Aventures de Gilles GEFFRAY

Dear Mister Spielberg,

I am, from the beginning, an unconditional admirer of your movies. You are the person who gave me the insatiable desire to write stories, and I deeply thank you for it.

 

If my plane reaches fortunately up to your landing runway, you will discover that I write and rewrite, since approximately 30 years, this entitled narrative: “The Sunbird’s Secret”, a script I wrote for you and who means a lot to me.

 

Turned into a novel in 1996 (only in French, regrettably): “The Sunbird's Secret” is a tribute to your famous movie adventures, beginning with the inevitable “Indiana Jones” to take off with the delirious " 1941 ", and by ending with the sublime and magic: “Empire of the Sun”.

 

The story of the “Sunbird” (original script title) was born at the end of 1987, and in 1988 I made an attempt to meet you, at first by mail with Kathleen Kennedy who made me understand that I needed a lawyer and some relations to deserve to present to you my scenario. Then I took my chance and I went to Hollywood in May and June 1989 period in which I looked for an agent and a lawyer – I did not find either of them.

 

Maybe I hadn’t this essential commercial side of this job, and doubtless also a rather wild spirit – I see myself as a kind of Robinson Crusoé on a small desert island (in Normandy) with my unique and invaluable computer which certainly has to work with solar energy, and which allows me to feed my “distant” dreams of international productions with you…

 

 Then  “I made a wish (upon a lot of Stars)” so that this small book of presentation, which aims to be a bottle in the sea, arrives in your hands…

 

I shall wish that the profits of this future French-American movie are of use to the research to look after the neurological diseases… I want nothing special for myself; I live to write but do not write to live… I was never interested in money, or glory. I always wanted that “my imagination”, what I also name “my shadow” be totally FREE…

 

My greatest reward is to have written always what I wanted to write, what fascinates me, what made me vibrate. My stories made me what I call “A FREE DREAMER”. It is not certainly the ideal to find a place in the sunlight, beside movie producers, but it is what I am – it is what I do.

 

I am cinematographically American, but also close to my roots, here in France. It is the reason why this journey around the world in this year of 1936 brings an intense meeting in feelings between these half-brothers. One of them is French, the other American, and they both have a strong personality, a legacy of a shady and ruthless family past.

 

What is interesting in this adventure it is that they never met previously and that, by the strength of the fate, they are going to be constrained to survive together through events, which are going to force them to forge their relationships, to teach them to count one on the other, as if they were for a long time, both best friends in the world.

 

As said it Plutarch: “A brother is a friend given by nature”, we cannot better summarize the relationship between my two young heroes who are going to evolve in a world in crisis, on the edge of the abyss, on the eve of the Second World War.

 

With hindsight, and the number of years shared with my characters, I thought for a long time that I would have appreciated to really live this weird adventure. Well, here is our luck, the storytellers, makers of dreams, the acrobat feelings… Somehow, we feel this strange impression that our characters exist, or have existed, some day, and it is doubtless one of the reasons why we do not sleep a lot at night, always visited by some strange creatures who come to converse with us, to help us to move forward, on the infinite and tortuous road that we chose, often in an involuntary way, and which doubtless allowed us to possess this ability, all this is essential for an author, nobody can learn that – it is the innate imagination.