Systematic psychosomatic reaction: in the weeks preceding a return to Montreal, a buxom red nail springs up on Dominic Sillon’s pif. But it’s not just for skin reasons that Dominic and Martin chose not to hold a media premiere for their new show.
Posted at 12:00 p.m.
Martin Cloutier admits to being a little worried about the upcoming interview. Above all, the comedian would not want to give the impression of being “an embittered old clown”. “Are we telling each other the truth? “Let’s go.
“There is no show that annoys me as much as a premiere, because it’s a show that can’t be done, that has no connection with the rest of the tour, he confides. Before a premiere, you are never happy. »
A show that cannot be? There is indeed nothing that resembles a so-called normal representation less than a media premiere, insofar as it is rare for a Thursday evening in Brossard to bring together in the same room more or less tired journalists, happy colleagues to be there even if their arms crossed send the opposite message, parents, spouses, children as well as sometimes Yvon Deschamps and Judi Richards.
Our team has been asked on our last three tours, “Do you really need us to premiere?” I think it’s the fantasy of many comedians not to do it.
Martin Cloutier
A fantasy that Dominic and Martin will finally realize with their sixth show, simply titled Six, which they have released for six months already and whose premiere would take place, in theory, in October. “Doing ads on TV, in the newspapers, inviting journalists, all of that was very important when we did our first show, underlines Dominic. Quotations were taken up everywhere in the region, it was in the promotion plan. But in 1999, there were no social networks. »
Hats off to the fools
Neither darlings nor scapegoats of cultural commentary, Dominic and Martin have generally garnered moderately rave reviews, but have rarely been praised or condemned.
A “beautiful common energy being combined with a text where ease is not the rule”, wrote the colleague Éric Clément in September 2013, a sentence summing up quite well the general tone of the articles describing for 25 years the stage work of veterans.
PHOTO OLIVIER JEAN, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Dominic and Martin on stage in July 2019
A rare exception: the day after a Just for Laughs gala, a scribe concluded in a somewhat peremptory fashion that “Dominic and Martin are not funny”, recalls Martin, inflamed for a brief moment. “OK my friend, call my bank manager, you’ll see, he won’t agree with you. But again, that wasn’t a review, it was just a complimentary comment. »
But does it happen, conversely, that the comrades recognize themselves entirely in a text? “It happened only once, answers Dominic. In Gatineau. What the reporter said about our numbers was exactly what motivated us to do them. It was like an analysis. He had understood the show too well! »
He also carefully remembers the title of a review of their first premiere, in Quebec: “It was written: ‘Chapeau, les niaiseux’. We thought it had to be positive. »
“The only criticism that tires me is the one that is itself a spectacle,” sums up Martin. I have sometimes felt like the straight man of some critics and I don’t need that. I’m Dominic’s straight man, that’s enough. »
Be part of the furniture
Probably because they belong to a tradition – the burlesque – having little to do with the currents running through current humor, and because they are, so to speak, part of the furniture, Dominic and Martin struggled, they admit, to attract a substantial number of media during their last premiere , in 2017. Total transparency: The Press had not attended.
We realize that we are no longer the little bulls of spring, that we are no longer the novelty. Last time, I think four media came. Why would we get nervous for weeks over so little interest?
Martin Cloutier
Although a first remains a significant rite of passage for some young comedians, Dominic Sillon, who teaches at the National School of Humor, finds that his students often already have their own fan base, built up through social networks, when ‘they lay their bottoms on the benches of the establishment. Criticism of a reference media is no longer the essential transmission belt for them that it once represented.
Martin insists: it is with the artificial context of the premiere that he and Dominic want to break. “A journalist could come and see our show at any time and review it, that’s part of the game. It happens in the region. I tell you: “You can come whenever you want, no problem, write what you think. The only thing is you won’t have a cocktail before.” »
Sixby Dominic and Martin, on tour throughout Quebec