{"id":69079,"date":"2014-04-02T13:19:43","date_gmt":"2014-04-02T17:19:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=69079"},"modified":"2014-04-02T16:27:49","modified_gmt":"2014-04-02T20:27:49","slug":"heroes-of-the-civil-service-an-interview-with-antonin-baudry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/04\/02\/heroes-of-the-civil-service-an-interview-with-antonin-baudry\/","title":{"rendered":"Heroes of the Civil Service: An Interview with Antonin Baudry"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Antonin<\/a>

Antonin Baudry, 2013. Photo: Clarisse Rebotier<\/p><\/div>\n

In 2010, a graphic novel, <\/i>Quai D\u2019Orsay,<\/i> was published in France under a pseudonym, causing a quiet sensation. Set in, of all places, the Foreign Ministry, <\/i>Quai D\u2019Orsay starred a young speechwriter frantically learning on the job\u2014the novel featured recognizable public figures, including the foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, who famously said <\/i>non to the war in Iraq.<\/i><\/p>\n

In France, graphic novels, or comic books (<\/i>bandes dessin\u00e9es), are a revered venue for pointed satire. The bestseller\u2019s author, it turned out, was a wunderkind former staffer for Villepin named Antonin Baudry. A man of varied passions\u2014board games, Metallica, Greek philosophy\u2014Baudry is currently the French Cultural Counselor for the U.S. Last fall, he adapted the graphic novel for the big screen. The resulting film, <\/i>The Minister, became an instant hit in France, earning the rookie screenwriter a nomination for a C\u00e9sar, the French Oscar. <\/i>The Minister is now showing (under the title <\/a><\/i>The French Minister) at select theaters in the U.S., including the IFC Center, in New York; the graphic novel is available in English under the title <\/i>Weapons of Mass Diplomacy<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

Sitting in his cavernous office in the French embassy, overlooking Central Park, the informal diplomat says he would love to try another graphic novel \u201con globalism, set in the Middle Ages.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Both in the graphic novel and the movie, you make it seem as if you hadn\u2019t the slightest qualification to write speeches for the foreign minister. Is that true?<\/b><\/p>\n

Yes. I didn\u2019t have the background that all the people there had at all. I had never met a politician before. I had never met a diplomat. What happened was that Dominique de Villepin was looking for young people from different universes to write for him. He heard through a mutual friend that I had done master\u2019s theses in math and literature, and he wanted to meet me. I totally panicked. I said to my friend, Why did you do this to me? I had to buy a suit. The minister received me at the Quai D\u2019Orsay, and it was just like being hypnotized. He explained a lot of things to me and everything seemed clear, and then when I left, I couldn\u2019t remember a thing. And there was this time pressure. He said I had to answer within twenty-four hours because we were possibly on the eve of a Third World War. I was twenty-six, and I thought, Why not? I\u2019d done academic writing and I knew I wanted to write novels. I accepted the job because I think many writers have no experience of the world. I once worked for the sanitation department in Berlin, cleaning the streets at five in the morning. I loved it for the same reason\u2014it gave me the chance to observe another universe instead of staying in my room, contemplating myself. <\/p>\n

The minister is a very endearing character. Can you describe the man who inspired him?<\/b><\/p>\n

I love de Villepin. We\u2019re still friends. I have a lot of admiration and tenderness for him. He made me suffer a lot, but I was a consenting victim. He\u2019s a very, very smart person who has some madness in him. And he\u2019s aware of it\u2014he plays with it, he believes it\u2019s necessary. And I agree. If he weren\u2019t as he was, France wouldn\u2019t have said, Non<\/i>, we won\u2019t participate in the Iraq War. The process leading up to that was chaotic and very strange, but the decisions, and the results, were rational. That\u2019s what I wanted to show in the book and in the film\u2014how irrational processes can lead to rational results. It\u2019s a Hegelian story. As Hegel says, the owl of Minerva only takes flight at dusk. It represents wisdom, which appears only after the day is done. You can\u2019t understand the logic of the process, but there is one.<\/p>\n

Did speechwriting teach you anything useful about fiction writing?<\/b><\/p>\n

It taught me a lot as a writer. It made me realize that you never know exactly who is writing. It\u2019s a mix of voices in your head, and you have to hear them all and choose, somehow. Each word is a battlefield.\u00a0<\/p>\n

