La Règle du jeu — Let anyone who has never signed a contract without reading it cast the first stone

By Michel Houellebecq. 23 March 2023.

An animal would have more rights

I borrow this title from my Dutch lawyer, Jacqueline Schaap; that sentence was her first reaction on reading this monstrous contract. Two questions immediately arise.

What human being would be capable of proposing that another human being sign such a contract? The answer is simple, written into the contract itself: KIRAC’s director, Stefan Ruitenbeek. Other individuals, no doubt, of an equivalent moral calibre, whose names history has not preserved.

What human being would be stupid enough to sign such a contract? The answer seems just as simple: Michel Houellebecq. I would like to suggest another, more general possibility: someone who has not read it. As I have explained elsewhere, that is not entirely true in my case: I read clause 1.3. And at that point, let anyone who has never signed a contract without reading it cast the first stone.

I believe there will not be many, apart, of course, from those who have studied law. Society does not rest on a contract, or even on contracts, since almost nobody reads them; really reads them, down to the very last clause, without forgetting the appendices. Society rests on a certain mutual trust. That trust can be seriously damaged in some cases, and that takes us into another world, a world in which I have little desire to live. A few examples, in no particular order, drawn from recent history:

— An airline pilot deliberately steers his aircraft into a mountain so that it will crash, with its passengers on board.

— A doctor deliberately kills one of his patients. Here I resist the temptation to reopen the debate on euthanasia; but I resist with difficulty.

— Someone proposes that someone else sign a contract of this kind, while presenting it as a routine formality, tedious but necessary, to be completed as quickly as possible.

Before leaving you to draw your conclusions, and in order to make my humiliation complete, I would like to draw your attention to certain clauses. Clause 1.4, which is extensively retroactive. Clauses 4, 6 and 8, on which I believe comment is unnecessary.

Well, there it is. That is where I find myself.

Michel Houellebecq.

Photographs of the ‘contract’ that Stefan Ruitenbeek made Michel Houellebecq sign in haste.

Understanding the affair

Dutch director and KIRAC collective member Stefan Ruitenbeek persuaded Michel Houellebecq to take part in a pornographic artistic performance in December 2022.

It had been agreed that the writer would wear a mask and would not be recognisable.

But, trapped by guerrilla filming methods, with images snatched on the fly, Michel Houellebecq put an end to the venture.

A few weeks later, he discovered online the trailer for the X-rated film Kirac 27, which completely disregarded the agreements made.

Since then, the writer has been fighting to prohibit the use of his image, only to be confronted with the argument that a ‘contract’ had been drawn up. An outrageous contract, signed at breakneck speed in a hotel room, which La Règle du jeu is making public here.

Michel Houellebecq’s open letter to the Dutch director Stefan Ruitenbeek

Sir,

It so happens that after my brief stay in Amsterdam, I went to Guadeloupe for three weeks to shoot a film by Guillaume Nicloux, starring, among others, Blanche Gardin and myself.

I mention this because Guillaume Nicloux’s working methods might at first glance be compared with yours — more, at any rate, than those of the other directors with whom I have had occasion to work.

On the one hand, he insists on shooting scenes strictly in the order of the screenplay, so that he can take account of changes that may occur in the characters, and above all in the relationships between them. He therefore does not rule out modifying a scene in the light of those already filmed. It is important to note, however, that he consults the actors about the changes he wishes to make.

On the other hand — and this is one of his distinctive qualities — the dialogue is sometimes improvised, or rather ‘semi-improvised’: its general subject is fixed, but the actors are free to choose their own words. This is particularly true of The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq, whose original screenplay can scarcely have exceeded twenty pages.

There is, however, an essential difference between your ways of working.

First, the difference is quite simply a matter of courtesy. To return to my stay in Amsterdam, I was irritated from the very first seconds, as soon as I set foot on the station platform, to find that a member of your crew had begun filming my wife and me without asking our permission, without even speaking to us. My first reaction at that moment should have been to seize the camera and throw it into the nearest canal. I am rather gentle by nature, and I restrained myself to prevent everything deteriorating from the outset. But my irritation grew every time you and your crew entered my hotel room, camera in hand, already filming. On other occasions, particularly during meals, Mr Ruitenbeek even filmed us without our knowledge. These methods belong more to gutter journalism than to auteur cinema. During a subsequent argument, given the deteriorating situation, I undertook to reimburse you for the hotel room, which I did. Incidentally, I had bought my own train tickets, paid for my meals there, and you own your filming equipment. Things continued to worsen until, one evening, I ordered you to leave my room with your cameras. We have not seen each other since.

There is another difference, concerning aesthetics. When a ‘normal’ film is being shot, there is a whole ritual, beginning with costumes and make-up. Once the technical crew is ready, the filming of each shot takes place within a very specific span of time, punctuated by precise instructions: ‘Roll’, ‘Action’, ‘Cut’. All this may seem ridiculous or outdated to you. I do not share that view. For me, this ritual is an immense help to the actor as he tries to attain a sufficient level of concentration to enter the character he has chosen to embody. It is largely thanks to this ritual that cinema — and theatre, through other rituals — can be considered arts.

You will object that your method is entirely different: that you seek to capture fragments of reality which you will then arrange into a meaningful continuity. The only answer I can give is that I must acknowledge that our conceptions of artistic work are radically opposed. Having experienced your working methods, I became convinced that the result would necessarily be mediocre, and that, as an actor, I would regret having been associated with this venture.

Above all, however, this artistic opposition conceals another, still more fundamental one: our radically divergent conceptions of loyalty, courtesy and respect for others. My mistake was not to react immediately when I sensed this. Today I am paying for it through the explosion of violence caused by your trailer, which irreparably damages my private life. I formally object to the footage you obtained through deception being used in your films, whether this one or any future film. As I repeat, it was filmed long before the contract was signed, and at that stage only an OnlyFans account was involved. My wife shares this position.

Michel Houellebecq.

This letter was previously published on the website of the programme Quotidien.