Johnny Hallyday: Good-Bye, Friend

The beloved French mega rock star who passed away at 74 Wednesday, Johnny Hallyday (see Adam Gopnik's New Yorker profile), is to have his coffin driven down the Champs-Élysées on Saturday before being flown to his favorite island, Saint Bart's, for burial on Monday.

A lover of America, he was nicknamed the French Elvis Presley, and many, if not most, of his songs feature a distinctive American rock sound.

More on Johnny Hallyday, including from Steven Erlanger:

 … his Wikipedia entry in French is longer than Jesus Christ’s.

Johnny Hallyday is as French as the baguette, and he has been singing for more than 50 years, bringing Elvis rhythms, energy and glitter to a culture steeped in ballads.

Johnny Hallyday is as French as the baguette, and he has been singing for more than 50 years

It is hard to explain the place [JOHNNY HALLYDAY] has in French life

muses Steven Erlanger from Paris about the French rocker, now 68, who "has survived three previous marriages, kidney stones, a bout with colon cancer and [a] bungled operation on his spine" along with "a couple of suicide attempts, and even an effort at retirement."

— he has done more than 100 tours, sold more than 100 million records, made 47 studio albums and 26 live ones. He has been on more than 2,100 magazine covers, and his Wikipedia entry in French is longer than Jesus Christ’s.

Johnny Hallyday is as French as the baguette, and he has been singing for more than 50 years, bringing Elvis rhythms, energy and glitter to a culture steeped in ballads.

…IN Los Angeles, at least, where he went in part to escape high French taxes, his children are untouched by his celebrity, since few Americans outside the music world know who he is.

Euro-rific Social Solidarity

Following a botched back operation on France’s most famous Elvis impersonator, fans of Johnny Hallyday assault the über-Euro-surgeon who screwed the pooch. Hallyday is now at Cedar-Sinai in LA getting “inferior, third world medical care”. Apparently Cuban medicine would be too good, or something, and of course because it’s France, the President is required to get involved, and you have to have an ineffectual “vigil” for some reason, and probably not covered by even a French medical insurance rider policy.

“In France, To Earn A Lot Of Money Is To Be Seen As A Little Bit Criminal”

However, the smart ones are voting with their feet:

Angry at paying more than 72 percent of his income in taxes, he moved to the ski resort of Gstaad last December in a storm of publicity. After Sarkozy's May election, Hallyday hinted he might come back. His press attache Catherine Battner says he has yet to make up his mind.

Fleeing the Tax

Households fleeing the fortune tax climbed to a record 649 in 2005 from 370 in 1997, according to a study by French Senator Philippe Marini.

Another study by the Economic Analysis Council, which advises the government, says about 10,000 business directors fled in the last 15 years, taking 70 billion to 100 billion euros ($137 billion) in capital to invest elsewhere.

Marini said the average age of the emigrants is 53, compared with 66 for the 394,000 people still in France who pay the tax. A third of those who left had started paying it only two years earlier, suggesting they represented new and growing wealth, he said.

Bend over Marianne. This is what you said you wanted.

“The Right to Laziness,” a 19th century book by Paul Lafargue, Karl Marx’s son-in-law, advised against working more than three hours a day. And French author Honore de Balzac famously said, “Behind every great fortune lies a crime.” This prejudice drove French citizens to Switzerland, Belgium, the U.K. and the
U.S., where at least 500,000 of them reside, either to make more or keep more of what they have. London and the U.S. are preferred refuges for younger people. Switzerland, with about 200,000 French residents, attracts the retired and stars like Hallyday.

Wealth? Obviously stolen by “the bosses”!

Kulture Korner: the Yé-yé girl

Sylvie Vartan’s 1967 Japanese TV Ad



A fun fact: Vartan was married to France’s no. 1 Elvis impersonator, Johnny Hallyday.

French Health Care: "l'opération était un massacre"

French health care is the best in the world and a model to follow (Ah que coucou à Jan), as American doctors intervene to rectify a French doctor's "massacre" on Johnny Hallyday's back by placing the French singer in a coma…

Jean-Claude Camus [le producteur de Johnny Halliday] a mis en cause le médecin français l'ayant opéré en novembre d'une hernie discale, responsable selon lui des complications observées par les médecins américains.