How was it different, speechwriting?<\/b><\/p>\n

Well, it\u2019s not writing. It\u2019s understanding a situation, what words it needs. It\u2019s collecting a lot of information about what\u2019s really at stake. And then a major part of the work is trying to understand how everyone will interpret what you write. The Americans will interpret these words in such a way, the Iraqis will interpret them differently, and so will the British. You\u2019re talking on different levels to different people.<\/p>\n

One of the painful things to watch in the movie is how the young speechwriter\u2019s hours of work are dismissed with one word, and he has to start all over.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, the first time, it\u2019s really surprising, and you\u2019re disappointed, but then it becomes part of the game. You\u2019re interacting with so many people, taking into account so many different points of view and egos. It\u2019s like being in a washing machine. There is no rational way to deal with it, to be honest. But the idea that you can write something, work really hard on it, and then cast a cold eye on it, throw it away, and start from scratch\u2014and consider that part of the normal course of things\u2014is useful for any writer.<\/p>\n

What made you decide to tell this story as a graphic novel?<\/b><\/p>\n

I had the feeling that many of the things I wanted to say were better conveyed visually. The same interactions that would appear heavy-handed in writing could be described elegantly with a single image. What I tried to do in the graphic novel was not to imitate the people it\u2019s based on but to develop an equivalent for each. For example, the minister has this big nose with a narrow head and weird hair. It\u2019s really not Villepin at all. But it\u2019s an equivalent\u2014people recognize him somehow.<\/p>\n

How was writing for a graphic novel different from writing for a film?<\/b><\/p>\n

When I worked on the comic book, I was standing right next to the artist. At the end of the day, I could really see what I\u2019d done\u2014you have immediate feedback, and you can change things. When you\u2019re making a film, by the time you discover the visual results of the decisions you\u2019ve made as a writer, it\u2019s totally too late to change them. As a screenwriter, you have to be very experienced to understand the onscreen consequences of what you\u2019re writing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Weapons-of-Mass-Diplomacy\"<\/a>When the graphic novel first came out, you went under a pseudonym, Abel Lanzac. I found an interview from your incognito period. All you revealed was that your wife was the reincarnation of an Egyptian princess and that you didn\u2019t like roasted endives.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

I showed the storyboard to one of people who inspired the book, the minister\u2019s chief of staff. He laughed a lot and said there was no problem with publishing it at all. His one piece of advice was to take a pen name so I could write whatever I wanted and wouldn\u2019t have to ask for authorization as a diplomat. But it didn\u2019t work, because my publisher sent out a press release, which said, \u201cThis book is by Abel Lanzac (pseudonym).\u201d If you indicate that it\u2019s a pseudonym, it doesn\u2019t work. So I decided to drop the pen name.<\/p>\n

Speaking of the chief of staff\u2014who appears in the book and film\u2014does such a perfect human being really exist?<\/b><\/p>\n

Yes. Pierre Vimont. He was unbelievable. That was a true discovery for me\u2014the genuine public servant, totally dedicated to the state and the common interest. He worked so hard. He would leave the office at three in the morning and be back at seven. He was always under extreme pressure, which he never, ever transmitted onto others. He was so calm, so kind, and so smart. Two things were impossible with him. One was preceding anyone through a doorway. I tried every way I could think of to let him go first. The second thing was to give him a piece of information he didn\u2019t already have. That was impossible. I don\u2019t know how he did it. One night I was on night duty at the ministry. You\u2019re the one who monitors all the information coming in and you have to decide what\u2019s important, whether you have to wake someone at night. There was a negotiation about a cease-fire between the Israelis and the Palestinians. I received a telegram at two A<\/small>.M<\/small>. that said the deal was done. I immediately rushed into his office to tell him. And he said, Yes, I know. It\u2019s great news. I thought, How does he know? He\u2019s not on the phone \u2026 He was always like that. He always just knew. He\u2019s a hero to me.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That was the radical suggestion of the book and the film. Not only were these civil servants not jerks, but they were heroic.<\/b><\/p>\n

Totally. French people are always saying that civil servants don\u2019t work and are always on holiday. France is a country that criticizes a lot, which is a great cultural tradition. But I know so many people in government who work hard all their days, sacrificing their personal lives. I\u2019m happy they\u2019re in charge. I wanted to show that. It\u2019s a satire, but a very tender one.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The other supporting character who steals the show is Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher\u2014from the fifth century B<\/small>.C<\/small>.<\/b><\/p>\n

