Letter From Paris
Paris Kiosque - July 2001 - Volume 8, Number 7
Copyright (c) 2001 Harriet Welty-Rochefort - Used with permission.
What do Alexander Soljenitsyne, Marguerite Duras, Woody Allen,
Catherine Deneuve and Pierre-Gilles de Genes have in common? The Russian
writer, French author and playwright, American film producer, French actress
and French Nobel Prize winner - as well as countless others of their stature
- have all been guests of enthuasiastic and ebullient Bernard Pivot
(pronounced PEE VOH), who's hosted two enormously popular TV talk shows
since the late 1970s.
Not just any talk shows, mind you. The "talk" was about books and culture
and if one were looking for a perfect example of "typically French", this
was it with a capital "I".
When I first came to France, I (and every single other American I knew) was
absolutely bowled over by Pivot's program, "Apostrophes", a show devoted
solely to books and authors. Only in France could one see such a
phenomenon, we thought.
First of all, while Pivot says it wasn't on prime time, it was pretty close
to it (9:40 pm) every Friday night. Secondly, the content was sometimes
abashedly intellectual. In what other country, we asked ourselves, would
millions of people draw up their armchairs to the tube to watch a show in
which the main feature was ideas and the main excitement was talk?
And what kind of person could pull it off? Pivot, a native of Burgundy, a
lover of soccer and fine Burgundy wines as well as good conversation,
describes himself as first and foremost a journalist "curious about
everything." It was this curiosity and boundless enthusiasm that made it
possible for him on any given Friday night to host, for example, an
intellectual French count, Jean d'Ormesson (his favorite guest) and Pierre
Gilles de Genes, a French Nobel Prize for Physics, to converse with them on
erudite subjects as if they were just sitting around a dinner table. In
fact, watching Pivot was just like being at someone's dinner party and
listening in on a conversation that, well, you'd just WISH your guests might
have.
Ideas were bandied about but there were material rewards as well. An author
lucky enough to get invited to Pivot's show could safely wager that his or
her book would, the next day, be a guaranteed bestseller. In fact, some
criticized Pivot for his power in making or breaking the success of a book,
in inviting or not inviting this or that author. Some he didn't invite --
some didn't accept. He never managed to get Irish author Samuel Beckett, the
French poet Réné Char or French writer Julien Gracq or the Columbian author
Gabriel Garcia Marquez And he regrets that he arrived too late on the scene
to interview Charles de Gaulle. He did however get into a seventy-five
minute conversation with the late President François Mitterrand who
initially had promised only ten minutes.
Time went by and things changed, as of course they will. Even though the
French pride themselves on their "cultural exception", Pivot's "Apostrophes"
got bumped from "almost" prime time and he himself got fed up with a steady
diet of only authors. His next program, aired late in the evening, was
called "Bouillon de Culture" (Culture Soup) and although not the draw that
"Apostrophes" was, it still attracted guests ranging from renowned
philosophers to actors and producers.
If you could manage to stay up late on a Friday night, Pivot's show and
Pivot's guests gave you an admirable smattering of what the French do best
as they excitedly talked about ideas, many times casually alluding to
historical events and facts some of us have never heard of. In short, if
you understood French and wanted to know just how different the French
really are from everyone else in the entire world, all you had to do was
tune in to Pivot and you'd find out.
Last week Pivot, who announced his resignation a few weeks ago, gave his
last show, and Pivot fans (there turned out to be a LOT of them) mourned.
It was a bang-up affair. His guest of honor was James Lipton, a total and
unconditional Pivot devotee who uses Pivot's questionnaire at the end of the
Actor's Studio interviews. (They include such gems as "what is your
favorite curse word" and "what will you say to God when you arrive at the
pearly gates?")
Everyone was sad but the person who best summed up the reaction to Pivot's
departure was a Francophone fan in Quebec who wrote him: "I thought that
we would all get old together, my husband, you and me. Upon hearing the
news of your departure, I feel like half a widow."
He had, however, succeeded in being on TV longer than most. How, he was
recently asked, did he manage to do? The 66-year-old laughed as he
pronounced off a last bon mot: "My programs weren't expensive to produce
and I'm not bald. Had I lost my hair, I'd be long gone by now."
I for one am glad he kept his crop of wavy gray hair but like the woman from
Québec, I'll miss not getting old with him.
Bon soir, Bernard. Et merci!
Harriet Welty-Rochefort, an Iowa native and long-time resident of Paris, is the author of
both published by St. Martin's
Press.
For more information on Harriet's books, click on
www.hwelty.com.
If you've had some funny, startling, satisfying, or dismaying
food experiences in France you'd like to share,
you may contact Harriet directly at
hwelty@club-internet.fr.
Editor's Note:
Dear Readers, while our writers are always
delighted to hear and to receive comments, both about their columns in the The Paris Kiosque,
as well as your experiences in Paris,
they are unable to answer any requests
for travel information.
Thank you for your understanding.
