We used to say that with ten clowns you could take over the city. It was Paris, the 80s, when for some reason a handful of artists came together, painters, writers, magicians, clowns, and created a new Golden Age, an artistic movement centered around the street theater scene in Beaubourg and Saint Germain des Pres. Later, the clowns would become the lead acts in Cirque du Soleil, so high was the level of talent, and I would end up writing screenplays with Roman Polanski and making films. But this was before any of us were known, when we were still struggling on the razor's edge of meaning and purpose, when the magic was still around every corner."