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"Our world is so sinister," says Godin, "that we have to laugh, to play the fool a bit" (L.A. Times). Yeah, you gotta laugh.



   CHIEF OF MISCHIEF

In the beginning was the word. Le Gloupier was simply a journalistic hoax, a figment of Jean-Pierre Bouyxou's skittish imagination. As a film critic in swinging Brussels, Bouyxou would spice up his reviews by peppering them with references to his whimsical creation. Week after week, readers were regaled with cocky, cock-and-bull stories which they seem to have lapped up without so much as batting an eyelid. They learned that Le Gloupier's authority on all things creepy-crawly (he was the alleged author of a learned treatise on cockchafers written in slang) was matched by his ground-breaking contribution to the arts. Nobody, claimed the counterfeit critic, could remain unmoved by movies such as Moi, rien que moi, toujours moi : at each performance the director would prance about in puris naturabilis before a blank screen, after doing a striptease to the strains of a soppy pop song which he belted out ad captandum vulgus . Even in those early days, Le Gloupier was a chief of mischief. Accusing Pierre Boulez of plagiarizing his symphony for organ, gruyère grater and percussion, he was said to have challenged the composer to a duel, choosing the fire hose as his weapon!



   COOKING UP, OR THE CRITIC AS ARTIST

At the time, Godin was another talented exponent of the critic-as-artist school. In his time, he conducted more than a hundred interviews with leading directors and actors (from Fritz Lang to Robert Mitchum) without ever actually meeting any of them. This enabled him to mete out the punishment he deemed appropriate to their aestheic or political misdemeanours. During one of these pseudo interviews, Henry Hathaway made the startling revelation that "manure spreads the flu." In another, Robert Ryan, caught in philosophical mood, stated that there would no longer be any need to go out to work if we all became herbivores. Richard Brooks, who described himself as a "complete moron," went on record as saying that his films were a load of "hot air." As for Frédéric Rossif, he promised that his forthcoming efforts would be "dismal failures" just like the previous ones.



   GUSHING GEEZER

Godin's coup de génie , however, was the invention of some forty film-makers whose fictitious works he diligently reviewed, l'air de rien , using his own family snaps as illustrations (Adam's too, too bogus gossip column in Vile Bodies obviously springs to mind). There was André Thurdulle's verisimilar remake of L'Arroseur arrosé . It was very similar to the original, apparently, but made quite a splash on account of the garden hose which sprayed water on the spectators through a hole in the screen. The English title of this cinéma-vérité classic, Hose and Pantihose , reflected its racy climax ("Blooms and Bloomers" with its Joycean overtones and "Libideau" were both rejected by the American distributor on grounds of intellectual pretentiousness). Giving free rein to his fantasies, in fine and in close-up, Thurdulle decided to have the gardener spank the pert postérieur of a silk-stockinged, mini-skirted demoiselle (instead of a little boy's), thus enhancing the sexual symbolism of the gushing geyser in the closing shot. The avant-garde cinéaste always became a gushing geezer when it came to becoming young ladies' arrière-trains , explained Godin, getting a little carried away himself in his description par le menu of the nymphet's chastisement.



   HYPOCRITIC

Jean Clabau's body of work was also lauded as a watershed in the history of the septième art , although female fundaments never played a fundamental part in it. Plants, potted or otherwise, figured more prominently. His masterpiece was a

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