At the helm of Good morning, a coffee?popular t showmorning television, Charles “Chuck” Bélanger (Nicolas Pinson) sees his destiny change after being literally caught with his pants down by the police one day after. Dumped by his girlfriend (Nathalie Doummar), his agent (Marilyn Castonguay), his sponsors, his admirers, Chuck is then approached by Marie Chagnon (Chantal Fontaine), a doctor who runs a recovery house for people suffering from various addictions. .
However, despite the scandal that shook all of Quebec, Chuck, a good guy who likes to party, refuses to believe that he has a problem with alcohol and cocaine consumption.
“ good morning chuckit’s a series on the addiction of ordinary people that deals with a heavy subject with humor and benevolence in a resolutely modern tone”, sums up Sophie Parizeau, general director of fiction at Bell Media.
There was a lot of emotion in the air at the Cinémathèque québécoise on Wednesday morning at the screening of the first two episodes of Good morning Chuck (or the art of harm reduction), a series of 10 60-minute episodes selected in official competition at Canneseries last April. It must be said that the subject closely affected some of the artists and artisans of this series produced by Lou Bélanger, Marieme Ndiaye and Rafael Perez of St-Laurent TV, in collaboration with Bell Media, Connect3 (Pablo Salzman) and Cineflix Media, international distributor.
“It resonated for people in the castin production, in distribution, for Jean-François [Rivard] and Matthew [Cyr]. We all have our stories of substance abuse and addictions. I managed to get out of it, but I worked very hard. I started laughing at myself when I realized who I was. I wanted to de-stigmatize addiction because it is scary and it hurts and we don’t know how to approach it, ”says Nicolas Pinson, who wrote the series in collaboration with screenwriters Émilie Lemay-Perreault, Patrick Dupuis and Sarianne Cormier.
Noting that his anecdotes made his friends “cry”, the actor then told them to director Mathieu Cyr in the hope of making a web series out of them. After having shot a demo, both presented it to Jean-François Rivard, who did not hesitate to embark on the project and to propose it to Crave. “It was his talent that brought me there”, says the director of That’s how I love you watching Cyr, with whom he shared the direction of episodes of good morning chuck.
In the white of the eyes
Filmed mainly in Sherbrooke in order to uproot the central character, the series immediately surprises with its black and white images. “The essence of an actor is in black and white that you see it, believes Jean-François Rivard. I felt that it had to be shot in black and white in order to create the filter that settles between a person who drinks a lot and the others. In a house where everyone suffers from drug addiction, no matter who you are, your social class, your environment, there is no forgiveness: everyone is the same and has the same symptoms. This black and white filter united all of our characters. »
It resonated for people in the casting, in the production, in the distribution, for Jean-François [Rivard] and Matthew [Cyr]. We all have our stories of substance abuse and addictions. I managed to get out of it, but I worked very hard. I started laughing at myself when I realized who I was. I wanted to de-stigmatize addiction because it’s scary and it hurts and you don’t know how to deal with it.
” It’s a show looks, continues Mathieu Cyr. It’s not always what the character says that is important, but what we see in the eyes of the other who is listening. I also found that the black and white brought out the lines of the house, the night scenes. For me, black and white means going back to basics… even if Nicolas has beautiful blue eyes. »
” This show-there, I wrote it from a single point of view, explains Rivard. It’s just Chuck leading us to understand what’s going on, like in a show of detective. So Nicolas is in almost every scene. Seeing my friend so talented, the connection and the complicity that we had, I discovered an actor with whom I want to work all the time. »
Injured child
In addition to his black and white images inspired in particular by Repulsion by Roman Polanski good morning chuck amazes with its animation segments featuring a small dragon. reminiscences of Invincible ? rather than It’s the big pumpkinCharlie Brown that Jean-François Rivard’s daughter watched as the series developed.
“Hearing the jazz music, I said to myself that Chuck was Charlie Brown, remembers the director. I was therefore inspired by driver series. Then I came across one of my favorite Lee Hazlewood pieces, First Street Blues, in which he tells the story of Leeroy, a little dragon that nobody understands, who gets shocked, who tries to destroy and who falls into the drink, which he ends up preferring to people. This Leeroy represents Chuck’s injured child because the traumas and the unsettled things that lead us to use are often linked to childhood. »
“It’s also a nod to Grisou, the little dragon who wanted to be a firefighter and who wanted to do so well, adds Nicolas Pinson. When you want to stop using, you want to do so well, you want to do no harm so much, but in the end, when you get the keys to the city, you’re setting fire to the village because you’re so emotional. »
Speaking of the end, what fate awaits Chuck, Dr. Chagnon, the intervener Gilles (Bernard Fortin) and the residents of the house, Lionel (Sylvain Marcel), Nathalie (Amélie B. Simard), Joël (Hugo Dubé), Thalia (Lyna Khellef) and Suzanne (Claire Jacques, whom we have never seen so moving)?
“There is potential for a sequel, but as I did for all three seasons of Invincible, in the last episode, I’m still working so that there’s a sense of conclusion. I don’t want to end up with a cliffhanger in case the series does not return because it seems that it is sad and not respectful, ”concludes Jean-François Rivard.