“I had a friend who told me once: ‘Your business will always remain marginal,’” remembers Claude Meunier. “I replied: “well yes, that’s how it is, what do you want?” »
Spoiler alert: Claude Meunier has not exactly remained marginal, Ding and Dong and, a fortiori, The little life having elevated themselves to the rank of authentic social phenomena. Confidence: every time I read that the original version of the series attracted more than 4 million viewers on two occasions, I have the reflex to accuse the author of the text of having poorly verified his information, even if this is the real truth.
Claude Meunier’s humor has by no means remained marginal, but it is easy, with the distance of the years, to underestimate what was strange, preposterous and against the grain in his first issues. What was a show by the Frères Brothers, the pre-Paul et Paul duo that he formed with Jacques Grisé and Robert Morissette, and of which unfortunately – or not – no trace remains?
PHOTO ALAIN ROBERGE, THE PRESS
Claude Meunier
“It was an absurd show where we did imitations, but we imitated a sunset or the Turcot interchange at rush hour,” explains the author during this interview during which he also discusses his relation to criticism, the influence of Ionesco and the sketch that Félix Leclerc one day wrote (!) for Ding et Dong. “With the Brothers Brothers, we could also imitate strangers. We would say “give me a first name, give me a last name”, then we would imitate, let’s say, I don’t know… Paul Larivière. »
Brother Serge
It was before Serge Thériault joined Grisé and Meunier within the trio Paul et Paul – Serge Thériault that Claude will meet on December 24 on ICI Première at the microphone of Stéphane Laporte, we learned last week, on the occasion of a program imagined around their prodigious complicity, The flakes are gathered.
Serge also recently went to the studio to sing backing vocals on the album of La Famille Denuy, the western project with which Meunier put online, at the beginning of the month, a new version of It’s Christmas and for which he surrounded himself with some of the best musicians in town, including guitarist Jean-Sébastien Chouinard (seen alongside Les Cowboys Fringants) and drummer Pierre Fortin (who also plays with Les Cowboys Fringants, and with Galaxie). The group’s first record, to be released next year, will notably contain a song written by Daniel Boucher and another by Simon Proulx, the most brilliant of Paul and Paul’s heirs.
Extract of It’s Christmas by The Denuy Family
“It’s a unique bond,” says Claude about his friendship with Serge. “We are very complementary brothers. »
Serge [Thériault], in a way, I am as close to it as to my wife. We know each other deeply, in all our sensitivity, our feelings. Together, we are more than the sum of the two of us. We understand each other, we understand each other. We played Ding and Dong, we played The little life. It was a game for the rest of us.
Claude Meunier
The actors of The little life enjoyed playing so much during the filming of the most recent season that Claude and his team are considering making episodes available to which they will restore the four or five minutes of beautiful excess which had to be cut during editing in order not to exceed the television milestone of 22 minutes.
The years that soften
In Neighbors (1980), a play co-signed by Louis Saia, Claude Meunier takes a merciless look at the world of adults, featuring characters incapable of saying anything substantial to each other, if we exclude the brief moments when the taste for mayonnaise amazes them.
PHOTO ALAIN ROBERGE, THE PRESS
Claude Meunier, in interview with our journalist
Developed from a sketch written by Claude when he was only 19 years old, entitled The party plate, Neighbors has very little pity for its characters, a very adolescent intransigence that time has ended up softening in the author, who is now 72 years old.
When the characters speak, they talk about cement nails, their asphalt, their hedge. Now I understand that we can talk about cement nails. I myself talk about cement nails sometimes. Or I’m talking about nothing. We’re all neighbors, in a way.
Claude Meunier, on the subject of Neighbors
We are all doomed to transform into our father, in one way or another, which I point out to him. “I picked on him in ways that I completely exaggerated,” explains Claude about the late Marcel, a slightly eccentric optometrist who inspired Ti-Mé and Bernard and who could, at Christmas, disguise himself as a Russian tsar, just to make your children laugh. “He wasn’t crazy like Ti-Mé, otherwise they would have locked him up. But he was a twisted man. I adored my father. The more time passes, the more I love it. »
Nearly 45 years later, Claude Meunier depicts the couple and family life with much more tenderness than in his cult play. In what promises to be the final season of the tribulations of the Paré clan, Ti-Mé longs to find Jacqueline, who left to visit the planet before turning (no longer) crazy. And if her absence weighs heavily on him, it’s certainly because he has no idea how to cook a turkey, but above all because he realizes that he loves her. For real.
“And as I get older, this is what I find in life: love, affection, sharing are very important. It’s a funny thing to hear coming out of my mouth, but I think it’s major. Otherwise, what are we doing here? I realize that I am like Ti-Mé: I need to have someone in my life who I love. »
The little life is offered on Tou.tv Extra and will be broadcast on ICI Télé from February 10.
Three quotes from our interview
About Michel Côté
“He was a monster of a game. He was a great one, Michel. He had incredible talent and great precision. As Marc told me [Messier] the other day: with Michel, there was never anything out of place. He was a guy who demanded a lot of himself. He was always questioning himself, very perfectionist. The guys were so good at playing Broue. The last performance of Broue [en avril 2017] was perhaps perfection, it may have been the best time I’ve seen it. »
About Marc Messier
“Everyone knows he’s a huge actor, but he’s pretty much the guy who has won the fewest awards in Quebec. It’s amazing, even if he doesn’t worry about it at all. Marc is a giant. He’s the Roger Moore of Quebec. It’s a spirit acting, dramatic and comic, but there is always Marc Messier who comes through. Take Réjean, who has no quality: Marc plays that and everyone finds him likeable. He has incredible charisma. »
About the character of Thérèse
“There was one of my aunts who was a real Thérèse and whom I loved very, very much. She was always a littlepacelike Thérèse is space. At the beginning, when the world said that Thérèse was stupid, I replied: Thérèse is not stupid, she is schizoid, she is a poet, she flees this world which is so boring for her. Thérèse, it’s a poem. »