“Tsé, it’s like when you sell a car, but basically you don’t really want to sell it”, illustrates Jean-Marc Parent, who was invited to explain to us why he had agreed to reconnect with the car. television, to which he had completely turned his back since the end, in June 1997, of JMP time.
A quarter of a century ago, the legendary TQS Sunday show overheated electricity meters and devoted the comedian to a sort of rock star laughter, playing around with the rules like a kid who has been given big toys. All in a kind of non-concept: a nice guy, almost ordinary, telling long-term stories (even if it means smashing!) With, as the only but electrifying support, a rock band.
But the car, then? “When you sell a car, but basically you don’t really want to sell it, you ask for a price that doesn’t look good, and there is always someone who comes to buy it like that. »Translation: It was obviously not the first time that a broadcaster or a producer tried his luck with JMP with the hope of a return in front of the cameras. Offers that he had all refused, in order to preserve the three or four months that he generally spends in Florida, incompatible with a contract on the small screen.
After receiving a new offer from ComediHa! and TVA, Jean-Marc Parent therefore enumerates his conditions: that he does not have to shoot too many episodes and that they be recorded in the same week, that we round up his old team and that he can improvise at will. “My manager calls me back a month later: they said yes! Ah well tabarouette, will have to do it. But I told them at ComediHa! : “Don’t expect something new. These are new stories, but it’s the same guy ”. “
Shot in August at the Quebec City Armory with Jean-François Blais (The voice, Live from the universe), one of the Quebec masters of variety in directing, the four episodes of this hand-sewn show for his headliner were sculpted from the four hours of monologues improvised each evening by the marathon runner of the anecdote not of appearance. No question for Jean-Marc Parent to send viewers to the commercial break, or even to design his stories in different easily divisible blocks. No question either of seeing the end result, simply titled JMP. It is his lifelong manager, Chantal Brisson, who represents him at the editing table.
“I still have a passion for my work, for the stage, but I no longer want it to take over the time that I have left,” explains the 59-year-old artist. How old are you? ” Thirty five years. “Ah well my mosus! It’s people like you that I’m jealous of. “
My manager called me back a month later: they had said yes! Ah well tabarouette, will have to do it. But I told them at ComediHa! : “Don’t expect something new. These are new stories, but it’s the same guy ”.
The genesis of the disabled
Jean-Marc Parent earns his living as a social worker and has no ambition at all to board the bus from the show business, when he presented sketches for the first time with his childhood neighbor, actor Widemir Normil (Fardoche, yes, yes) in a nightclub in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Le Richelieu. The name of their duo: Black and White. “Wid was a model,” JMP recalls. I went to see his fashion shows, because we were friends. He was heading towards the artistic world, it was clear to him. We started fooling around, having fun, but for me, it wasn’t serious. “
His first three solo numbers, including that of The disabled, attracted attention and soon propelled him to the firmament of a burgeoning humor industry. They were several to evoke this number in the wake of the verdict of the Supreme Court in the Mike Ward / Jérémy Gabriel case. “But I don’t know why we’re comparing the two. I’m not saying one is better than the other, it’s just completely different. “
Recall that before revealing his number on stage, the comedian took care to meet a man living with cerebral palsy, André Leclerc, today well known for his work to promote tourism and culture accessible to people with disabilities. Jean-Marc Parent will also return to the genesis of the number, which dates from 1988, in his new program. “I left with my little text on satchel sheets, I went to see him at the Center Lucie-Bruneau and I asked him if my gestures were plausible, if what I was saying was plausible. He was laughing so much! It was important for me to have the agreement of someone who knows this. “
If JMP, in The disabled, makes people smile thanks to his spasmodic movements, it is especially thanks to his text full of empathy, in which a man in a wheelchair describes all the obstacles he faces on a daily basis, that the comedian generates laughter. The physical comedy thus becomes like a ruse allowing it to capture attention, the better to denounce the lack of consideration that our society gives to people with disabilities. “Of course you had to listen to what I was saying, that was what was most important. You laugh because you realize how terrible the situation is. “
At the height of the media-cultural phenomenon that had becomeJMP time, Jean-Marc Parent wiped his share of jokes and caricatures ridiculing his physical appearance. Did this mockery help him stay away from the TV for so long?
” No really not. As I often say: I decided to play hockey, I might get caught up in the gang, ”he replied straight away. “But yeah, it was really hard for me. We know that if we tell a child that he is ugly, that he is not good, it will get into his head. But it’s the same with adults! Except the people who do that don’t care. And the funny thing is, when someone is hurt and attacked, you ask whoever was hit with the stick what it does to them. We never ask the one who hits what it brings him. However, we know what it feels like to receive a blow. You should ask why they are doing this to those who are swinging the blow. “