My cult scene from The Goat, by Francis Veber

The director of the classic with Pierre Richard and Gérard Depardieu recalls the quicksand with a laugh.

This evening, France 3 will rebroadcast The Goat (1981), one week before The Compères The complicity between Gerard Depardieu And Pierre Richard is so strong that they always see each other again with pleasure.

The Goat, The Fugitives, The Companions: Gérard Depardieu and Pierre Richard, a close-knit duo that never goes out of style!

To keep you waiting until 9:12 p.m., the director of The Goat explains to us how Pierre Richard sinks all alone into quicksand in front of a dazed Gérard Depardieu.

Precious camera

“At that time, we filmed with one camera, we had to take precautions. Well, imagine that the Mexicans lost it for four days! With them, it was always “momentito” [“un moment”]. Nothing was ever serious, they took their time… Anyway, to get back to this scene, I simply made a wide fixed shot when Pierre was going down, then close-up shots/reverse shots on him and Gérard. The situation is so effective in itself that the staging had to highlight it. We shot it in one day.”

We'll see

“What could happen to an unlucky person in a desert? Sinking into quicksand, that's all. That's how this scene was born, on my typewriter. I never asked myself whether it was feasible or not, knowing that I don't change the dialogues or the situations on set. The screenwriter never thinks about the director. It's so difficult to come up with an idea that if you ask yourself questions, you don't write anything anymore. It's when you find yourself facing the obstacle that you have to try to get over.”

From top to bottom

“It was obviously necessary to use mechanical effects to make Pierre Richard sink into the sand. The Mexican specialists were ingenious at this kind of thing. They had installed in the ground a kind of tank with a system of jacks, activated remotely, which rose and fell electrically. The tank was filled with water and on its surface swam lots of pieces of cork the color of the surrounding sand. When Pierre went down, the cork immediately reformed around his legs. The illusion was perfect.”

Sad clown

“We don't imagine that clowns like Pierre Richard suffer. So when he went down into that tank up to his neck, we tended to forget it! I remember that at one point, between two takes, I was discussing with the technicians the improvements to be made when suddenly, I heard a little voice say timidly “please”. I turned around and answered rather harshly “what?”. “My head is very hot”, murmured Pierre who was as red as a tomato… We paid more attention after that.”

Depardieu the outsider

“Gérard is wonderful in this scene. Look at him carefully, he almost cries, he is so distraught by the character of Pierre. At the time, he was already a total genius but he did not have the level of notoriety of his partner. He was only appreciated by film buffs for his roles with Blier, Bertolucci, Pialat… Moreover, his fee was much lower than that of Pierre, who contractually received a colossal interest on the profits. All of this was obviously put on the table, from the following film, Les Compères.”

Common sense question

“We had to find a corner of the Mexican desert where the ground was perfectly level so that the two characters were even, with one of them slowly going down. It's just common sense. In the very bad American remake [Danger public, 1991]the director, Nadia Tass, did not understand it. She chose an uneven ground, removing all the comedy potential from the scene. How stupid one must be!”

The story of The Goat : The daughter of the Great CEO Bens is so unlucky that she is kidnapped while on vacation in Mexico. To find her, her father hires private detective Campana, whom he teams up with a chronic blunderer in the hopes that he will bring him closer to his daughter…

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