With all due respect to other comedians cited in the same category, it would be an equal injustice to the time Steely Dan stole the Grammy for Album of the Year from Eminem in 2000 if Pierre-Yves Roy- Desmarais did not leave Sunday evening with the Olivier for the comedy number of the year. And yet, this number almost never saw the light of day.
Posted at 6:00 a.m.
At the end of September 2020, the Quebec government announced the closure of performance halls. Carte blanche Just for Laughs evenings planned for October should therefore be captured in front of empty seats. A crowd and canned laughter would be added to the edit. The kind of deception that had everything to annoy Pierre-Yves Roy-Desmarais.
“My first reaction was to no longer want to do it,” recalls the man who was among the guests of Pier-Luc Funk and Phil Roy’s show. “Then, thinking about it, I thought I could create a number about the fact that there is no one in the room. »
This is the gently subversive idea of There is nobody, almost six minutes of jokes (and kicks!) inspired by the vast subject of incommunicability, which Roy-Desmarais delivers with the energy of the marsupilami, feigning interactions with an audience which, as he highlights repeatedly, does not exist. Andy Kaufman would have been proud.
“My agent proposed the idea to Just for Laughs, who didn’t want to know. I sent a text to show them what I had in mind and they replied, and I quote: “You have to think of Thérèse of Trois-Rivières.” According to them, it was too much space potato for her. Parenthesis: “space potato” is a favorite expression of the director and friend of Pierre-Yves, Guillaume Girard. It designates something strange, ethereal, sibylline.
You had to think of Thérèse of Trois-Rivières, then. Pierre-Yves Roy-Desmarais was revolted, for several reasons.
Of course, if you imagine that Thérèse is silly, she won’t understand. But I’m pretty sure Therese is less silly than you imagine. And then why should you only speak to Thérèse of Trois-Rivières? Why don’t we also talk to Kevin from Terrebonne? Let’s say it was a pretty spicy discussion.
Pierre-Yves Roy-Desmarais
Compromise: Pierre-Yves Roy-Desmarais suggests to Juste pour rire to present the number to them, in rehearsal, the same day of the shooting. “And then they flipped over. »
like magic
This anecdote reveals the conservatism that still strangles the world of humor, but also the way that Pierre-Yves Roy-Desmarais has of considering the stage as a space that should not suffer any constraint.
Cited in three other categories at 23and Les Olivier gala (capsule or humorous web sketch of the year, discovery of the year and Olivier of the year), the big guy of 27 years is undeniably one of the most prominent comedians of his generation. His first show Jokes Hat Mom Magic Piano, aroused the same enthusiasm among the public as among the critics. But Pierre-Yves Roy-Desmarais, both in his influences (Les Denis Drolet, Les Chick’n Swell, Les Trois Accords) and in the style of humor he practises, has little in common with the storytellers who flourish in theaters across the province.
PHOTO SARAH MONGEAU-BIRKETT, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Pierre-Yves Roy-Desmarais, in October 2021, during the Montreal premiere of Jokes Hat Mom Magic Piano
“There are people who tell me that I do absurd humor, but since all my idols do pure absurd humor, I consider humor to be as popular, in the sense of as accessible. . »
Absurd or not, Pierre-Yves Roy-Desmarais is certainly a formalist, who arouses the majority of his laughs by overturning the codes and thwarting the expectations of his spectators, whom he often lures with the help of a familiar premise, quickly followed by a perfectly unpredictable punch.
And if we lose sight of the fact that several of his gags are often meta-gags pointing out the tricks of the humorous medium itself, a proposal in theory quite nested, it is undoubtedly thanks to his friendly face of eternal kid . Where absurd humor is sometimes animated by a dull anger or by a propensity for over-intellectualization, each of Pierre-Yves’ presences in the spotlight is a party, during which the entertainer avails himself of all the toys at his disposal, a a rare posture in a comic universe which, for the past twenty years, has valued the purity of American stand-up.
“I have the impression that humor is like a magic trick: I make you believe that the action is happening here, but in reality, it is happening there,” he explains, miming the thing with his hands.
That’s why I find it boring when people tell me that true humor is to make people laugh just with words and a glass of water. I have a huge stage, why would I have to step on a tile one foot at a time? It’s fun to exploit the entire medium: to make people laugh with my face, with the light, the music.
Pierre-Yves Roy-Desmarais
Pierre-Yves Roy-Desmarais thus intends to continue to evade any attempt at formatting, while hoping to dismantle the still stubborn prejudices that stick to the humor industry. We point out to him that he seems to be making fun, in his number There is nobody, catchphrases used by some of his colleagues when interacting with the public – commonly known as crowd work.
“What I don’t like about a certain type of crowd work, it’s when it’s just a launching pad to spank the world, which we see a lot in comedy evenings. Well, that freaks me out. It has been said a lot that the School of Humor molds comedians, but comedy evenings are a hundred times worse! It’s always the same dude talking about the same thing. I am convinced that there are plenty of people who are interested in culture, but who think they don’t like humor, who could be interested in it if they were presented with something other than that more often. »
The Les Olivier gala is broadcast on ICI Télé on Sunday at 8 p.m.