My life in Paris is well behind me. My last visit was in 2011. Like New York changed during my years in Thailand from a city of artists to a metropolis of wealth. Thanks to Facebook I have been able to reconnect with old friends and last year I was pleased to hear that the famed cartoonist Tanino Liberatore was alive. Back in 1986 I had the pleasure of working with him on three projects; two cartoons and the script translation of his classic tale of an android in love with a 12 year-old junkie RANXEROX.

The director for the film Jean Mondino. The script had been written by Pierre Grillet. They needed an English screenplay to get Hollywood money. I wasn’t a particularly good writer, but Tanino, Pierre, and Jean were my friends and I had just finished EMMANUELLE 3 for Paramount-France, so for better or worse I was the man for the job and I sat down for two weeks and typed out 100 pages of a futuristic search for Elvis’ lost master tapes. Tanino’s pubescent heroine Lubna was addicted to a drug. Pierre had called it ‘bleu’. I used the word ‘heroin’ in my adaptation. I gave the script back to Mondino and told him to read it before he gave it to anyone.

He must have been under pressure for the producers, because he sent the screenplay unread to Hollywood. Drugs were rampant in the film world, but the 80s were the time of Nancy Reagan’s Just Say No. Those cocaine-addled Hollywood hypocrites read heroin and axed the possibility of any financing for the project.

I was rightfully blamed for the disaster and my translation work dried up faster than spilled water on a Death Valley highway.

I remained friends with everyone, because failure isn’t a fault in France.

Not for your friends.

Check out RanXerox the graphic novel.

Here are the images.

http://images.google.com/images?q=ranxerox&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=5y9oS-LXJIfk8QatmcCxBw&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CB4QsAQwAA