Telling the intimate life of Maurice “Mom” Boucher, former warrior leader of the Hells Angels, does not interest the author Luc Dionne, who is currently working on a miniseries about the two trials of the Montreal kingpin, around twenty years ago of years.
“No, there is no question of hiring an actor to play Mom Boucher. That’s not the story. What I want to tell is what happened in the investigation centers and within the Carcajou squad. And let’s say these weren’t places where Mom Boucher went to have coffee,” explains screenwriter Luc Dionne on the line.
In fact, this six-episode television series, intended for Videotron’s Club illico and produced by Fabienne Larouche, of Aetios, will focus on a very specific period in the history of Quebec’s most famous bandit: that between his acquittal of the murders of two prison guards in November 1998, and his indictment for the same crimes in May 2002.
“At that time, everything was crashing everywhere in Montreal and the heat was rising in the prisons,” remembers Luc Dionne, whose series will revolve around three pivotal characters in the biker war, namely the investigator (inspired by the ex-police officer Guy Ouellette), the Crown prosecutor (France Charbonneau, appointed judge in 2004) and the informer (Stéphane “Godasse” Gagné).
PHOTO ALAIN ROBERGE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Me France Charbonneau, Crown prosecutor, after the trial of Maurice “Mom” Boucher, convicted of homicide in 2002
The series will expose how these three protagonists were essential in the conviction of the former Hells Angel, who died in July 2022 at the Archambault penitentiary in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, north of Montreal. The Sorel gangster died of throat cancer at the age of 69.
So, yes, the shadow of Mom Boucher will hover over the six episodes, without necessarily monopolizing all the light.
Understand: this is not a “biopic” about the rise – and fall – of the ex-biker within a powerful criminal organization. And there is no question of glamorizing the life of this man, who triggered Canada’s deadliest conflict.
“It’s not a documentary that we’re making, either,” explains Luc Dionne.
No actor or director has yet been attached to this project, which was launched last week by Club illico.
The moment that most marked the collective imagination remains the triumphant exit from the Montreal courthouse of Mom Boucher, in November 1998, free, smiling and surrounded by members of her gang. He had just been acquitted by a jury of the murders of Diane Lavigne and Pierre Rondeau, two correctional officers from Bordeaux and Rivière-des-Prairies shot dead a year earlier.
The hitman Stéphane “Godasse” Gagné, the assassin of Diane Lavigne, turned his coat around, and it was his testimony that allowed Mom Boucher to be sent behind bars for life. A star informer, Gagné was granted day parole in March 2023, and he lives under a secret identity.
Luc Dionne knows this world of police officers, lawyers and bandits very well. He explored it in Omertà, The last chapter And District 31. One of his best friends is Guy Ouellette, a former Sûreté du Québec police officer and member of the elite Carcajou cell, formed to neutralize bikers in the mid-1990s.
“Guy Ouellette has a phenomenal memory. I’ve known him for 30 years,” says Luc Dionne.
Since the end of District 31, in April 2022, Luc Dionne did not contemplate the void, let’s say. The 63-year-old screenwriter also completed the first 12 hours of his annual series DPCP for Radio-Canada, planned in the September 2024 schedule, in theory.
Unlike his producer Fabienne Larouche, Luc Dionne consumes little television. “I am the polar opposite of Fabienne, who sees everything and knows all the series. Me, after half an hour or three quarters of an hour, I understood and I stopped. I don’t want to be influenced. Sometimes it’s completely unconscious. You don’t remember seeing something and you put it in your series a few months later,” observes Luc Dionne.
No, Commander Chiasson’s father is not at all bored with the infernal pace of production imposed by a daily series like District 31.
He took the opportunity to send flowers to the one who succeeds him at 7 p.m., Monday to Thursday, Marie-Andrée Labbé, creator of STAT.
“An author who works alone, like Marie-Andrée Labbé, I know exactly what she goes through. I know it, this long tunnel, where there is no light in front or behind. At some point, you write so much that your body tells you no. By the end, I was writing 12 hours a day, seven days a week. When I’m done District 31, I took the plane to Cannes, then I went to Frankfurt. Right in the middle of the street, the body blocked me. I fell to the ground and didn’t know if I was bawling or laughing. I asked for help and, when I got to my hotel, I had a massage and I was in so much pain everywhere that I fell to the bottom of the table, completely naked,” recalls Luc Dionne, who has since recovered, have no fear.
He’s greeting you from the Florida sun, lucky guy.