Debbie Harry and Robert Fripp wanted to remake Jean-Luc Godard film ‘Alphaville’
Blondie’s Debbie Harry is an artist who managed to make a (somewhat) successful transition from recording and performing music to the world of cinema. Her first leading role came in 1980 in Union City, and three years later, she took on a standout role in David Cronenberg’s iconic body horror Videodrome.
However, it appears that acting in films was not the only part of cinema that Harry had an interest in. In fact, she once tried to remake Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville with none other than King Crimson’s Robert Fripp. In 1979, Harry and her partner and bandmate, Chris Stein, were interested in Godard’s movies and thought that Fripp would be perfect for a role in a remake of his 1965 film.
Attached to the project was Amos Poe on directing duties. Poe had been an underground New York filmmaker in the 1970s and had worked with Harry previously on The Foreigner. In 2000, Fripp had written retrospectively about the project. stating: “In 1978, Amos Poe was to direct the remake of Godard’s Alphaville starring Debbie Harry as Natasha von Braun, Anna Karina in the original film. The detective Lemmy Caution was originally played by Eddie Constantine. For the remake, Debbie’s co-star was to be – wait for this one – an English guitarist almost universally disliked by his former band buddies. The film was never made, but the stills from his screen test were fabbo to the max. One of them even appeared on the front page of Melody Maker in December 1978.”
Alphaville is Godard’s 1965 new wave science fiction neo-noir film that scooped the Golden Bear award at the Berlin International Film Festival that same year. The film follows the secret agent Lemmy Caution, who is sent to the titular space city to find a missing person and emancipate the city’s populace from its tyrant of a leader.
While the film explores the themes of science fiction, Godard did not use any futuristic props or sets but rather shot entirely in real locations of Paris to portray the fictional city. Caution himself is an invention of the crime novelist Peter Cheyney, and Eddie Constantine had portrayed him on several prior occasions. In Alphaville, though, Caution is taken away from his usual domestic setting and sent into the outer reaches of space.
Despite their interest, it appears that Godard himself had been highly critical of the prospective remake and persuaded Harry, Amos and Fripp not to make the film. The book With William Burroughs by Victor Bockris reads: “Debbie recalled that when she and Chris met Godard to discuss remaking Alphaville he had pretended that he could not speak English and said through an interpreter, ‘Why do you want to do this movie? You’re crazy!’” So we’ll never know precisely how it might have wound up.
