Growing Up In Public: Lou Doillon

nik.mercer — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 07:33:29 -0700

Il était une fois—or, as we say in English, once upon a time—you could smoke cigarettes in the cafes and bars of Paris. The first time I met Lou Doillon was in one of these now-mythological cafes near the Bastille late last year. We met for the purpose of discussing a movie I had written and was planning to direct called The Bright Side. The film, in brief, concerns the difficult relationship between a reclusive, alcoholic ex-pat American writer living just outside Paris and his possibly schizophrenic, half-French/half-American daughter.