Last week I was in Paris to do some filming for a documentary I currently work on. It went quite well except that we were unexpectedly asked to show filming permissions when we wanted to film in a bus and near Versailles Castle. Of course there was no time to get permissions. Anyway, these were minor annoyances we could cope with. Nevertheless I found that the bus driver as well as the police at the castle were enjoying their power a bit too much for my taste.

When we were heading back to Orly airport, we noticed on the platform at Versailles Rive Gauche station, that we had forgotten a bag with my colleagues passport at the counter where we had bought the train tickets. To enter the platform one has to pass a bar, in order to get to the counter I had to pass the bar. having to catch a train in order to catch a plain, I jumped over the bar and was immediately stopped by a “controleur”. The guy looked like a fat pig with a face I thought I had seen on Otto Dix painting before. I should have known what to expect of him.

I explained the situation, but the guy insisted on charging me 45€. I asked him to call the police so they could sort this out. He told me that calling the police would cost me another 35€. Within seconds 4 or five more “controlleurs” circumvented me. By the time my colleague walked back from the platform with all our luggage. She was still on the other side of the bar. I asked one of the “controlleurs”, a woman, to let her out.

After lengthy discussions and after one “controleur” screaming at me from within 2 inches from my nose, I decided that it wasn’t worth missing the plain and paid the 45€. When we wanted to get back on the platform the tickets did not work. When I asked them to let us on the platform, we were told that we had to get new tickets.

That was when I decided to call the police anyway. They arrived within 5 min and generally agreed with my point of view, but told me that they could not do anything, because they had to be “neutral”. I wonder what neutral means when they witness a crime. All they did was forcing the “controlleurs” to give me a card with an address where I could send a written complaint. I searched the web and it really seems like there is no email address or a phone number for that kind of complaint.

I must say that I feel sorry that this is the way things seem to work in a country where I have many friends and where I always liked to spend time. The sad thing is that I know that this did not happen because I had bad luck. It really is a mentality thing. Of course one will run into losers who get a kick out of randomly abusing power positions. But this was a situation with 8 officials (3 cops + 5 “controlleurs”). Not one of them had the balls to step up and solve a ridiculous situation. I honestly believe that there is something seriously rotten about the way officials act in France. Almost like robots that have no flexibility programmed in their system. When they get in a situation that differs from their simplistic template, the alternate program “aggression” is started. At some point we were actually told, that we should not come to France if we didn’t like the way they did things.

Of course this kind of behavior from official creates problems and more aggression. After this experience I can sympathize much better with the kids in the suburbs. If that is the attitude they have to deal with on a daily basis, why the fuck should they not go to war? I would.

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