I've been asking around about this for years, and my friend over at the No Mas website asked yesterday: Does anyone know anything about the William Klein documentary The French? It chronicles the 1981 French Open. If you've seen Klein's doc about Muhammed Ali, The Greatest, you know this tennis movie has to be worth seeing.
Dave at No Mas managed to see it when it was screened in New York a few years ago as part of a Klein festival, but it seems to be totally unavailable anywhere else. If you have any info on it, please let me know. Here's Dave's description of what he learned from seeing it.
*Borg was pretty much the coolest dude of all time. He was a cross between Humphrey Bogart, a Swedish porn star, and a lazy but talented leopard.
• Yannick Noah was only slightly less cool than Borg.
• Lendl was severely paranoid.
• McEnroe was borderline insane, to the point where it almost seemed like he had Tourette’s. The moment he stepped on the tennis court he started spouting off, to the ump, to the fans, to any passing birds. Mostly to himself. Nobody liked him (big surprise on that one).
• Nastase was hilarious. There’s a great scene where during a rain delay where he’s got Chris Evert and Hana Mandlikova laughing like schoolgirls while he flashes his buttcrack at them in the clubhouse. Nastase was clearly an armpit fart kind of guy of the finest order.*
And on and on and on. If you’re a tennis junkie, you see why it’s a crime that this movie is not available ANYWHERE in the States. There are some obscure places on the French web where you can order it (sans subtitles, bien sur) but nowhere in America. I don’t know how it works exactly, but now that we're hunting with the big dogs over there at Tribeca, here’s my plea directed to the American Film Entrepreneur at Large – would some one of you out there who generally does this sort of thing unearth this film from whatever moldy vault it’s in and put it on DVD and, you know, sell it? This movie needs an audience. Merci, messieurs. Vous serez recompensé.
PS: My last Book Club post vanished somehow. I'll try to cook up another one Sunday, along with a preview of Monte Carlo.