Après son opération dans la nuit de mercredi à jeudi, le chanteur a été placé dans un coma artificiel de façon à soulager ses douleurs.

The semifictional drama of Sarkozy's rise to power constitutes a sharp break with more reverential French film tradition

As if the life of Nicolas Sarkozy has not produced enough melodrama — especially with rumors now that his third wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, may be pregnant [since confirmed] — French moviemakers have produced a semifictional drama, called “La Conquête,” or “The Conquest,” that purports to take us behind the scenes of his rise to power.

That is how Steven Erlanger starts his article on the film which was shown at the Cannes Film Festival today.

“The story of a man who wins power and loses his wife,” is the tag line, a neat summary of the relentless Mr. Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign to succeed Jacques Chirac even as his second wife, Cécilia, falls in love with another man but returns to pretend all is normal until the final vote is cast — and then disappears.

The tale is meant to be Shakespearean, a drama of flawed, ambitious men and romantic, calculating women, a delineation behind the curtains of political scheming, betrayal, personal loss and the price of power. But it is also the story of a serving president, a sharp break with more reverential French tradition.

The models for the film, said the producer, Eric Altmayer, were Anglo-Saxon — “The Candidate,” “Bob Roberts,” “All the President’s Men,” “Primary Colors” and, of course, “The Queen,” the depiction of the British monarch’s struggle with Diana, Princess of Wales, and her death. The director, Xavier Durringer, has worked hard for verisimilitude, he insists, not for caricature or satire.

“It’s not a political film, but it’s about politics,” Mr. Durringer said. “It’s not a film about Sarkozy himself, but about the conquest of power.”

Mr. Altmayer said: “We tried to stay as objective as possible. We tried to come close to him, his vulnerability and contradictions, his good and bad.”

… [Sarkozy] is particularly fond of American films, personally pinning a high rank of the Legion of Honor on Clint Eastwood and giving a disquisition about his love of Mr. Eastwood’s directness and simplicity, contrasting it to the bourgeois, talky complexities of the average French film.

… The actor who plays him, Denis Podalydès, known for his work in the theater, wears a curly wig, but otherwise impersonates Mr. Sarkozy through his twitches, mannerisms and gestures.

…But the film clearly includes fictional moments, especially of intimate conversations, as Mr. Sarkozy tries to persuade Cécilia, his second wife, not to leave him.

The trailer shows one scene of Mr. Sarkozy storming out of a political meeting saying: “I’m a Ferrari. You open the hood with white gloves on.” At another point in the trailer he yells, “I’m surrounded by jerks!” In general, the film has him speak, in private, in a tough, vulgar slang. Another character calls him mad, and the actor playing Mr. Chirac pretends to shoot Mr. Sarkozy with an imaginary rifle.

…The filmmakers have worked on the project for years, with a script by a political historian, Patrick Rotman, but found little money from the usual sources. Gaumont, which gave its imprimatur and distribution network, contributed only a modest amount of money, and French television channels, which normally help finance French films, all declined to touch “La Conquête,” all except the paid cable channel Canal Plus, Mr. Altmayer said.

“It’s not a big surprise from the private channels — we are in France, don’t forget — and they are very close to the power,” he said. “I was a bit more disillusioned with public channels like France Television, but they never explained why. There is a kind of self-censorship that is very French.”

Mr. Durringer said that “around certain subjects there can be a kind of fear — when you are the director of a channel, you tell yourself that if it’s taken badly by the Élysée, you’re going to get fired.”

… There have been other French films about postwar presidents. A 2005 film, made after his death, showed François Mitterrand trying to write his memoirs, and there have been made-for-television films about Charles de Gaulle and others.

But this film is about a sitting president in a new era of politics and the media, which Mr. Durringer describes as one of celebrity and informality, when Mr. Sarkozy “is more in the media than any rock star or actor, more exposed in the media than Johnny Hallyday.”

While Depardieu Undergoes Criticism, Le Monde Contrasts the Star's Current and Future Homes

On the sign of the Belgian town where Gérard Depardieu is moving, a joker has scratched the word Nounours (Teddy Bear), which has been Depardieu's nickname (another is Gégé) since the actor started gaining weight many years ago.
Update: While Nounours welcomes people to Néchin, we wish to say welcome to the readers of Instapundit… 

Criticism of (the departing) Gérard Depardieu has been mounting, but that expecially among government ministers. Nounours hates François Hollande, calling the French president the "Piglet".

