When Bertrand Blier develops a screenplay, he writes with specific people in mind. Since the French filmmaker's stories are usually a little crazy, he wants his actors the same way. ``I need an interesting starting point,'' said the director of the certifiably insane ``Too Beautiful for You'' (``Trop Belle Pour Toi''), which won the Jury's Special Prize last summer at Cannes, and ``Get Out Your Handkerchiefs'' (``Preparez Vos Mouchoirs''), winner in 1978 of the Academy Award for best foreign film. ``To have the movie start with something crazy, you need the sort of actors that are crazy enough themselves to make it credible,'' he said. Good actors, the director insists, are a little deranged, like his friend Gerard Depardieu, the star of ``Too Beautiful for You'' and ``Get Out Your Handkerchiefs'' as well as Blier's ``Menage'' and ``Cold Cuts'' (``Buffet Froid''). They met in 1973, when Blier was casting for ``Going Places'' (``Les Valseuses'') and Depardieu was an unknown actor. ``I was a little hesitant to hire him because that was a very important charatcer in the film,'' Blier recalled. ``For six months, every day, Depardieu would come to the office with a different costume on to convince me he could play different characters. One day, he was very funny. The next day he was sad and distraught. It's extraordinary.'' Depardieu got the part and Blier gave him the chance to make good on the promise of his extended audition _ to do anything. In ``Get Out Your Handkerchiefs,'' Depardieu decides his unhappy wife needs a lover and recruits a total stranger for the job _ in the middle of a restaurant. In ``Cold Cuts,'' he plays an unemployed man who accosts a stranger in a subway station and rants about his dreams of murder. In ``Menage,'' he is a thief who again inflicts himself on total strangers and takes over their lives. The films are in the spirit of those screwball comedies of the 1930s, such as ``My Man Godfrey'' and ``The Thin Man.'' Timing is essential, quick enough to make audiences laugh, but not so fast that the story loses believability. And no matter how warped the humor gets, the actors have to play it straight. ``Each film is like a game,'' Blier explained. ``With each new movie you have to set your rules and you have to explain your rules to the public if you want them to be able to play with you.'' He admires American director Billy Wilder, who depended on actors such as Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau to hustle along the story. Blier says Depardieu is ideal for that kind of comedy because he's quicker than other actors. ``The entire movie just goes a lot faster,'' Blier said. ``Even in a love scene, everything goes very fast. The other actors, even the very good ones, they tend to listen to what they're saying, contemplate themselves. He doesn't do that.'' With ``Too Beautiful for You,'' imagine ``She-Devil'' with the husband abandoning Meryl Streep and running off with Roseanne Barr. Depardieu is a respectable upper-class family man who falls in love with his homely secretary (Josiane Balasko) while spurning his beautiful wife (Carole Bouquet). Blier noted that ``Too Beautiful for You'' was harder to shoot than his earlier films because there was less action and more emphasis on affairs of the heart. Deparidieu, reluctantly, had to slow down. ``Depardieu was feeling rather uneasy when they were shooting the movie because he was under the impression that he had nothing to do. He likes to act, he prefers to act. He's always looking at the women and doing nothing. When he wanted to do something, I said, `No, don't move, only look.''' Blier, the son of actor Bernard Blier, was born in 1939 in Paris. Through his father, Blier met French directors Henri-Georges Clouzot and Jacques Becker and soon decided he wanted to make films, too. ``I was 15, 16, and it came to my mind that that was the only profession for me,'' Blier said. ``It's the only profession where you take yourself for God, pretend you're God for a while.'' His first commandment remains ``Thou Shalt Be Insane,'' and no exceptions are allowed. One poor actor was even banished for signs of excessive normal behavior. ``The first scene of `Buffet Froid' was very difficult for me because I shot the scene with another actor, who was not Michel Serrault, and it was a disaster,'' Blier said. ``I called Michel Serrault and he came for two nights to shoot his scene. Only Michel Serrault was crazy enough for the beginning of this film. I can't work with actors who are not like that.''
