NORBERT SAADA: If one remains nostalgic past, one does not live any more

After Eddie Barclay who put the foot with the clamp to him, Norbert Saada is regarded as a large artistic and cinematographic producer with step less thirty–six films with his credit. This fan of jazz and Franck Sinatra will have had of cease throughout his career only to meet and to deal with large singers or actors of legend. He is besides writing his memories. Whereas the 71ème edition of the Cannes Film Festival touches at its end, the producer, who is again animated by the desire for remaking cinema, delivers to us some anecdotes drawn from his rich person and enthralling history. Meeting.

European impact: Which was your course?
Norbert Saada: Originating in Tunisia, I arrived at Paris to continue my studies. But with final, I was salesman of vacuum cleaners, then of trousseaus. Every evening, I danced out of nightclub, so that I saw myself proposing by Lebanese to come to animate evenings in Beirut. I left for one month. I remained there more than one year. I returned to France to open “the Cellars of the king” with Saint–Tropez. It is there that I met Eddie Barclay who proposed to me, whereas I was not informed any of the medium of the disc, to come to join it as an art director.

Was Eddie Barclay thus your mentor?
I would say rather than he gave me my chance. In the life, when one succeeds, it is not because one is more intelligent than the others, but it is because one arrives at the good moment with his ideas. That was my case.

Which are the singers of which you occupied yourselves?
I was likely to work for Léo Ferré, Charles Aznavour, Jacques Brel, Jean Ferrat, Dalida, Otis Redding, Sami Davis JR, France Gall and well of others…

When does one work as you had the occasion to do it for great names, which requirements has one?
The great names, those which have a true talent, are simpler to work and less annoying that those which do not have any. To take an example, I will quote my friend Charles Aznavour. I remember that he did not want to record “Mamma”. It was Robert Gall, the father of France Gall, who had written the text. It found it no one, therefore it did not want to do it. It is his/her sister Helped who convinced it. He listened to it and finally, that was a triumph.

Y–a it an artist of the young generation which you would have liked to produce?
Some astonished me like Stromae. It is an UFO. I find Julien Doré very original, but I do not think that I would have been able to produce it. It has a universe well with him.
By evoking artists of character, did you find yourselves in your career vis–a–vis a personality so strong which you hesitated to produce?
Not, that did not arrive to me.

Then, did you regret?
Yes. I made the error of my life while not agreeing to produce Tina Turner. After its divorce, it had come to sing in Paris with the De luxe hotel. At the time of a dinner, she asked me to deal with her. I had just left the medium of the disc for the cinema. My motivations were not any more the same ones. I did not want any more, twenty years after, to set out again in the music. Large “stupidity”, because six months afterwards, it left a disc which broke the hut. My second regret is with Liza Minelli. She wanted that I produce it and I did not do it, because the conditions were with too complicated.

Why did you move towards the cinema?
I went in Almería (to Spain) to meet Sergio Léone. We had a reciprocal love at first sight so much so that we were left more and that we made full with films together whose “My name is Nobody”.

What do you feel when you re–examine films which you produced?
I consider it regrettable that they are not any more mine and especially to have sold them for nothing.

Do you look at them in entirety?
Not, I do not arrive there, because I know them by heart and that I see only the defects there.
Under its aegis, you produced with Alain Delon four films (“Monsieur Klein”, “Armaguedon”, “Died of one rotted”, “Attention the children look at”). How did your meeting with the star occur?
It was at Barclay. At the time, he sang a title in duet with Dalida with which he had had an adventure when they had left to Rome. One is immediately of course. Thus, when many years later, I proposed to him to make “Monsieur Klein”, it accepted.

Do you remember in the way in which that occurred?
It turned then to the De luxe hotel “Borsalino n°2”. It was at the bottom of a coffee, a cap screwed on the head. I present the scenario to him while asking him to read it. He answers me “I do not need to read it, I do it”. And me to answer him: “Not, you do not make without reading, you will read and you will do what you have desire for making! ”

Was it difficult to work at its sides?
Not owing to the fact that we know each other and owing to the fact that it respected only people who could choose subjects. He worked with the very large ones. He is what he wants and what he does not want. If you know your trade well, it does not annoy you. That summer the case with me.