Amongst his fellow actors, a Philippe Torreton has joined in the criticism, while Brigitte Bardot has leapt to Gégé's defense.

In any case, Le Monde's Florence Aubenas and Geoffroy Deffrennes offer a full-page comparison of Gégé's current home (in one of the poshest streets of Paris) to his future home (in the small town across the Belgian border — see photos above and below this paragraph).

In his Paris street, the man whom one storeowner called "Saint Depardieu" enjoys the company of the locals, helping them with various problems and calling all of them by the familiar tu. Indeed, because he has helped save so many stores and jobs — opening a couple of restaurants in the process — Rue du Cherche-Midi might have ended up being called Rue Depardieu, had not the Belgian "scandal" erupted…

Depardieu vouait une passion tonitruante au président Nicolas Sarkozy. Avec François Hollande, c'est tout aussi bruyant, mais à l'inverse : "Il semble le détester de manière presque physique", note un voisin. En tout cas, en public, sans se cacher, il a l'habitude de le désigner sous un seul nom : "le porcelet".

Pour un amateur de bonne bouffe, ça passerait presque pour aimable, et le boucher de la rue de Sèvres, où Depardieu vient en personne choisir son agneau de lait, serait peut-être prêt à le certifier. Le surnom a fini par arriver aux oreilles de Hollande soi-même. 

… un commerçant énumère volontiers les miracles de saint Depardieu, qui a sauvé une coiffeuse jetée à la rue par son bailleur, en lui offrant un local. En fait, tout le monde le connaît dans la rue, même au magasin bio, seul commerce de bouche où il n'entre jamais, "contrairement au fils de Johnny Hallyday", lui aussi du quartier. Et s'il fallait prendre parti, la plupart des voisins le trouvent plutôt chic, plus chic en tout cas qu'Alain Delon, résident suisse depuis 1999, qui vend des lunettes mais pas comme oculiste : il est devenu une des plus grandes marques du secteur.

Don’t be surprised

Chief blackmailer of the trade union racket finds “scandalous” that someone successful would move out of France for tax reasons. In the imperialistic mind of Le Monde Al-Jazeera sur Seine, that make Hallyday a fiscal “exile”.

Ironically, tearing apart anyone successful out of simple envy has always been observed to characterize social behavior in villages on the third world, but lately to be found true of western leftists intent on fostering the "solidarity" that comes with widespread economic collapse.

You’re banished from the island, Johnny!

French contributions to contemporary culture

Besides Johnny Hallyday? How about Intifada emulation, Al Qaida support, and suburban TAZ implementation.

A Further Opportunity to Blast America, Its Society, and Its Leaders Is Given in Le Monde's Portraits of Artists and Other VIPs

Continuing our celebration of Le Monde 's 60th anniversary (following overviews of its Le Monde 2 magazine and the daily's film reviews), we sneak over to another section of its cultural pages, the VIP portrait section…

Regularly, almost every day of the week, Le Monde gives its readers a so-called in-depth portrait of a VIP, French or foreign, whether an artist or a human rights activist or other.

Not unsurprisingly, often part of these portraits are devoted to Bush-bashing or other diatribes against the hyperpower, its policies, and its capitalist society.

(VIPs lambasting Dubya and/or U.S. foreign policy include Gael Garcia Bernal (article by Thomas Sotinel), Björk (Véronique Mortaigne), Judith Butler (Clarisse Fabre), Brigitte Fontaine (Fabre), Philip Glass (Marie-Aude Roux), Alberto Granado (Christine Legrand), Nicolas Hayek (Afsané Bassir), Hong Sai-Wa (Philippe Pons), Lenine (Mortaigne), Ken Loach (Florence Colombani), Sergio de Mello (by his companion Carolina Larriera), Jacques Monory (Géneviève Breerette), Nana Mouskouri (Mortaigne), Véronique Sanson (Bruno Lesprit), Will Smith (Florence Colombani), Fernando Solanas (Paulo Paranagua), Michael Stipe (Stéphane Davet), Tsunenari Tokugawa (Pons), Paul Verhoeven (Sotinel).)

