Screenwriter Kamen is taken with director Besson

The relationship's one hiccup -- to use the Hollywood expression -- came in the late '90s when Besson called Kamen to work on a project and Kamen declined, saying he was too busy. Besson refused to speak to him for the next 18 months. Then Besson telephoned Kamen, saying he was coming to New York the next morning and wanted to have breakfast. It was the spring of 2001. At breakfast, Besson explained his wild plan: He would make a series of $20-million action films. After the pictures became hits, Besson could buy film libraries, generate the cash flow needed to build a business, go public and launch his own studio. Oh, and of course Kamen would write all the movies with him.

The stony 18-month silence was never mentioned. "Of course, I asked Luc to apologize and he refused. I kept after him and finally he gave me this look that clearly was meant to show his lack of interest in this discussion, and he shrugged and said, 'OK, I apologize. Now can we get back to work?' And that was as close to an apology as I ever got." In Bessonland, everything happens fast. He told Kamen they were flying to L.A. that night. Kamen packed a bag, they constructed an idea for a film on the plane ride, took a taxi to 20th Century Fox, where they met with Jet Li, pitched him the idea and he said yes. Five months later they were in production on "Kiss of the Dragon."

So how do this odd couple collaborate? Kamen explains: "Luc thinks up about eight film ideas every day. Some are great; some are horrible. He sees all these images in his head, so when we sit down, I'll say, 'I like this one,' and we lie around the house -- or the hotel room -- and he dreams up these amazing images and I try to bring some structure to the story while we think up the characters and who they are and what they do -- their arc, so to speak. Then I go away and write."

Besson often insists that Kamen read him the script aloud. "He's like a big child -- he likes to be read to. But when he sees a movie, he doesn't see the words, he sees the images. When I read him the script, he'll be writing down the angles and cuts and camera movements that are all in his head and suddenly he's turned it into a movie."

Sometimes Kamen is a translator, fixing a line of dialogue or a joke that wouldn't play in America. But more often he's finding ways to create a story that is linear enough to be understandable here, where audiences expect more narrative logic than do European moviegoers.