Luc Besson

Luc Besson (born March 18, 1959) is a French film director, writer and producer.

Biography

Little is known about Luc Besson's private life since he rarely discusses his personal life in interviews. He was born in Paris to parents who were both scuba diving instructors. This had a heavy influence on his childhood and throughout his childhood Besson planned on becoming a marine biologist until the age of 17 when he had a diving accident which left him unable to dive any longer. He has since fully recovered.

During his childhood, and especially during adolescence, Besson showed amazing creativity. Out of boredom, he started to write stories, including the backdrop to what would later become one of his most popular movies, The Fifth Element.

At 18, unable to dive, Besson returned to his birthplace of Paris. There he started to become involved in film, taking on odd jobs to get a feel for the industry. After this, he moved to the United States for three years, but returned to form his own production company which he called "Les Films du Loup". The name was later changed to Les Films du Dauphin.

In the early 1980s, Besson met Eric Serra and asked him to compose the score for his first short film, L'Avant dernier.

He was also in charge of the promotional movie which was presented to the IOC members for the bid of Paris for the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Besson married Milla Jovovich on December 14 1997, but they divorced in 1999. On August 28 2004, Besson married Virginie Silla.

Besson's influence on other directors, artists, and world-wide popular culture cannot be denied, largely resulting from his films of the early 90's notably Nikita (1990) starring Anne Parillaud and Léon (The Professional, 1994,) starring Jean Reno and introducing Natalie Portman to the screen. These two films strongly influenced spin-off works by many artists in comics books, other films with "cleaner" hit-man characters, and several American television shows, with the most direct spin-off being the long-running (1997-2001) USA network TV series "La Femme Nikita" as well as influences on ABC's Alias (TV series) starring Jennifer Garner as paranoid girl-spy du jour. This influence extends to the creation of FOX TV's 24 (television) by Joel Surnow and Robert Cochran, who had previously produced Nikita for the USA network. Also, Besson can be credited with originating the idea of "the cleaner" -- the ultra professional assassin -- character in popular film. Harvey Keitel has played "cleaners" in the "Americanized" version of Nikita with Bridget Fonda called Point of No Return (1993) and Pulp Fiction (1994). This character also made it to TV in 1994 The Cleaner (The X-Files) and is being satirized by 2006 in The Cleaner (film) starring Cedric The Entertainer. In 2006 Steven Spielberg's film Munich featured a cleaner among the non-official Mossad team.

Controversy

Despite, or because of, his popularity, Luc Besson has become a somewhat controversial personality, especially in France.

Criticisms

His film company, Europacorp, has often been accused of producing brainless entertainment, movies with weak scripts that are filled with vulgarity, populism, bad jokes and even sexism and racism. Especially Taxi 2, a popular success, has been the target of such criticisms.

Lawsuits

On several occasions Besson was sued by collaborators, such as Subway co-writer Pierre Jolivet. Kathryn Bigelow accused him of stealing the script she wrote for a movie about Joan of Arc. This lawsuit ended in a settlement, the terms of which were confidential.^* Other trials for plagiarism were won by Besson.

In January 2003, following the publication of a highly critical article ^*, Besson sued the French magazine Brazil, demanding 50,000 euros. He lost. Besson also lost a trial against Julien Seri, the first director of Yamakasi, who was fired by Besson. Seri had publicly accused Besson of dictatorial methods and unrealistic schedules.

The most serious confrontation with the law concerned the death of cameraman Alain Dutartre during the shooting of Taxi 2, due to a failed stunt. The charges against Besson and director Gérard Krawczyk were dropped in February 2006, but stunt coordinator Remy Julienne and executive producer Bernard Grenet of Europacorp are to go on trial for involuntary manslaughter.

Filmography as director

The Last Battle or Le Dernier Combat (1983)
Subway (1985)
The Big Blue aka Le Grand bleu (1988)
Nikita aka La Femme Nikita (1990)
Atlantis (1991) – underwater wildlife documentary
Léon aka The Cleaner aka The Professional (1994)
The Fifth Element (1997)
The Story of Joan of Arc aka Jeanne d'Arc or Joan of Arc (1999)
Madonna's "Love Profusion" (music video)
Angel-A (2005)
Arthur and the Invisibles (2006) (currently in post-production)

External links

Discussion of Luc Besson-directed films

References

1959 births | Living people | French film directors | Parisians