Godard Goes Missing; Who Knew He Was Still Alive?

Jean-Luc Godard — aka Director of Breathless aka Jump Cut Pioneer aka Guy Who Implanted Jean Seberg’s Crop-Haired Goddess Image in the World’s Collective Fantasy aka Cigarette-Smoking 79 Year-Old in Apparent Good Health — is missing. The Motion Picture Academy has just announced that Godard will receive an honorary Oscar at this year’s ceremony. But when they tried to contact the director, he was nowhere to be found. Twenty-four hours of faxing, calling, emailing, and FedExing Godard’s friends and associates, and still no sign of Godard. Weird. Also, did they really think FedExing would work? Perhaps the famously curmudgeonly and anti-Hollywood director is stone-walling the Academy in a final socialist stand against elitism. Maybe he stepped through a magic door and ended up in Narnia. But he’s probably just on a trip, and didn’t tell anyone he was going. We’ll find out soon. Either way, now is probably a good time to re-visit Godard’s films. I just saw a new print of Breathless at Film Forum, and damn, that is a really f-ing good movie.

Adam Wilson’s first novel, Flatscreen will be published by Harper Perennial in Winter 2012. He is a former culture columnist for Blackbook, and a former TV blogger for Flavorwire. His journalism, crit ...read more