: Only the earth is eternaldevoted to one of the greatest contemporary American writers, Jim Harrison.
franceinfo: This documentary is a real look, a one-on-one with a witness to the power of nature over us. There are no tricks in this character.
Francois Busnel: I wanted a film that would be a film without make-up, at all levels. No makeupno patching up, no appearing, no being.
“Jim Harrison is both a writer and a poet and someone who can change your life because instead of teaching you moral lessons, he gives you an example to follow.”
Francois Busnelat franceinfo
Jean Cocteau who said: “Do not look for people who give you advice, but people who show you the example“. And there, we have a guy who shows us the example of what it can be like to live according to one’s nature in nature. And very quickly, we have the idea with Adrien Soland to make a cinema film and not a television film, not about Jim Harrison, but with Jim Harrison, as an actor. A film about nature, about the connection that we have perhaps lost a little with nature, the way in which the wild world , wild nature can reconcile us with our human nature.
He makes it clear that nature, at no time, has hurt him, unlike life which has really dented him, damaged him. It shows how nature has a special power.
Yes. It has the power to make our sorrows, neuroses and tragedies no longer the subject of whining. We all have tragedies. Sometimes they paralyze us, they prevent us from living. Jim Harrison tells us: “In a city, it’s normal when you’re in a society of performance, stress, pollution, where everyone is looking for a place that isn’t naturally theirs. But put yourself on a river. Look at it and become the river. What is she doing ? She is moving forward, all the time. She flows in one direction and she doesn’t look back. And yet, she had her share of tragedies. She got out of bed once or twice, she doesn’t complain and goes straight on. And that’s what nature can do”.
This wild nature can allow us to live better with our problems and not against our problems. And Only the earth is eternal, this title that we borrow from a Siou Lakota proverb, lived in Jim Harrison, as he can live in all of us. The idea that it’s the earth that’s supposed to last, not us. And it would perhaps be good for man to stop considering the planet, the Earth, for his exclusive benefit.
Jim Harrison has built himself despite the trials of life. It’s a bit like you. Child of the DDASS, you knew how to use what was brought to you, what people who loved you gave you, to redistribute it to others. It’s the feeling we finally have.
It’s hard to talk about yourself when you make films to talk about others, you know. Art plays a capital role, the shock of a book, of the stories of others. What Jim Harrison teaches us is also not to complain. It’s also about not falling into self-pity, not looking too much at the past.
“I try not to live in the past, not to project myself too much into the future and to savor the present moment. When you achieve this, there is a feeling of liberation, of absolutely crazy fullness.”
Francois Busnelat franceinfo
In 2016, Jim Harrison left us and yet you have a lot of him. He never imagined he would become a writer because he came from a rural background. Did you imagine one day being able to present The Great Bookstore ? Literature has been a major element in your career, with these booksellers that you discover one day in Paris.
Yes, it’s true. There are moments like that that are revelations. The booksellers were a visual shock for me. Every time I see them, people first. Men, women that you immediately identify as if everything was engraved on their face and then, behind these green boxes which are magnificent and inside, absolutely everything. The world contained in scraps of paper that you greedily devour. It cost nothing at the time. I remember, we bought the books for a franc. It was remarkable and yes, it’s true that it’s the books that allow us to perhaps free ourselves from fate, well in any case from a certain determinism.
What has literature brought you and still brings you today? It scours the soul, literature. It avoids falling into binary thinking. It helps to understand that the questions are more important than the answers. It allows you to think against yourself too, not to be a slave to your emotions or to the opinion of others.
The most important thing is to know how to be upset, is to know how to have emotions, not to fall into pathos, not to let emotions rule you, but not to be a dry heart, not to to be a dry soul. And I believe that today, we need that.