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Editor's note: While in the process of researching the influence of the European avant-garde on mainstream filmmaking in Hollywood in the 1970's, '80's, and '90's, I came across the following correspondence stored in an old breadbox in the basement of a home once owned by Antonin Artaud's sister Isabelle in St. Cloud, a suburb of Paris, France. I have taken the liberty of editing some of Artaud's letters as they were frequently extremely long. The replies from Mr. Spielberg I have left precisely as they were originally written. --P.M. New York/Orlando/Paris 1995 |
 NTONIN ARTAUD (b. 1896) was a key figure in the French avant-garde, best
known for his influential concept of "The Theater of Cruelty," as well as
the surrealist short play "The Jet of Blood." Artaud was plagued over the
course of his life by a number of debilitating physical and mental ailments
including meningitis, severe headaches, neurological pains, and drug
addiction. Indeed, many of the leading artists in the surrealist movement
at the time, with whom he often was bitterly divided, considered him
psychotic. Artaud was hospitalized in 1937 after a psychological breakdown.
He was confined to asylums until his death in 1948. The following letters
constitute the artist's only known post-mortem correspondence with the
Hollywood power elite.
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 TEVEN SPIELBERG is a film director, producer and one of the principals in
the SKG Dreamworks studio in Hollywood, California. His directing credits
include the films E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Close Encounters of the
Third Kind, Jurassic Park, Hook, Jaws, and Schindler's List (for which he
won the Academy Award in 1994). He resides in Pacific Palisades,
California and New York City.
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