Screenwriter Kamen is taken with director Besson

"Luc is a huge fan of American cinema, but he sees film very much from a European perspective," Kamen explains. "If you watch a film like 'Taken,' it's very much of a hybrid between a French film and an American action movie. Our biggest debates come when Luc feels that everything in the story is implicit and it's not necessary to explain it, while I have the American point of view, which is that sometimes you have to very clearly go from A to B to C."

The two guys sound like they belong in a buddy picture, since Besson doesn't fit the Hollywood mold and Kamen is a fish out of water in France. They even have nicknames for each other, with Besson calling Kamen "Donkey" (because he chatters all the time) and Kamen calling Besson "Shrek" (because, as Kamen explains, "He's the fat guy").

With more action films in the works, including a sequel to "Taken" and an American version of "District 13," a popular 2004 French thriller that Besson produced, Kamen says he's never been happier.

"I get to work with the world's greatest filmmaker without ever worrying about being replaced," he says with an exuberance rarely heard from a screenwriter. "I feel like I died and went to writer's heaven, which is a place where you don't get rewritten and you can always get a three-star meal. It doesn't get any better than that."

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patrick.goldstein@latimes.com