“Storytelling, for my father, is something natural,” explains Marcel Sabourin’s eldest son, Jérôme. “He can talk for hours, he’s unstoppable. And it has a hypnotic side, because with my father, everything is crazy, but everything comes together at the same time. »
A description perfectly matching the hour of interview that the legendary actor gave us over small glasses of vermouth (how could we refuse?). Everything was crazy, but at the same time, everything ended up coming together, even when you thought you were lost forever in the twists and turns of one of his long responses in the form of free improvisation having as their theme the immensity of the cosmos.
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“I don’t know what you’re doing here, I have nothing to say,” says the actor with his broad 88-year-old smile when we arrive at his home in Beloeil, in this magnificent house where he has lived for around fifty years with his wife, the discreet Françoise, the exact opposite of the flamboyance that her husband displays as soon as the curtain rises. It doesn’t matter whether this curtain is that of a real theater stage or the microphone of a podcast series.
Behind him, in the dining room where we sit, a bulletin board covered in Post-its. On one of them, these few words: “Françoise, I am in love with you. »
PHOTO ALAIN ROBERGE, THE PRESS
Marcel Sabourin in interview
This house is one of the main characters ofAt the end of nothing, the documentary that Jérôme Sabourin has worked on over the past nine years. Although the word documentary poorly describes this kaleidoscopic portrait, deeply cinematic, with the shattered image of the man whose career, from La Ribouldingue has J. A. Martin photographerincluding writing songs for Robert Charlebois and three productions ofUbu kingstands as a splendid affront to this world which loves boxes so much.
I didn’t make a film about my father, I didn’t make a film about the man Marcel Sabourin, I made a film about the imagination, about the madness of Marcel Sabourin.
Jérôme Sabourin
“When he tells, my father’s mind becomes excited to be crazy, and crazy to be excited,” Jérôme explains.
A human being must express himself
It is to this crazy excitement, or this excited madness, that we will have had access to during our interview. This is because when he constructs an idea, Marcel Sabourin turns it in all directions, until he finds the formula, new and fresh, which will tickle and satisfy his mind.
At almost 89 years old, Marcel Sabourin has everything of a happy man. Happy to spend a lot of time in the rich mazes of its lively noggin, most of the corridors of which are still well lit and where are stored, in surprisingly impeccable condition, souvenirs from the farewell show of the Russian dancer Galina Oulanova, at which he attended in 1960 in Moscow, or his last supper with Claude Gauvreau.
Would he like to have access to eternal life, if this eternity took place on earth? “The way things are going there, at any time, I will sign this,” he replies, “but I would like in 3000 years to be able to reverse my decision. »
It would take me a damn long time to get tired of it: we have a good life, a full life. The only big, big problem is that when you live to be old, you lose your boyfriends. This is what is most serious, most terrible.
Marcel Sabourin
“Marcel doesn’t give the impression of being a guy who accumulates bad things,” confided Michel Rivard in the biography of his friend (All spread apartAll in all, 2018), a mental hygiene to which the one who swears to have never said a word behind the back of someone chum.
Although he tore the straitjacket of Catholicism in which he grew up a long time ago, Marcel Sabourin remains a spiritual man, or at least, a man of ritual. Every morning he pours the flow of his thoughts, luminous or vitiated, into a recorder, more or less fruitful verbiage which his secretary copies.
PHOTO ALAIN ROBERGE, THE PRESS
Marcel Sabourin in interview
“Afterwards, I reread it all word for word and I tear it up ceremoniously,” he explains. Because once it’s out, it opens up other ideas that may be viable. In other words, when the yard is full, it must be emptied. Human beings are made in such a way that the more sensitive they are, which is the case for all artists, the more easily and quickly the court fills up with lots of business. And it has to express a human being. »
The whole thing
What does Marcel Sabourin believe in? “I don’t believe in anything at all. The all-nothing being the all-nothing. And the whole panrian being all the universes that you can imagine to exist. We are in an incredible, total mystery and for me, totally marvelous. For what ? Because I have something to eat. If I didn’t have food, I wouldn’t find this wonderful universe at all. »
I ask Marcel Sabourin if he has anything to add that would remain just between him and me, to which he responds with a long silence.
“Well yes,” he said, “because there is only silence that can express the fact of being this little grain of sand sitting at a table on a planet which is a little grain of sand in a universe. which is perhaps only a small grain of sand. For intelligent beings there is only silence. I speak, because I’m not intelligent, but if you are really open to this immense, mysterious phenomenon that a galaxy represents, that being there, here represents, well, you can only close yourself the box. That’s the most intelligent thing. »
At the end of nothing hits theaters on March 15.
Three quotes from our interview
On his linguistic awareness during his first visit to Paris
“I realized that I did not speak French and that to speak French, as an actor, I would have to counteract 236 circuits inside myself and my brain. So if you counter 236 circuits, speech does not flourish at ease and happy to go where it is going as it is. »
About his favorite song among those he wrote for Charlebois
“ Chu d’in [la deuxième partie de la fresque Fu Man Chu], it’s quite fun. Because yes, we are in it. Everyone is in. The universe is inside. There’s no way not to be in it. It was written on the edge of a table, because Robert didn’t want to write any more songs. »
About his parents
“It is certain that what they left me is to be attentive to others and fortunately, because an actor is attentive to himself, he is full of himself -even. Fortunately my father was a pharmacist: that awakened me to people’s suffering. Even though I am an actor and very egocentric, I am easily touched. »