Quand on regarde votre parcours, on imagine mal comment un cinéaste ayant consacré la majeure partie de son travail à des films d’art ou à des captations de pièces de théâtre peut en arriver à vouloir réaliser un long métrage campé dans le milieu criminel des années 1970. D’où est venue cette idée ?
En cherchant un sujet, je suis revenu un peu à mes amours d’adolescence, à l’époque où s’est tenue la grande Commission d’enquête sur le crime organisé [CECO], which I was very interested in. It’s a world that fascinates me and that’s when I heard about Donald Lavoie’s story. I began to imagine him now old, forced back into the middle. I then started tinkering with a screenplay, but since I’m not really a screenwriter, a producer suggested that I go and meet Martin Girard. [Nitro Rush, Saint Narcisse], with whom it connected right away. We thought that the known period of the life of this guy was already a film in itself.
PHOTO HUGO-SÉBASTIEN AUBERT, THE PRESS
After directing several documentaries on the arts, Raymond St-Jean offers Twilight for a killerhis first fiction feature film.
Apart from the two protagonists, Donald Lavoie (played by Éric Bruneau) and Claude Dubois (the boss of the Southwest underworld is played by Benoît Gouin), all the names have been changed. How far has the notion of artistic freedom gone in this case?
We have faced the classic problems encountered by all those who tell the life of someone who exists. Legal questions arise. We were able to keep the names of the two main characters, but all the others were changed and some characters were reinvented. We worked to make everything dramatic, but the events we see in the film are true, as are the pivotal moments in the story.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY FILMOPTION INTERNATIONAL
In Twilight for a killerBenoît Gouin plays Claude Dubois, boss of the underworld in Southwest Montreal during the 1970s.
At the exit of confessions, who is interested in hitman Gérald Gallant, Luc Picard told us that even if he could, he would have refused to meet him. If he didn’t live today recluse under another identity, would you have wished to meet the real Donald Lavoie?
No, no more than the people who knew him very closely, because we would have found ourselves faced with several different stories, each with their own version. It was not necessary. Al Capone one day became a fictional character who entered mythology without anyone knowing who he really is. We also have this kind of characters here: in Monica the machine gunIn Requiem for a Heartless Handsome, for which Robert Morin was inspired by Richard Blass, in short, we have already touched on that. These are important stories, especially since that of Donald Lavoie and the Dubois clan corresponds to the era of the rise of Quebec nationalism. Local organized criminals asserted themselves against other criminal groups – Italian Mafia, Irish Mafia – which shared the different neighborhoods of the city. The challenge for me was to recreate the 1970s without falling into pastiche or caricature.
What particularly interested you in Donald Lavoie’s career, to the point of wanting to devote a feature film to it?
First, there is the downfall of a star created by the media, who thinks he is above his own business and who keeps making bad, often dangerous decisions. I also wanted to talk about the relationship to these monsters which are not necessarily hideous, which is extremely disturbing. Since violence is often treated as a spectacle in our society, I wanted to show it in a very dry, very direct way. Lavoie’s contract was to get in, shoot and get out.
Éric Bruneau has often been told that he physically resembles the real Donald Lavoie. Was it obvious to you?
That’s not the only reason I chose it, of course. But yes, Eric looks like Donald Lavoie. When he arrived for the audition, he was still looking, even though he was already extremely well prepared. And he searched with me. That’s what I liked about him. Éric really put a lot into this film.
Twilight for a killer hits theaters March 10.