French have nothing on US obession with fame -Veber

NEW YORK, Mar 13 (Reuters) French filmmaker Francis Veber, famed for his farcical comedies, says his native country's attitude toward celebrity is tame compared to America's current obsession.

Veber, 69, has lived in Los Angeles for the last 15 years, and his latest film ''The Valet'' offers a light-hearted look at the lives of France's rich and beautiful. It recently premiered in the United States and closed the Rendez-Vous French film series in New York on Sunday night.

New York Times critic Stephen Holden called it ''the closest a French movie comes to acknowledging the Britney-Anna Nicole syndrome, but it's treated as a comic blip on the radar of a more serious, intellectually engaged culture than America's tabloid sinkhole.'' Veber said America's focus on Anna Nicole Smith, the former Playboy model whose marriage to billionaire J Howard Marshall and death in February set off media storms, would never have occurred in France.

''We would never have had that in France, because nobody there is bigger than life,'' he recently told Reuters. ''But when Americans are bigger than life, they are really bigger than life.

''They (the media) over-treated that because the audience is asking for it.'' ''The Valet,'' one of France's 10 top grossing films last year, centers on the life of a married billionaire caught by paparazzi with his supermodel mistress. It will open across the United States next month.

Veber has helped cross French-American boundaries in writing and directing with international hits including 1978's ''La Cage Aux Folles,'' later made into a US hit ''The Birdcage,'' the 1986 film ''Les Fugitifs'' -- later made into the English-language ''Three Fugitives'' -- and ''Le Diner de Cons (The Dinner Game) in 1998.

He said the phenomenon of paparazzi and tabloid magazines made for an interesting film theme.

''People are now very scared. You can't have a mistress and be a rich man and be very famous and not be jeopardy because they are behind you all the time. It is harassment, you know.'' REUTERS DKA KP1043