Poor Jean-Pierre Jeunet, at some point this guy was on top of the world, hell, he even directed an Alien movie, albeit the worst installment of the franchise. Nevertheless, "Delicatessen," "The City of Lost Children" and "Amelie" were special gifts. So, it is with much dismay to learn that Jeunet is trying to throw Oscar front-runner Guillermo del Toro under the bus by accusing The Shape of Water director of copying a scene from "Delicatessen."
A Ouest France article by Francois Leger asserts that the Dominique Pinon and Karin Viard sequence of them dancing while seated on a bed, as they listen to an old musical number on TV, is a token replica of a similar scene involving Sally Hawkins and Richard Jenkins.
The article becomes even more interesting when Jeunet tells Leger than he actually e-mailed del Toro: “I told him, you have a lot of imagination, a lot of talent. Why go and [use] the ideas of others? He said, ‘We owe Terry Gilliam everything.’ According to him, he does not steal from others, it is Terry Gilliam who has influenced us all. But [the Hawkins-Jenkins scene] is so copied-and-pasted Delicatessen that there is a moment when I said to myself that he lacks self-esteem.”
“It’s already old Delicatessen, it’s spent in history, and so under this pretext we can use and recycle. Now, I do not make a nervous poo either because it is better to be stung than ignored. I’m not going to attack for plagiarism anyway. It’s not my mind. But Guillermo has enough talent not to do that.”
You know I love the nod to Terry Gilliam. He was an untouchable GOD for me from 1975-1998. His influence at the movies is vast and too damn underrated. There would damn sure be no Guillermo del Toro without a Terry Gilliam.