My wife is a specialist of Heraclitus. She teaches at Columbia. Her field is the representation of the Greek philosophers in seventeenth-century Spanish literature. So Heraclitus and Democritus are living on our sofa. I like this idea that you have two main attitudes in life\u2014Heraclitus, the one who cries, and Democritus, the one who laughs. If you don\u2019t try to be too intellectual, those are the two possibilities you have when you\u2019re facing situations. Laugh or cry. That\u2019s why I wanted him as part of the show. Not only for his comments about life, but also for his distance from the world. He\u2019s always represented in his garden, his back to the city, looking out from a distance and crying because it\u2019s too sad to see how men live their lives.<\/p>\n

What was it like to hear Villepin give the speech you worked on, defying the United States over the Iraq War?<\/b><\/p>\n

In France, everybody pretends now that we were against this war, but it\u2019s not true at all. The vast majority of the French elite, including the left-wing intellectuals, were trying to convince Villepin to follow Bush. When I heard him deliver his speech, I cried. I knew it was important. But I also knew that it wouldn\u2019t stop the war. Those are the limits of speeches, the limits of debate, the limits of the pursuit of truth.<\/p>\n

Getting back to heroic civil servants, I hear you saved the French embassy in New York from being sold.<\/b><\/p>\n

I made a counter offer, which was to open it to the public with the specific idea of having a French bookshop with fifteen thousand books. It\u2019s a not-for-profit. It\u2019s not even going to look like a retail place\u2014it\u2019s designed to look like a grand private library. No commercial displays or aggressive lighting. You can buy books, but you can also just sit on the sofa and read them. Part of the concept is to create a French-American venue for international debate, to invite the most original writers in the U.S. and Europe to discuss art and finance and politics. We\u2019re going to have a literary festival curated by Greil Marcus.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Weapons_of_Mass_Diplomacy__710_972\"<\/a>

A page from Weapons of Mass Diplomacy.<\/i><\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s the last building Stanford White designed. Actually, he was shot dead by a jealous husband while he was working on it. It was a gift from Colonel Whitney to his nephew, who was getting married. The Whitney family lived there for thirty years, then sold it to an German actress. Then Claude L\u00e9vi-Strauss, the French ethnologist, was appointed by General de Gaulle as the first cultural counselor to the U.S. He saw the building and convinced France to buy it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Is it true there\u2019s a Michelangelo statue in the lobby?<\/b><\/p>\n

Yes. Stanford White went to Italy to get the marble for the building, and he came back with this statue and stuck it in the lobby. Everyone thought it was just some statue. They put their ashtrays on it. Then one day, twelve years ago, the director of the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University came by and asked about it. The staff thought it probably came from the streets of Florence, but the director said, Actually, I\u2019m pretty sure it\u2019s a Michelangelo. She paid for a survey by the Met. Their verdict was that there\u2019s a ninety-five percent chance that it\u2019s Michelangelo. There was a huge panic in the French administration, who wondered how they were going to insure it.<\/p>\n

Without causing a diplomatic incident, do you have any observations to make about the natives here?<\/b><\/p>\n

I love them.<\/p>\n

Why?<\/b><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never met so many interesting, unique, and intense people as I have during my travels across the United States. Here, it\u2019s much more common that people do a lot of things in one single life. It\u2019s less common in France\u2014people go in a single direction very deeply there.<\/p>\n

Go on. What are some of our other strengths?<\/b><\/p>\n

Your self-confidence. And your belief that everything is possible, which is beautiful.<\/p>\n

Do you really recite Descartes every night?<\/b><\/p>\n

Descartes, for me, is an American. He\u2019s supposed to be so French. We tend to reduce him to Cartesianism, with its boring rational approach. It\u2019s not that. He also thinks everything is possible. If you can think it, you can do it. You just have to make good decisions. If you\u2019re lost in the forest, what do you do? He says just choose a direction and stick to it. I think that\u2019s a very American way of thinking. We live in a world of insanity, but let\u2019s not procrastinate. Let\u2019s make a decision, the most educated one we can make, and let\u2019s go for it. That is very American. That is not so French! Descartes is the secret conduit between the French and American spirits.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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