Yvon Deschamps could no longer present today the monologues that made him famous, it is often said, in order to illustrate a presumed narrowing of artists’ freedom of speech.
Is it really true, Monsieur Deschamps, that you could no longer play, identically, some of your most important texts, without provoking controversy? “It’s true, but it doesn’t matter,” replies the man who is always the first to call back that several of his numbers (including intolerance And women’s liberation) have already, in their time, been poorly received by part of Quebec.
But Yvon Deschamps sought first and foremost to shake up his contemporaries, not to shock for the sake of shocking, even less to hurt, the effect that some of his numbers would certainly produce in 2023 (including the one containing the word that begins with an N) . The father of Quebec humor nevertheless regrets that the creators, and those who employ them, polish their words at the slightest annoyance expressed by a minority of the public.
In his monologue titled Handling (1980), Yvon Deschamps alternately personified a guy from the far right, a guy from the far left and a crazy guy, who all shared the same ridiculously concrete conviction in their conception of an ideal society. The master of irony was perhaps already describing our era, which is not very gifted for dialogue.
“Hey people are sensitive! he exclaims.
PHOTO KARENE-ISABELLE JEAN-BAPTISTE, SPECIAL COLLABORATION
Yvon Deschamps
What I find worse today is that if you have three hairy and two bald people who are against something, we stop doing it. The hairy and the bald have the right to be against it, they have the right to demonstrate, but we don’t stop for that.
Yvon Deschamps
Mr. Deschamps adds, before bursting out laughing, which should be listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site: “Comedians have all the rights! Mike Ward went all the way to the Supreme Court to give us every right to say whatever we want. »
The humility of a great
Although the many encounters that punctuate the daily life of a cultural journalist immunize against the gaga admirer syndrome, interviewing Yvon Deschamps is undoubtedly the closest thing to shaking hands in history with a capital H. Total transparency : your scribe felt, heading towards the luminous offices of the Yvon Deschamps Centre-Sud Foundation, as if he had obtained a tete-a-tete with René Lévesque or Félix Leclerc.
“So I understand you,” says my host with this false vanity, typically Deschamps, behind which hides a humility sharpened by several setbacks. If he belongs today to the icons of Quebec culture, he has not forgotten that the end of his career has often been predicted. He remembers it like it was (almost) yesterday: October 17, 1973, in The PressChristiane Berthiaume caps the criticism of her show women’s liberation of the peremptory title: “Behind the new monologues of Yvon Deschamps, the void…”
A privileged moment, therefore, to talk to Mr. Deschamps, and doubly precious insofar as it is extremely rare that the 37-year-old greenhorn behind this article has the chance to chat with a man 50 years his senior, with all that that supposes of salutary perspective.
“Life is still easier today”, drops the octogenarian about the advancement of Quebec, which has necessarily changed a lot since Unions, what does osa give? (1968), a number that encapsulated the enslavement of an entire people. Spine-chilling anecdote: at the start of his working life as a teenager, Yvon Deschamps’ grandfather worked 72 hours a week, with no vacations on the calendar.
Who will hold my hand?
“Who will hold my hand/at the end of my path? /who will hold my hand/to the day without tomorrow? », sang Yvon Deschamps in 1982 in Onlyone of his most moving songs, composed by Serge Fiori, on a serious text, in which a man paralyzed by his finitude reveals himself.
“I’ve always been obsessed with death. It has been omnipresent in my life since the age of 6 or 7, he confides. When I realized I was going to die, I didn’t accept that at all. I said to myself: “Let’s see! The others, maybe, but not me.” And around 12-13 years old, I was sure that I wouldn’t die, that we would find something to prevent that. I’ve had anxiety attacks many times in my life because of this. »
“But as you get older, it’s the opposite,” he hastens to add.
PHOTO KARENE-ISABELLE JEAN-BAPTISTE, THE PRESS
Yvon Deschamps
I had a full life. I have everything: I have love, it doesn’t make sense, I have good health. […] The only thing we fear is dragging out years in bed.
Yvon Deschamps
On July 20, he will take part in the Gala Ultime of the Just for Laughs festival, a final lap for this concept that has served him well, he who has hosted no less than 15 galas. What does he hear about on stage, during this evening, all the profits of which will be donated to the Yvon Deschamps Centre-Sud Foundation, which helps young people in the neighborhood?
“I’m trying to pick up things I’ve written about the fear of losing identity to immigrants, other people’s ways and customs that might take our own identity away from us. An unfounded fear? He’s laughing. “No, it is not founded at all. »
Three quotes from our interview
About French
At the Deschamps, there is no question of the grandchildren speaking to their grandfather in English. “With grandma, she’s an Englishwoman, that’s okay! “, he exclaims about his unfailing Judi.
“But they like it, speaking in English, what do you want?” “, he continues more seriously. “I think that’s the appeal of American pop culture. They watch so much on their phone. They find it cooler to say things in English. »
About the climate crisis
“For my children, my grandchildren, of course it worries me. But I still have confidence, I say to myself: “The caveman was very, very worried about the future. He was scared. When fire broke out in the forest because of lightning, the end of the world was near.” The environment, I think about it a lot, and I tell myself that it can’t be that humans are thick enough not to do the right thing at some point. »
About his relationship to money
The first Yvon Deschamps foundation, set up in the late 1970s, helped people with disabilities. The comedian had launched it because the money that his career brought him indisposed him.
“I was in so much pain, it’s our Mosus of Judeo-Christian culture. It was a sin to have money when I was a kid, and afterwards, as I was more of a leftist guy and I was like, “What do I do with the money? I don’t have to deal with having money”, it made me unhappy. And there, I even thought of stopping working, to stop doing it. Finally, it was Judi who said: “You’re so tiring with your money. Give it, we’ll talk more about it.” »