It’s impossible to miss Josée Boileau as she seems to possess the gift of ubiquity, at least on the media level. Not only can we read his political and social analyzes in the magazine Newsbut her passion for reading transformed her into a literary columnist for The Montreal Journal. This is without counting his participation in various programs on ICI Radio-Canada Première. All this is interspersed with periods of writing on subjects that are close to his heart, such as journalism (Letters to a young journalistVLB publisher, 2016), the state of contemporary Quebec (I made the most beautiful trip againSomme tout, 2019), but also on tragic events that continue to upset her, such as the Polytechnique massacre on December 6, 1989 (That day. Because they were womenÉditions La Presse, 2019).
The loyal readers of Duty remember her very well. His career, spanning four decades, merges with the trajectory of this newspaper, and took place in two stages. After a first visit to Duty from 1989 to 1993 as a journalist, she returned to the fold in 2001 until 2016, successively occupying the positions of editorialist, director of information, and finally editor-in-chief.
It was in her house that she was kind enough to receive The duty for a lively exchange, punctuated by laughter and anecdotes, all enhanced by the bows of Janette, a cat as beautiful as she is mischievous. And visibly jealous in the face of the cumbersome presence of the two intruders from this newspaper!
If you had to define yourself as movie buff, what would you say?
I would call myself a patriotic film buff! My priority remains Quebec cinema, because if we don’t encourage it, it’s not the Americans, the French or the Belgians who will. It’s fundamental for me to go see as much as possible, and in a cinema. Especially since the vast majority of filmmakers design their films to be seen on the big screen; I want to respect this approach. In recent months, I have had a huge crush on Humanist vampire cconsenting suicidal herche [d’Ariane Louis-Seize, 2023]which made me laugh a lot, as well as for Richelieu [de Pier-Philippe Chevigny, 2023]. This filmmaker presents us with a very complex situation without falling into Machiavellianism, and the actors are fantastic. I also really like Quebec television series.
You have already written in one of your columns in News, and with a certain regret: “In my community, we “trip” on Netflix or HBO, not on Noovo! »
We may demand regulation for all the Netflixes of this world, but the primary responsibility of citizens is to encourage their own productions. When we ask Quebec writers what works they prefer, they are often American works. And in their novels, I can no longer count the number of times they quote American songs. It infuriates me!
Do you find pleasure, or perhaps a certain embarrassment, in seeing films or series that take place in the journalistic environment?
During the broadcast of Scoop [1992-1995], I was already a journalist, and I knew full well that it was less exciting than this series. Besides, it wasn’t films about journalism that inspired me to do this job. I grew up in a family where we read a lot of magazines, a lot of newspapers — except The duty, too intellectual compared to my environment! -, and in The Press, my idols were Lysiane Gagnon and Marc Laurendeau. I loved their analyses, but would a filmmaker dare to make a film about a journalist who writes analyses? What I was passionate about was reality, and my idols were firmly rooted in reality.
Do you still feel that certain films succeed in capturing part of journalistic reality?
I was a television researcher for a live broadcast, and live television is extraordinary, even more so than radio. This is why I have a particular affection for Broadcast News [de James L. Brooks, 1987], although that might be a bit of an exaggeration. I remember a guest I pushed — literally! — in the corridor 30 seconds before going on the air because he was the first, and late! Another film that seems to me to fit well with television journalism is inspired by the true journey of a war correspondent [Kim Barker] in Afghanistan,Whiskey Tango Foxtrot [de Glenn Ficarra et John Requa, 2016]. She is played by Tina Fey, and very well embodies the adrenaline necessary to accomplish this kind of cover, as well as the casualness: during the day she works under the bombs, and in the evening, she parties in a nightclub to get rid of this immense stress.
Your relative interest in films featuring journalists is perhaps due to your in-depth knowledge of the sector, as well as your desire to make cinema “an escape”?
For all kinds of reasons, and because the environment is constantly changing, I always find that these films poorly reflect our reality. I think it’s kind of the same for people in all professions. My father was a police officer, he loved detective stories, but he never stopped saying how it had nothing to do with his work and that of his colleagues. My daughter is a lawyer, and I talked to her about the wonderful sequence shot at the beginning of the Red rooms [de Pascal Plante, 2023] in a court of law, Goldman trial [de Cédric Kahn, 2023] orAnatomy of a fall [de Justine Triet, 2023], that doesn’t interest him. And she sees everything that doesn’t work in relation to reality.
But for neophytes, fiction can become magnificent gateways to worlds to which we would not otherwise have access.
This is why I love sociopolitical films. For example, I knew a young Chilean who wanted to settle here and who needed to make money. He found himself in chicken factories or picking carrots: before that, I had no idea of the working conditions in these environments. So, when I read Sarah R. Champagne’s reports in The duty to then watch a film like Richelieu [sur le quotidien harassant de travailleurs immigrants temporaires latino-américains dans une usine à travers le regard d’une Québécoise dont le père est d’origine guatémaltèque], it corroborates everything I know. I also think of a very eloquent image in Ru [de Charles Olivier-Michaud, 2023] where we see a shot of… Phentex slippers! It’s all there: Quebec culture and family, the 1970s, the integration process, etc. No need for a single line of dialogue, we understand everything; these moments demonstrate the power of cinema.
You write literary columns in The Montreal Journal. Are you a fan of film adaptations of novels?
Short answer: no! I am the mother of four children, I have read the series of Harry Potter, we have all the movies at home… and I haven’t watched a single one! The rare extracts seen in advertisements showed me characters that I had not at all imagined in this way. Among the rare films inspired by novels that I liked, there is The name of the rose [de Jean-Jacques Annaud, 1986]where the characters correspond well to those of Umberto Eco’s novel, and Carrie [de Brian De Palma, 1976]a brilliant film about adolescence that I have watched several times, right up there with Stephen King’s novel.