In funeral homes, there is always a notebook where you can write your respects to the deceased. Nowadays, we have social networks to express our sorrow and our admiration towards personalities who leave us, one of the rare moments when it is the sweetness that dominates the media eclipse. Each time, I find it moving to measure the loss of an artist by these scrolling messages.
Their disappearance sincerely touches us for the simple reason that they really were part of our lives, even if we never met them. Last week, it was Tina Turner, and now, Michel Côté. Two completely different destinies, of course, but the same deep affection from the public, and careers that have crossed the decades by bridging the generations.
I discovered Michel Côté as an albino tramp in In the moonlight by André Forcier, then his career subsequently only had successes that tons of actors must have envied him. brew is an unequaled record in the history of popular theater in Quebec; Cruising Bar, in which he played several memorable characters as a one-man band, was one of the biggest box office successes during a period when Quebec cinema was struggling in theaters; with Omertacertainly one of the best Quebec television series, he proved his dramatic register in the skin of Pierre Gauthier, before reaching a peak in the unforgettable role of the father of the CRAZY by Jean-Marc Vallee. Without that preventing him, on the contrary, from returning to comedy with From father to cop (twice).
PHOTO PROVIDED BY TVA FILMS
movie scene CRAZY with Michel Cote
The roles of father have also marked Michel Côté’s career, as if he had succeeded, from brew To CRAZY Passing by From father to cop, to create this universal generic father, but profoundly Quebecois, good and a little narrow-minded, whom thousands of people in the public recognized as if it were their own. If my father had learned that my brother was gay, he might have reacted like Michel Côté in CRAZY, and I think that that’s why this film went around the world.
Before Michel’s death, there was Tina’s, last week. Why did his death upset me like this? Because she was part of my life. I discovered this extraordinary woman when I was a child, when she was in the midst of a renaissance. Tina Turner was first for me a “madam” who sang What’s Love Got to Do with It. And Michel Côté, the guy who played in brew.
I finally understood that Tina Turner was then making a comeback after her difficult years of toxic and violent relationship with Ike Turner, at over 40 years old, in an industry without mercy for age. Yet she became an icon of the 1980s as she had been in the 1960s and 1970s, and when we discovered her journey, we felt nothing but respect. Enough for me to believe that Tina Turner was eternal and that she wasn’t going to leave before her 100th birthday at least!
In the case of Michel Côté, I have the impression that he has always been in the landscape since I have seen films, without once having lost the flame of the profession and the love of the public. And he too, I believed him to be eternal.
In the cinema, on TV and on stage, the name of Michel Côté seemed a guarantee of success, because the public loved this actor, but also this hypersensitive man whom I have always found friendly and humble in interviews. Impossible to forget his emotion when he learned of the death of Jean-Marc Vallée, shortly before he retired from public life because of his illness which I refused to believe was incurable.
It seemed that he was unaware of being part of the triple A category of Quebec stardom, and he chained contracts without any snobbery, so much so that he participated in the most popular projects of the last decades. Who didn’t love Michel Côté, who made us laugh as much as cry?
No artist can last like this without a deep love of the profession and people, without respect for colleagues and craftsmen, and certainly not without this humility that allows you to surpass yourself all the time. This is why we will never stop listening to Tina Turner and we will always see Michel Côté’s films again with happiness. What hurts is that we would have liked to take even more, because there are beings of whom we never tire. Blessed by the gods, loved by mortals, grateful to life even when it does not give a gift, we do not want them to retire, let alone leave, leaving us inconsolable.
It is the mark of the great to miss us so much.