As the war of words between “Blue Is The Warmest Color” director Abdellatif Kechiche and the film’s actresses Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos shows no sign of abating, here’s an update about the filmmaker that doesn’t involve the stars of his Palme d’Or winning film. At least not directly.
More nuggets from his interview with Telerama (via AlloCine) have arrived online, not about his lesbian relationship, but instead about one movie that he initially pitched to producers, that he could still potentially make down the line. He reveals that he had initially given production company Wild Bunch four or five projects to choose from and one of them was “the story of Marilyn Chambers, a American porn star of the 1970s.” He noted she gained notoriety for acting in what was an early interracial sex scene in the hit “Behind The Green Door” and adds, “she died the year of the Obama election.” (She passed away a few months after he took office and was a write-in candidate for the Tea Party, oddly enough, in a number of states).
Kechiche sees her journey as “a wonderful story” which changed people’s perceptions of a profession that many looked askance at. Simply put, she was hugely popular, not just in porn (“Insatiable” was the biggest selling VHS release for two years), but she crossed over into the mainstream for a spell too, perhaps most famously in David Cronenberg‘s “Rabid.”
And while producers are apparently asking him to make this movie next, Kechiche is apparently burned out. “I’m being encouraged to direct, but I think I’m going to say no. I feel don’t feel doing cinema anymore, I need calm,” he says, in what is no doubt a reaction to the off-screen drama of ‘Warmest’ from what was an apparently contentious shoot, to a prickly press run.
So we’ll see if this ever happens, though it’s not every day that you’re asked to helm a project that for most would be difficult to get off the ground. Let’s just hope whatever he does next, it’s smoother sailing for all involved.