Released on screens 20 years ago, Gas Bar Blues joins the growing body of beloved Quebec films finding new life on stage. For David Laurin, co-artistic director at Duceppe, who signs the adaptation, the beautiful film by Louis Bélanger marked a transition in local cinema, showing the father figure in a different light. “We were used to seeing an absent, violent father, the man of few words who does not help to solve problems. So this sensitive homage to the father was a kind of UFO, and it produced babies. I feel like he took a generation of directors somewhere else. »
Inspired by the filmmaker’s childhood memories in Limoilou, this personal story “achieves something so simple and universal that it affects everyone”, judges Martin Drainville. The actor plays the owner of a gas station weakened by Parkinson’s disease who, in 1989, struggles to keep the family business alive, threatened by the arrival of self-service, while his children caress other dreams than to work there. “For me, it’s also about the difficulty of simply saying ‘I love you’. Especially in male relationships. I think Louis Bélanger, rather than telling his father, he made a film. It’s a lot of work, telling our fathers that we love them. »
It is also this paternal role that has drawn Drainville into the play. He completely understands his character’s concerns. “Me, I define myself a lot as a father, more than as an actor, even. And despite the somewhat crooked side of François Brochu, we can not doubt his sincerity in wanting to offer a better fate to his children. »
[Cette histoire] achieved something so simple and universal that it affects everyone. For me, it’s also about the difficulty of simply saying “I love you”. Especially in male relationships. I think Louis Bélanger, rather than telling his father, he made a film. It’s a lot of work, telling our fathers that we love them.
And we talk about a generation of men often marked by modesty, ill at ease expressing themselves, and by a complex in front of their more educated children, because they allowed themselves to be “fooled” by the vocabulary of the latter, a vocabulary they themselves lacked, says Martin Drainville, who saw it with his own father. The actor likes Gas Bar Blues gives a voice to people “who are not good at speaking”, whereas we now live in a “Facebookian world” which favors image, where, “whether in politics or in business, competence is to make people believe that they are competent”.
What makes this story interesting, for him, is also the period in which it takes place, the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a time of great upheaval. “The whole communist bloc is falling. It’s the end of a world. And a wall also falls gas bar. The characters don’t realize it, but that world can no longer exist, because it can no longer be economically viable. And 30 years later, we see it. As far as businesses are concerned, it’s Amazon, online commerce… ”A phenomenon which has accelerated with the pandemic.
The show, which will travel across Quebec, pays tribute to small neighborhood businesses on a human scale. At a service station around which gravitates a whole community of regulars. ” The gas bar, its function was to sell gasoline, but it was even more than that. There was a very simple human contact. »
Musical adaptation
By transposing Gas Bar Blues, David Laurin wanted to preserve the heart of the work and keep as many elements as possible. “I also wanted, as the film is largely autobiographical, to be extremely respectful of the truth. »
Even if the director Louis Bélanger, very open, gave him carte blanche, the adapter submitted each version of his text to him. “For the record, the guys in Louis’ family were happy with the film. But his sisters and his mother asked him: “Why did you erase us?” Louis still feels bad about that today. But he made them understand that it was to serve the work, that he was more touching [de voir] a single father, caught having to let his children go and close his business, only with a woman by his side to help him through it and very responsible daughters. »
In addition to the reduction in the number of scenes, necessary for the theatre, the main change is also the creation of a female character, the fusion of two figures from the film: the eldest daughter and the youngest son, the filmmaker’s observing alter ego. The story is told through the point of view of this teenager.
However, the transposition posed a central question, according to Laurin: what would encourage the public to come to the theater since the film “is already exceptional”? Answer: creating an event around it. “The viewer has to experience something special. Propose something else, but respecting the work. And it is through the music, already very important in the feature film directed by the brother of the harmonicist Guy Bélanger, that the experience will pass. The production directed by Édith Patenaude has recruited performers who master an instrument, who will play live on stage an original score – without songs – composed by double bassist Mathieu Désy.
“This is where we differ from the film: we are in the soundtrack, notes Martin Drainville. It will be more and more of a challenge to attract someone to a venue, especially after the pandemic. “But the actor, who says he does not believe in the digital shift in theater, feels that this experience of seeing a work in communion with others has been missed by people. “Our senses are more challenged in a room. The vibration of show, from the public, it’s unique. And the music brings that. That’s how we’re going to bring people back into the theatres: by making them experience sensations. »
According to the actor, this framework of blues serves as support. “Sometimes when the character has no words to say, the music takes over. And she is omnipresent in the show. I don’t play any instrument, but I’m immersed in it. It’s like a wave, the room becomes the surfboard and it carries us. »
Comparison ?
In François Brochu, the interpreter inherits a very endearing character, a male figure “a little rough, a bit clumsy, but benevolent”. To compose it, “I use what I am, the fathers I have seen. And probably that, without knowing it, Serge Thériault influences me a little. The obstacle of this role is the possible comparison. Serge Thériault was extraordinary”.
Thanks to his fair and moving interpretation, we had rediscovered the actor, then very associated with Môman, in The little life. In an interview given to To have to in 2003, before the launch of the film at the opening of the World Film Festival, Louis Bélanger had explained his choice of Serge Thériault to play the protagonist of Gas Bar Blues — a work that includes humour: “I find that actors labeled funny are always good in drama. »
Martin Drainville, long identified with comic roles, has also seen the perception of others change in recent years, thanks in particular to his acting in The Hardings by Alexia Bürger or in the TV series Fragile by Serge Boucher. “The first role that we play and that people notice, sometimes we play it for a very long time, except that it changes its name…, he says with irony. That said, I deeply love comedy. To make people laugh, you have to be real. And for me, doing drama or comedy is the same thing. Comedies are often dramas for the characters living them. »
The interpreter of the new version of brew “take advantage” of this splendor period, where the range of roles offered to him has expanded. A change that he welcomes without any bitterness. “I liked doing comedy, and if I did, it was because I wanted to. But I want to say: it was all there forever…”