As I
said before Ernest and Célestine is a series of books depicting the
daily life of Ernest and Célestine in their home. The stories are
always very simple and very short. For example, one of them is called
The Broken Cup, Célestine breaks a cup because she is angry, Ernest
is mad, Célestine apologizes and clean up the mess.
When
we decided to make a film about Ernest and Célestine we didn't want
to put all those stories together and make a film with that. We
decided to make an original story and for that Mister Didier asked
Daniel Pennac, a french novelist.
Let
me introduce him... As I said,
Daniel Pennac is a novelist, he never
wrote for cinema before. We made some very famous novels in France :
The Scapegoat,
Write to Kill, he also puplished essays like
Reads
Like a novel and
The rights of the reader illustrated by
Quentin Blake and novels for children
like
Eye Of the wolf.
Mister
Didier asked for his contribution after reading Eye of the Wolf.
Strangely enough, Daniel Pennac knew Gabrielle Vincent as he wrote
her letter several times, but Mister Didier didn't know that when he
asked him. Daniel Pennac and Gabrielle Vincent never met but they had
a lot of respect for each other, they only talked with letters.
When
he started working on the script, Daniel Pennac said that he wanted
to pay respect to her old friend. Here is a small pitch of the story
he wrote :
In normal bear life, it is frowned upon to
make friends with a mouse. But Ernest, a
big bear, a clown and musician who lives
on the fringes of bear society, nonetheless
welcomes little Celestine into his home. She
is an orphan and has fled the mouse world
down below. Thses two solitary characters
find support and comfort in one another, but
in the process, fly in the face of convention,
upsetting the established order
I
didn't discover the script by reading it, Daniel Pennac who is a
wonderful Storyteller chose to read it to us.
Representation
of Daniel Pennac reading his story
When
he tells his writings, he puts a lot of energy in it, he sometimes
act like a bear, answer to the bear like a mice, interprating each
characters of the story one at a time. His reading is full of
anecdotes telling us how he got this or this idea. Most of these
anecdots are talking about the mice living in his house. This result
into a wonderful way of discovering Ernest and Célestine story.
Representation
of Daniel Pennac reading Ernest role, then Célestine role
Here
is a small extract from the script. It is at the very beginning of
the film, the first time the audience meets Ernest...
2.ext. ernest’s house – early morning
The feather settles
on top of a snowy hill. A little bird comes over and takes it into
his beak. We hear the sound of deep loud snoring interrupted by the
beginnings of a sneeze.
ERNEST
(Off)
AAAAAAAtt…
The camera focuses
on a small hill.
ERNEST (CONT'D)
(Off)
AAAAAAAA
CHOOO…
The bird is ejected
and all the snow tumbles down from the hill, revealing modest cabin.
ERNEST (CONT'D)
(Off)
AAAAAAAAAAAAAATCHOOOOO
!
The bird who had
again settled on the rooftop of the cabin is ejected by the huge
sneeze once more.
3. Int. ernest’s house – early morning
ERNEST’s house is
in a sad state of disarray. Decrepit furniture, dust and spider webs,
an old piano along with other musical instruments: cymbals, a drum,
an old accordion slinking down towards the ground,… the dishes and
the cleaning seem to have been neglected for months.
ERNEST
AAAAAAAAAT…
A big canopy bed
(without the curtain) and a big bear sleeping in it. We come closer
to him. This is ERNEST. He is snoring but a tiny snowflake has
drifted down from a hole in the ceiling and lands on his nose. It
tickles. He scrunches his nose.
Another little
snowflake lands spot on his snout.
ERNEST (CONT'D)
TCHHOOOOOO!
ERNEST, nightcap on
his head, turns over in his bed, once, then a second time. He sits
up. Frowning, he is not in a good mood. He grumbles:
ERNEST (CONT'D)
I’m
hungry.
He gets out of bed,
steps on the accordion, which lets out a groan, walks across the room
over to a table covered with pots and pans. ERNEST lifts the top off
of a big crock pot and gags. He quickly places the top back on. He
looks into another pot: it’s empty. He throws it over his shoulder.
Another: empty. Tosses that one as well. A third : empty. He
swings his arm and sweeps all the pots and pans off the table.
He comes across a
big jar marked « cookies ». He shakes it, hears a sound.
A big smile spreads across his face, he opens the jar and emtpies it
of its crumbs. He savours his spoonful of cookie crumbs.
A little bird
settles on the window sill and looks at the tempting crumbs remaining
on the table. Ernest pulls the curtains to block out the sight of the
bird. But chirping can be heard from the gaping hole in the ceiling
above him: little birds have gathered to observe the scene and make a
dive towards the cookie crumbs at the same time as Ernest. But he
stumbles and trips over himself, knocks over the table and falls face
first onto the floor, furious.
The fledglings flee
through the roof leaving Ernest to, at last, enjoy his crumbs.
More chirping: one
of the little birds has settled on Ernest’s bed. The bear looks
over at it and smacks his lips. He takes some crumbs in one hand, a
frying pan in the other and moves towards the bird with an extended
hand, offering up the crumbs.
ERNEST (CONT'D)
Nice
little birdy
Come
here, little birdy, come here, little birdy.
As the bird moves
towards the crumbs, ready to peck, Ernest swings the frying pan down
to crush it but at the last minute, the bird flies off and Ernest
crushes his own hand with the pan.
ERNEST (CONT'D)
(cry of pain)
AAaaah!!!
The
script was finished in the beginning of 2009. This is when we started
to recruit an artistic team. This is what we are going to talk about
next
