Comments | chrisdolley: Crime and Poetry: Part Six (French

chrisdolley

Crime and Poetry: Part Six (French - A Language for Poets)

Feb 08, 2007 09:55

To recap: it's September 1995. We'd just survived eight months in France and then this happened. Someone stole my identity and grabbed our life savings. The police, however, wouldn't help us - insisting we came back with someone who spoke better French...Which is when we thought of Jean-Pierre. He was the only candidate we could think of. Chantal ( Read more... )

identity, humour, humor, theft, nsa, true, police, france, memoir, crime, expat, statement, nsa8, fax

Comments 1

anothernathan February 8 2007, 14:26:14 UTC

Years ago, I was one of the Assistant Location Managers on the movie, "True Believer". I was assigned to prep NYC's Chinatown for three nights of shooting the climactic murder scene and had to get the cooperation of scads of Chinese restaurants and building owners.

I hired someone to work with me as a translator and went to work. The first place we stopped into, I asked the translator to explain that the only thing we needed in this particular place was to have all the neon signs stay lit all night for the three nights of filming.

The translator and the restaurant manager spoke loudly to each other for five minutes. There was lots of gesticulating. There was spittle at the corners of their mouths. I was waiting for weapons to be drawn.

At the end, the translator turned to me and said, "He says O.K., Fine".