Screenwriter and playwright Réjean Tremblay, who worked for decades with Jean-Claude Lord, paid tribute to a filmmaker close to the people who was “ahead of his time”.
• Read also: Filmmaker Jean-Claude Lord has passed away
“What I wish with all my heart, but with all my heart; Jean-Claude, because of his way of being as a man, of being a little rebellious and wild, I find that he never had the recognition and the merit that should have been his,” said Mr. Tremblay in a telephone interview with the QMI Agency on Sunday, following the announcement of the director’s death at the age of 78.
The two men had met for the last time on October 22 in Montreal, in the company of producer Jean-Guy Després, said the screenwriter, who had then found his longtime sidekick “tired”.
It must be said that the two men have collaborated for a long time since the very first season of the series “Lance et compte”, which had revolutionized the television environment when it arrived in the homes of Quebecers in 1986.
“If he hadn’t been there, I don’t know if we would have had the revolution we did. Me, it was my first real dramatic scenario. Do you think I got there with infused science? It was Jean-Claude Lord who summed it all up for me in one sentence: “I don’t want you to tell me, I want you to show it to me,” said Réjean Tremblay gratefully.
The screenwriter who was then taking his first steps on television “learned on the job” thanks to Jean-Claude Lord. “I loved it. He was passionate. I knew where he was going. For an author who was just starting out, it was ideal.”
Open-mindedness
Mr. Tremblay praised his friend’s open-mindedness, who did not hesitate to break codes and tackle subjects that were off the beaten track.
“He was so ahead of his time. It was he who convinced me that Pierre Lambert, the good hero from Trois-Rivières, who played in Quebec, fell in love with a Haitian in the conservative hockey community. [En 1985], it was audacious on the part of Jean-Claude”, detailed the screenwriter, referring to the main character of his flagship series.
“He has always written, directed, worked for the people, for the ordinary world. He never worked for the elites. […] Moreover, he was clumsy with technocrats, because it revolted him,” added Réjean Tremblay, describing Jean-Claude Lord’s cinema as “open to the world, to the people”.