Books #2: Diary of a Balaban

The Close Encounters of the Third Kind Diary, by Bob Balaban.

Odd that I should choose this as an influential film book from my formative days? I, who enjoy slapping Spielberg from time to time? Ah, but CLOSE ENCOUNTERS still strikes me as a lovely thing — maybe I get cross with SS because I want him to be better, because I know he can be.

This slender tome gave the young me a glimpse into the convoluted makings of a blockbuster movie (the Star Wars book/magazine that linked Lucas’ pulp space opera with everything from SILENT RUNNING to METROPOLIS to FREAKS was also helpful) and was amusingly written t0 boot. Before you’re too harsh on me, remember I was about 11.

Same book, different title.

Balaban is a fascinating figure — a jobbing actor in everything from Seinfeld (Costanza leers at his teenage daughter and costs Jerry a TV deal) to CATCH-22 (“It’s good practice!”), he later became a director (of PARENTS, the Lynchian ’50s-set comedy-Gothic, in which one can exult to Randy Quaid saying “You can be yourself in the dark…”) and a producer for his friend Robert Altman (GOSFORD PARK, in which he also plays a producer).

BB played Truffaut’s interpreter in CE3K, which gave him lots of lines which are basically just translations of Truffaut’s. They could have just been exposition or repetition, but BB infuses them with his own character’s feelings. Essentially the job gave him a great vantage point to watch a super-production in the making, and he covers the unfolding story with an appealing self-deprecating wit.

[Spielberg] asks me to say a couple of words in French. I say, “Il y a avait longtemps depuis que j’aie parla Francais, et si vous me donnez ce role, je devrais beaucoup etudier. En effet, je ne sais pas si je opurrais le faire.” I say this in very rapid French which I have been rehearsing all morning. Roughly translated, it means: “I haven’t spoken French in years, and if you give me the job I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it.” Spielberg is impressed. He doesn’t speak French.

Also, this bit about dining in Wyoming with Truffaut:

All the food is “chicken-fried.” It is impossible to translate chicken-fried steak into meaningful French. Truffaut seems nice. He keeps asking for vegetables, and the sad little waitress keeps saying, “We have cottage cheese.” I, of course, speak my normally fluent English to the waitress, who thinks I am French too, and keeps repeating everything I say in English, in English.

It’s kind of like Woody Allen, but true.