- Coluche, L’Aile ou la cuisse, 1976. Comedy star Richard and auteur Claude Zidi had been planning a third film for ages. But the script was disappointing. ”I can’t do something I don’t like. Not if it makes me feel like going to a factory every day.” “At this price, you can,” retorted producer Christian Fechner. Next call came from his intended co-star, Louis De Funes, the stutter, splutter, mutter, nutter comic who ate scenery and co-star as if they were ratatouille.“You’re not doing it?” “Non, iIt’s not for me!” “So what’s the script like?” “He obviously hadn’t read it,” recalled Richard in 2019. “Well, he’d do whatever he wanted with it. He’s never better than when in a bad film. The proof that it wasn’t for me was that [#1 French stand-up] Coluche did it. We have different approaches to comedy.” So did De Funes and Coluche. Yet they were an instant mutual admiration societe with “Fufu” going so far as to call Coluche “the new Bourvil” – his co-star in two of the biggest French comedies, Le corniaud, 1964, and La grande vadrouille, 1966. (They had been preparing two more, La Folie des grandeursand La Guerre des Gauls, when Bourvil died at 53 in 1970).
- Michael Habeck, Der Name der Rose/The Name of the Rose, France-Italy-West Germany, 1986. The French comedy star was due among the Franciscan monks ina Benedictine Abbey, circa 1327.
- Bernard Verley, Nord, France, 1990. Actor-turned (excellent) auteur Xavier Beauvois had written his first feature, somewhat autobiographic, and wanted The Tall Blond Man With The One Black Shoe to portray his alcoholic father. Richard loved the scenario. His agent, future producteur Jean-Louis Livi, did not – bad for the one-time comedy king’s image. Richard later regretted passing. Beauvois did not. With Verley he got a good actor and a co-producer!
- Jean-Luc Godard, Après le réconciliation, France-Switzerland, 1999. After Nous sommes tous encore ici, 1996, this was the second time in three years thatthe bilious realisateur substituted for an uninterested actor in a film of his lover, Swiss auteur-actress Anne-Marie Miéville.
- Carlo Giuffrè, Pinocchio, Italy-US, 2002. Writer-director-star Roberto Benigni first planned the project as a collaboration with his La voce della luna director, Federico Fellini. When Fellini died in 1993, Benigni ran the whole show (and wanted the veteran French comic as Gepetto). However, the simplicity of Benigni’s La vie est belle had churned into an overblown ego trip, resulting in the first non-English language film nominated for Worst Picture at the US Razzie Awards… just three years after winning the Best Foreign Film Oscar for La vita bella.
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 5