I walked across Broadway south to Sixth, a walk I’d done many times in the past. On Sixth, I passed the beat-up doors of the old fortune teller, now shuttered. I was on my way to that dank oasis in the middle of the concrete depths, Cole’s, the disputed French dip originator and pre-Prohibition bar that nourished countless L.A. workers, politicians, mobsters, poets, and artists alike.

I intended to write about Jean-Luc Godard. He died on September 19th. The legendary cineaste was the last of the French New Wave (or nouvelle vague) founding fathers to punch the clock, following François Truffaut, d. 1984, Claude Chabrol, d. 2010, Éric Rohmer, d. 2010, and Jacques Rivette, d. 2016. His demise took me back to my early 20s when being cool was all that mattered and being cool meant Jean-Luc Godard...