“Even today, I tell myself that this idea did not have allure”, launches Claude Meunier about Happy New Year Roger, the Bye from 1981.
The founding member of Paul and Paul and Ding and Dong was barely 30 when he was commissioned to write the Bye from 1981. He was then among a team of authors made up of his faithful friend Louis Saia as well as Marie Perreault, Louise Roy and Roger Harvey. He had already signed in the Bye from 1976 – the one with Dominique Michel in Nadia Comăneci – a parody of the game show The line work.
Kind of antiBye having much more to do with the absurd universe of the Meunier-Saia pair than with the satirical tradition of the end-of-calendar magazine, Happy New Year Roger is often considered the worst Bye of history, a largely overrated reputation that quickly contradicts a viewing of this experience which is sometimes confused and strange, but very often comical.
“Any near or far resemblance to the show Bye is completely unintentional and would only be pure coincidence ”, immediately warns a warning sign, before a musical number begins in which an alluring France Castel sings the apple to the tune of New York, New York to a timorous building keeper, the Roger of the title, embodied by a perfect Serge Thériault.
YOUTUBE SCREENSHOTS
Title screen of Happy New Year Roger
The continuation, to match, consists essentially of a series of vignettes drawing abundantly from the discomforts inseparable from family reunions, from the unspoken from which conversations are woven (the play Neighbors will be created in 1982) and in the inevitable quarrels between brothers-in-law (Marc Messier in support of the Canadian of Montreal and Normand Chouinard in fan of the Nordiques of Quebec). Once upon a time there were happy people by Nicole Martin – this is the year of Plouffe by Gilles Carle – is reinvented as a song about the madness that turkeys cause in a family, a prelude to the obsession for this dish from Moman in The little life.
“At Radio-Canada, we almost say bye bye to Bye ”, Headlines The Canadian Press on December 26, 1981, in an article by Marc Morin which evokes the drop in ratings of the 1979 edition (2 million viewers) to that of 1980 (1.7 million). “The traditional end-of-year program on French Radio-Canada television will be an advantage [sic] a matter of humor for the sake of humor that a retrospective of the past year. […] The main criticisms leveled at Radio-Canada last year were that the end-of-year special was too political and that there was not enough room for renewal. ”
“We weren’t specialists in political humor, we were more into human relationships. We thought a lot about Monty Python and [Saturday Night Live]. We were happy to have this challenge, but we were very naive. We were sure that the world would like that, ”recalls Claude Meunier with a laugh.
PHOTO ANDRÉ PICHETTE, ARCHIVES THE PRESS
Claude Meunier in 2015
There was a guy called Roger [Harvey] in our team and he always asked: “What title are we going to give to that?” This is how we chose Happy New Year Roger.
Claude Meunier, co-author of Bye from 1981
Harsh criticisms
Happy New Year Roger will be strongly scratched by the critics, in particular by the formidable Louise Cousineau, of Press. “We thought at Radio-Canada that a name change and the elimination of political jokes would be enough to restore the allure of the great end-of-year show,” she wrote on January 5. ” Sweet Jesus ! […] Happy New Year Roger (poor Roger!) almost fell asleep. Definitely we will have to find something else. Or abandon the idea altogether. […] I volunteered for the dishes. The sink was funnier. ”
“Well me, overall I thought it was funny, Happy New Year Roger », Replied Pierre Foglia on January 12, proof that it is not yesterday that the real pleasure of Bye lies above all in the clashes it provokes. “What’s wrong with me [d’écrire là-dessus] fifteen days later? It takes me that I argued with my colleague Louise Cousineau who found it boring and who wrote it; it takes me that the letters of constipated indignation begin to flow in the page “Free Tribune”. ”
Among the most memorable (and controversial) segments of Happy New Year Roger : that of New Year’s Eve when a young woman (Pauline Martin) invites her new black boyfriend (Robert JA Paquette) for the first time to her parents (Véronique Le Flaguais and Claude Meunier, with protuberant chin prostheses , in characters sketching in broad strokes what would become 12 years later Moman and Popa).
Claude Meunier, who puts the grossest stereotypes associated with black people in the mouth of his fellow man, remembers having wanted to magnify the prejudices that circulated a lot in Montreal, he says, about Haitian immigration. .
I wanted to denounce these prejudices. It was a completely anti-racist skit, which I still find very funny. He spoke out so clearly about racism. It was not an excuse to pretend to denounce racism and thereby allow oneself to joke at the expense of blacks.
Claude Meunier
Despite the harsh welcome that Happy New Year Roger, the contract of the Meunier-Saia duo was renewed in 1982, this time a vintage much more in tune with cultural and political news. The two appearances of La Poune, in a parody of Houndstooth (Poune’s foot) and in a cross-reading of Human earth and AND (Wet earth, with Rose Ouellette in alien costume), are among the most wonderfully surreal moments in the history of Bye. The venerable comic was then 79 years old.
“My memory is that she was in a sort of diver’s costume and that she was so hot that I had a hard time finding it funny, I was so afraid that she would pass out”, says Claude Meunier. “We obviously had a big age difference, but she was happy to be with the new gang that was emerging. She was so sweet, she wanted to be funny so much. She was like a good old grandma. We wanted to pay attention to her. ”