“It was a great experience and there, CRAZY came out and I was recognized. I decided to leave, but I found it boring. » What extraordinary experience is Marc-André Grondin talking about? From his job as a record store at the former HMV Megastore in downtown Montreal.
Does this mean that the success of Jean-Marc Vallée’s unforgettable film tore him away from his dream? we ask him, deliberately enlarging the line. Answer full of candor: “It’s stupid, but… I earn a really good living, I’m really lucky to have the career I have, to travel, but I know that ultimately, I would have been happy working as a record dealer or earning a humble living as a drummer in small gigs. Music, if it is present, I find my happiness, one way or another. »
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Do not read this confession as a lack of gratitude, since in reality, it is quite the opposite. Marc-André Grondin knows full well that his life is made up of privileges; he has been working as an actor since he was 4 years old – his first contract: a Minute Maid ad.
PHOTO ALAIN ROBERGE, THE PRESS
Marc-André Grondin during the recording of the podcast show
But if he speaks with seriousness and passion about his profession, the actor never lights up as much as when he goes into a tirade about his favorite drummers or when he describes the Ludwig drums, Vista Lite model, color green, which his lover bought him for his 40th birthday. The greatest gift of his life, he says, before remembering that this same lover gave him the gift of two children, which also seems worthy of mention.
“Listen, I was really moved, I had a tear in my eye and I said to myself: “Well no, you’re not going to scream for a drum.” I have one of my drummer friends who I told this to who said to me: “Well yes, you can bawl for a drum.” »
“The only real regret I have in life is not having taken music lessons for a long time,” confides the man who, from the age of 4, was a fan ofair drumminghis parents both having played drumsticks and played in bands.
“My need to ventilate, to express myself comes much more through music [que par son travail devant la caméra]not just by playing it, but by listening to it,” says the man who worked during the first decade of the millennium behind the cymbals for the rock groups Nitrosonique and Psychotic 4 and who must have imagined a few solos be-bop during the filming of the Club Illico series IXE-13.
I kept my teenage brain. When I listen to a song, I have the impression that it was written for me, I draw parallels with my life, I see images.
Marc-André Grondin
Musical matches
For a long time, Marc-André Grondin exchanged abundant emails with Jean-Marc Vallée and artistic director Patrick Vermette, in which the three friends offered others the gift of their musical excitement of the moment.
The Bahamas singer? It was Jean-Marc Vallée who introduced it to Grondin. Several years later, the music of the Canadian indie folk artist would become the soundtrack to the birth of his relationship with his lover, Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse. “When I listen to Bahamas, I think of my girlfriend. » And to his director friend, too, obviously.
“The entire soundtrack of his projects can be found through these emails,” explains the man who put Jean-Marc Vallée on the path to Sigur Rós, the Icelandic post-rock group heard in Café de Flore (2011) and who was to sign the music for The Young Victoria (2015), before obviously narrow-minded producers opposed it. Grondin was the perfect person to direct the Mixtape: a musical tribute to Jean-Marc Valléepresented at the Montreal International Jazz Festival on June 28.
“I remember that for Christmas or his birthday, I bought him Agætis byrjun [1999] and the untitled album [2002] by Sigur Rós. I told him: “This is my big favorite, I think you’ll like it, it’s super cinematic.” ” And he was not wrong.
Don’t go to bed angry
A musical “curator” with enthusiasm as inexhaustible as a John Bonham solo, Marc-André Grondin could in this sense hardly be more the heir of his father, the radio host Denis Grondin, who experienced the heyday of CHOM and CKOI. It was with his father that he attended his first memorable show, that of Weezer at CEPSUM, on August 5, 1995. He was 11 years old.
PHOTO ALAIN ROBERGE, THE PRESS
Marc-André Grondin
Everyone found it very difficult when parents had to follow, but for me, my father, it was my gateway to all these shows. He had so much knowledge about music, he was always drawing parallels.
Marc-André Grondin
Like Jean-Marc Vallée, who left too early at the age of 58, Denis Grondin left this world in 2017 at only 66 years old. “It’s certain that when you lose someone close to you violently, without warning, it puts a lot of things into perspective,” observes his son. You enjoy getting older. »
His white beard hairs, which are hidden from him on certain sets? Marc-André has learned to cherish them. “I don’t have much hair left, but I tell myself that I’m still lucky to experience this, to have these traces of time passing. »
“Of course it can be super anxiety-inducing,” he adds, “because it’s true that everything can stop overnight. So I try not to get too caught up in the world. I’m trying to apologize. When your father dies in his sleep, you say to yourself, “I’m going to try not to go to bed angry.” »
Three quotes from our interview
About success
“With each project, I remind myself that it may be my last. Not because I want to draw the plogue, but because someone else can draw it. You can no longer be called, for any reason. There are some who were in all the series when I was little and who have disappeared. […] Success and sustainability are not just a question of talent. It’s a combination of many things. You can make bad choices, be unlucky on certain projects and, at some point, you are given a label and you lose value. »
About CRAZY
“I wasn’t opposed to my success, but I found it phony. Between the day before CRAZY and the day after CRAZY, I was the same person, but suddenly people saw me differently. But they didn’t see me, they projected the film on me. »
About his last meal with Jean-Marc Vallée in 2021
“I found the guy I knew when I was young. He was very deposed. He had whitened a lot. He was writing his movie about John and Yoko in Malibu and he thought he was so lucky. There was something deposited about him that I felt less before. »