[Jean-Jacques] Raspaud, who has found himself tasked by you with keeping me informed of your contacts with [Jean-Pierre] Rassam, contracted on the initiative of [Gerard] Lebovici for the shooting of the [Society of the] Spectacle, yesterday revealed to me a new aspect of your activities that I certainly can not let pass. In entering into with you, eighteen months ago, a verbal accord -- which, for my part, is more valuable than any contract that might be juridically recorded, and which, moreover, does not fail to include the same conditions -- for the production or co-production of this film, I clearly warned you that, unlike you, I am hardly pressed for time; and even less preoccupied by the details of money problems and the profits that would not fail to be derived from this cinematographic realization. But, on the other hand, the manner in which I have conducted myself, on the cinematographic terrain as elsewhere, must be rigorously respected and served. Those were my conditions,[1] and you must know quite well that you can not be anything in this affair if you do not meet my conditions.
In other words, to pick up a famous quotation, producers are judged "as much by what they produce as by the manner in which they produce it."
When you and Raspaud conversed with Rassam, a month or six weeks ago, I believe, this person expressed to you, in disagreeable terms, the pretension of meeting me. This poor Rassam, even if it happens that he sometimes has a little money between two Godardist failures or the resale of a stock of Moroccoan rugs bought from Customs, can certainly not believe that he can buy the right to associate with me. And as for as the professional aspect of the question, one doesn't see why you have been paid with a large percentage of the [future] profits from my film, if it wasn't exactly for me to avoid the unpleasantness of personally meeting with individuals of this kind. This imbecile, it seems, has played before you the role of "practical man," nay, a competent reader of Machiavelli. He has not feared to say that there is some "timidity" on my part for refusing to see him; him as well as a thousand other mediocrities that I flatter myself with knowing to trample on in five minutes, either with words or other means. Raspaud has fortunately reacted with a certain but still insufficient severity to this odious sophistry. But you, for you part, remain soft. You seem to want to reserve your demands and cries of the heart for those who treat you well. But he who doesn't know how to respond to his adversaries will not have friends.
I have learned only yesterday a more unpardonable fact, and that you didn't tell Raspaud for many weeks. Some time after the meeting evoked above, when this same Rassam fixed with you and Raspaud a meeting at a cafe, at which you waited for him for twenty minutes, you finally went to find his secretary. At that moment, you knowingly let it be believed by the one who tried to reach Rassam by telephone that I too was waiting in the cafe for this cunt.
If one of the interchangeable Rassams still have to learn who I can be, it is at present quite clear that they will not learn it from your intervention. And you, who must know and have very unfortunately forgotten, it is obviously impossible that you can represent me henceforth in any kind of affair.
The agreement that we had on the cinematographic plane is thus henceforth null and void.
Quite sincerely,[1] See Debord's letter to Voyer dated 21 June 1972.
(Published in Guy Debord, Correspondance, Volume 4, 1969-1972. Translated from the French and footnoted by NOT BORED! July 2005.)