Did it manage to you to annoy you with him?
It arrived once, during a private projection of “the death of one rotted”. It was late. I did not expect it. That did not rain to him. I told him: “Get stuffed” and I left. It is Mireille Darc who finally reconciled us.

Between the music and the cinema, in which register did you feel more in phase?
They are not the same universes. I tried to make both to one moment, but it was not possible. The schedules do not have anything to see and then singers and actors are very different artists. To speak with a singer has nothing to do with exchanging with an actor.

Are you nostalgic of these years?
Certain things. Musically, I am nostalgic moments spent in studio with Aznavour and Brel or of the great funs with Johnny and Mort Shuman. Cinematographically, I miss Sergio Leone. Before its disappearance, we were preparing a very beautiful film: “Nine hundred days of Leningrad”. But if one remains nostalgic past, one does not live any more.

Was this better or easier in the Sixties?
It was another universe and then at the time there existed only three radios: RTL, France Inter and Europe number 1. It sometimes happened to me to make four to five discs in the week. Today, the artists make every four month of them, with sounds not better than before and with an incredible technique.

Which French film which is not with your prize list would you have liked to produce?
“The direction of the festival”. It is a film choral turned very well in which Jean–Pierre Bacri is formidable.

What makes that you decide to produce a film?
The scenario. It is necessary that I like it, that I feel it and that I imagine it.

Which are the actors who impressed you?
Jean Gabin. At the time, I was very friendly with Lino Ventura and Michel Audiard. When they presented it to me, I did not dare anything to say. One often found oneself around the table and Gabin had told me the first time: “Does not touch with the dishes when Lino eats, because it is a quartet of mandibles. ”

Certain friendships you do they miss?
That of Lino. That of Audiard with which I laughed well. That of Sergio Leone near whom I started my cinematographic career. It was timorous very imaginative. That of Johnny. I was at the hospital when he died. I had a shock.
Which were your more beautiful meetings?
That of Martin Luther King. I had been solicited to find to him a room in Paris for a concert of benevolence. I do not have shame to acknowledge which I really did not know, like much of people of my generation, which it was before it dies. As a fan of jazz, that of Miles Davis to the club Saint–Germain. He was impressive. I found it very beautiful and very elegant.
While speaking about jazz, that in is it of that with Ella Fitzgerald?
Since small, it me fascine. I met it at the time of a concert which it gave to Antibes and which I was to record. At the time when it started to sing, a locust did as much of it. It stops thinking that the animal was going to make in the same way. But not. Finally, Ella starts to interpret the blues while speaking with the locust so that it stops. That lasted twenty minutes before it can make its concert normally. One finds oneself after the show and one laughs of this small improvisation. I tell him to make a disc of it, but the years pass and I forget. Thirty years afterwards, I discovered that its recording company had finally left it.

Which are the meetings which marked you the most?
That with Léo Ferré. It was a character out of commun run which had a humour with the second degree. It came to the Studio with Granddad, its monkey equipped as a little boy whom it regarded as his son. It dedicated besides to him a tearing song after his wife killed it by jealousy, with rifle shots. There is also that with Robert de Niro. It was in New York in full August. It arrived dressed in a Jean and a white tee–shirt. I tell him: “I am content, because I will be able to praise myself later to have made move a guy who will be tallest star American. ” He tells me: “Which it is?” and me to answer him: “You”. It started to laughing. One year after, with the Cannes Film Festival where it came for “Taxi driver”, it sees me by far and makes me a sign as “thank you”.

What does one retain with time?
Moments which struck you in your career like your first day of turning, your name which appears with the credits of your first film, the steps of the Cannes Film Festival assembled at Sophie Marceau in a red dress “BASIC Instinct”, the first palm and then, the great meetings which one made.

To be made Knight of Arts and letters and Knight of the national order of the merit do they resound like dedications?
Absolutely not. On the other hand, I was content and proud for my parents. The honors, it is well for the family. I refused the legion of honor because my parents were not there any more. I did not have any more interest to receive it.

If were to be remade, which chapter of your life would like you to rewrite?
None. I would remake an end of music and an end of cinema. I cannot dissociate both so much they gave me great emotions.

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