Guillaume Marbeck knew he needed the sunglasses.
He was running late for his audition to play Jean-Luc Godard in a Richard Linklater movie about the making of the French auteur’s seminal 1960 film Breathless, but he knew that he couldn’t attempt to play Godard without the filmmaker’s omnipresent eyewear. His friend, an optometrist, offered to let him borrow a pair that could double for Godard’s signature frames. But a pipe had burst in the optometrist’s apartment, setting Marbeck’s whole day behind.
By the time he made it to what was supposed to be a 10 a.m. audition, sunglasses firmly on his face, he recalls, “I got out of the elevator and I saw like 15 people looking at me like, ‘Who is this guy?’ The producer, Michèle Pétin, she told me, ‘You’re late!’ In my head, it went like, ‘What