Night of W.C. Fields

Michel Pé

7 Rampe du Pont

92 Courbevoie

Courbevoie, December 23^rd, 1999,

Dear Uncle Rudy,

Thanks a lot for your card. It makes me happy that everything is doing all right for you and of course for John. On our side, my wife and the children are quite well, and me, I’m doing my best to survive, as usual.

Thanks again for your invitation. I am sorry we wont be able to spend Christmas with you this year, but be sure we will come and stay in your place next summer, during our four weeks vacation. I am also sure that you will enjoy even more when I tell you that we plan to come along with a few friends, cousins, rabbits, chicken and dogs.

More seriously, Chief Joseph Deuxième is retiring in a couple of days. There has just been a big ceremony at the headquarters, with a speech by the President himself, and a very touching answer where mainly he declared with too much modesty that basically he only had been a lucky man, and also a passionate man. And everybody has noticed that he almost spent more time talking of Chief Joseph Premier than of himself. That’s what one could call class.

Sincerely all of this makes me feel somewhat melancholic. I have been working directly under him for eleven years and in spite of my uncontrollable disgust for anything that looks or sounds technical, I have learned a lot with him. And in spite of my numerous personal problems he has always been incredibly nice and generous to me. He really is somebody I deeply respect and admire.

Rudy, I understand from what Bob tells me that you’re keeping busy with the ISO 9000 procedures. Congratulations ! What a fascinating subject ! Once you’ve strarted it must be awfully difficult to stop. Hope it does not give you insomnia. Must be a bit like drugs, no ? I have always dreamed of doing that kind of job. I would even do it for free. The only thing I do not understand is why you feel obliged to take your car and go to Afro for your daily nap. Cant you do it at home ? Cant get rid of old habits, maybe ?

I am glad you have liked the book about Fields. To me he remains an incredible forerunner. He was one of the first to attack directly and mercilessly the censorship, the puritanism, the hypocrisy and more generally all the traditional values of those times, such as they were illustrated, for example, by Norman Rockwell (whom I nevertheless really adore). But Fields had nothing to do with that. Even if he was hiding his feelings behind cynism and declared drunkenness he was nothing else than an anarchist. And my God, what an unforgettable voice ! And it aint a fit night out for man nor beast. Iwill have it in my ears forever.

By the way, Night of the Hunter is not, like you say, a fine movie. It is THE finest movie of all times (jointly with The Searchers, by John Ford). I have watched both of them at least thirty times. I know them by heart. And each time I look at Laughton’s film (he was an homosexual, did you know that ?) I find details I had not noticed yet. About childhood, religion, fear, nature, sex, good and evil, everything you can find in a man’s or woman’s mind. And although I am not a religious man, I particularly love the last sentence, pronounced by Lilian Gish. Lord, have mercy on little children ; they abide and they endure.

Well, I think my english training is over for today. I wish the three of you all the best for this stupidly called year 2000 (since everybody knows Jesus was born 25 years before Christ, approximatively).

Friendly yours.