An editor is seeking to persuade a producer to mount a joint project. They have thirty minutes to say whether or not they will meet again.
From a distance, the scene resembles a romantic encounter. Two people face each other and try to win each other over in a few minutes — what is commonly called, in everyday French, speed dating. Here, the stakes are not sentimental.
An investigation describes a ritual that has become permanent between publishing and production: brief face-to-face meetings in which one must convince, or give up, even before having truly begun to work together.
Nothing in this setup guarantees that a book will become a film. It organizes only the first cut: meet again, or move on to the next.
The parallel with seduction stops at the form. Time is limited, judgment is immediate, and the decision whether or not to continue is made in the same narrow window as a first date.