The Eurotrash guide to Jean-Luc Godard | Little White Lies

Not Movies

The Euro­trash guide to Jean-Luc Godard

27 Sep 2022

Words by Adam Woodward

A person with long hair and pierced facial features holding a lit cigarette and microphone.
A person with long hair and pierced facial features holding a lit cigarette and microphone.
The late French New Wave icon was affec­tion­ate­ly sent up on the cult 1990s late-night show.

With its sur­re­al sketch­es, risqué cul­tur­al com­men­tary and cheer­i­ly low pro­duc­tions val­ues, Euro­trash was the late-night talk­show du jour in the 1990s, pulling in a whop­ping 2 – 3 mil­lion view­ers per week at the height of its popularity.

Orig­i­nal­ly air­ing on Chan­nel 4, the cult mag­a­zine show is best remem­bered for smut­ting up British tele­vi­sion for the best part of a decade. But it also fea­tured reg­u­lar seg­ments with a vari­ety of well-known celebri­ties, includ­ing a num­ber of promi­nent art-house direc­tors. Any­one remem­ber Lars von Tri­er tobog­gan­ing down his back gar­den in Copen­hagen, or a fresh­ly permed Pedro Almod­ó­var chew­ing over his 1993 film Kika on a lip­stick-red sofa?

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Among the most bizarre in the show’s his­to­ry is its tongue-in-cheek appraisal of recent­ly deceased Nou­velle Vague lumi­nary Jean-Luc Godard, whose 1987 adap­ta­tion of ​‘King Lear’ is described by turns as ​“jum­bled garbage” and ​“a mas­ter­piece of artis­tic mas­tur­ba­tion”. This fol­lows a black-and-white skit, know­ing­ly framed as an idiot’s guide to JLG, in which Euro­trash host Antoine de Caunes goes full Belmondo.

This new­ly unearthed clip, which you can watch in full below, coin­cides with the release of all 16 sea­sons of Euro­trash on DVD and dig­i­tal down­load lat­er this month. Give it a watch – you might just learn some­thing about one of cinema’s fore­most auteurs.

Euro­trash is on DVD and dig­i­tal 26 September.

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