Pass the Popcorn: Is It Ever Okay to Steal? For Artists, It Might Be Essential

November 6th, 2025

Is it ever okay to steal? It is if you’re an artist. In fact, it’s encouraged.

Hello, this is Christine Burright, graduate of the UNO MFA in screenwriting program, filmmaker and aspiring TV writer, for Pass the Popcorn for KVNO’s Arts Today.

Back in August, I talked about my love for French New Wave film and the lengths to which that love has taken me — most specifically, a 35-page Master’s thesis.

Understanding that your love may not be as, let’s say, comprehensive as mine, I suggested you cut short your own research into the film genre and go straight to viewing Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless on kanopy.com.

If you checked it out, or even if you didn’t, a new stop on the French New Wave train is arriving November 14th on Netflix.

Nouvelle Vague, or New Wave in French, is the latest film from American master director Richard Linklater. The film is described as a playful, poignant love letter to cinema that reimagines the making of the revolutionary classic Breathless.

Starring Guillaume Marbeck as Jean-Luc Godard, Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg, and Aubry Dullin as Jean-Paul Belmondo, the movie follows the inception and filming of Breathless in 1959. It’s a look at everything that technically went wrong during filming — and how that, in turn, led to one of the most influential cinematic works of all time.

While certainly less experimental and audacious than Breathless, Nouvelle Vague still manages to surprise with its all-out dedication to recreating the magic of late 1950s French filmmaking.

Linklater ensured the movie was shot on black-and-white film with the same Cameflex camera model as the original. And according to cinematographer David Chambille, Linklater asked him to find the reverse angle of what Godard and his cinematographer Raoul Coutard would have been aiming at — and film that.

Linklater also made use of many of the same techniques as Godard, including shooting in the same locations, using jump-cut edits, and embracing loose, spontaneous camerawork.

You could almost say that Linklater is stealing from Godard — which is kind of the whole idea.

At one point in the film, the characterized version of Godard quotes T. S. Eliot, telling the characterized version of Jean Seberg, “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.”

The British Film Institute once called Godard “one of the first great magpies of film history.” Godard stole from Jean Cocteau. Linklater stole from Godard. And somewhere out there, a filmmaker is probably stealing from Linklater.

After all, influence and homage are part of what defines great art. Every act of creation stands on the shoulders of what came before.

Nouvelle Vague is without a doubt a work of art. And aside from being spectacular to watch, what really stands out is the joy and humor threaded throughout. As the fraught 20-day shoot of Breathless unfolds, the cast and crew find a rhythm in Godard’s unconventional style and even glimpse the dry wit behind those iconic sunglasses.

It’s a reminder that great art, while serious in craft, can also be great fun.