The big news came when even Johnny Hallyday — France's favorite "American" rocker! — voiced impatience with America and its policies. Now that means something! (I couldn't find the article's hyperlink, malheureusement; if any lecteur knows of it, merci de me le faire savoir…)

In addition, Le Monde has shorter and more news-itemish articles about celebrities, albeit on the front-page, whose only purpose is to bash Bush (Woody Allen [Florence Colombani], Cat Stevens [Véronique Mortaigne], Bruce Springsteen [Bruno Lesprit], etc). On the other hand, Bob Dylan — the protest singer par excellence — refused to comment (to Lesprit) on Bush and the American presence in Iraq.

In fact, here we get to what is surprising. What is odd about Le Monde's portraits is that you rarely, if ever, see anybody speaking about Bush (or American foreign policy) in positive terms. On the other hand, you do find portraits (a large amount of them) where Bush (and American foreign policy) is not mentioned at all. Nor do you ever hear anybody say anything negative about John Kerry.

It's almost as if, when face to face with someone who either 1) is a Bush supporter, or 2) doesn't care one way or the other, or 3) didn't come up with a very original and quotable anti-Bush one-liner (because some of these VIPs are well-known for their vocal opposition to all things American — see next paragraph), the Le Monde journalist decided that that part of the portrait wasn't worth mentioning (unless, of course, his or her editor cut it). In any case, something that isn't worth reporting.

(Portraits in which Dubya and/or US policies were not mentioned at all include those devoted to Anonymous 4 (article by Renaud Machart), François-Marie Banier (Josyane Savigneau), Booba (Stéphane Davet), Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi (Thomas Sotinel), Jackie Chan (Sotinel), Dominic Chianese (Damien Bonelli), Olivier Cohen (Alain Salles), Michael Connelly (Gérard Meudal), Raymond Domenech (Philippe Broussar), Kitsou Dubois (Rosita Boisseau), Daniel Cordier (Philippe Dagen), Serge Dassault (Dominique Gallois & Pascale Santi), Henri Dutilleux (Marie-Aude Roux), Ichikawa Ebizo XI (Fabienne Darge), James Ellroy (Gérard Meudal), Isaac Fanous (Xavier Ternisien), José Frèches (Philippe-Jean Catinchi), Jan Garbarek (Antoine Jacob), Nicole Gautier (Jean-Louis Perrier), Michel Gondry (Sotinel), Jean Guidoni (Véronique Mortaigne), Judith Henry (Darge), Philippe Herreweghe (Machart), Yannick Jaulin (Davet), Elfriede Jelinek (Joëlle Stolz), Gérard Jugnot (Jean-Michel Dumay), Daniel Keene (Darge), Joël Kermarrec (Harry Bellet), Aubert Lemeland (Machart's headline says the composer is "crazy [!] about America"), Wangari Maathai (Jean-Philippe Rémy), Michael Mann (Jean-François Rauger), Miossec (Davet), Nagui (Guillaume Fraissard), Genesis P-Orridge (Odile de Plas), Georges Prêtre (Roux), Noël Quidu (Michel Guerrin), Sam Raimi (Jean-Luc Douin, no link available), Denis Roche (Savigneau), Mylène Sauloy (Marie Jégo), Omar Sharif (Afsané Bassir Pour) Sandra Kilohana Silve (Boisseau), Alberto Sorbelli (Dagen), Daniel Spoerri (Dagen) Rachid Taha (Mortaigne), Anne Tismer (Brigitte Salino), Daby Touré (Bruno Lesprit).)

Another funny thing is that another thing you don't find much of in the independent newspaper's portraits is criticism of Jacques Chirac or French foreign policy. It is almost as if… as if the VIPs (French or foreign) did not want to risk alienating part of the Monde readership… (Unless, of course, it is the reporters of the newspaper of reference who do not want to alienate their editors and the powers that stand behind them…)

This, in turn, makes you wonder: how anti-Bush are all the VIPs interviewed really, and how much are they playing (deliberately or unconsciously) to their interlocutors (the journalists interviewing them) and to the general (self-serving) atmosphere pervading Europe and avant-garde America?

This all ties in with the numerous examples of film reviews and portraits lambasting American society, Washington's foreign policy, or the American character's supposed dark side, things that have little to nothing to do with the films' artistic merit (let alone the filmmakers' original intent), or little to do with the artist's actual words.