Dany Boon is an author, humorist, director, screenwriter, producer. It was on stage that the French public discovered him thanks to the show: I’m fine, everything’s fine. And then in 2008, there was this tidal wave called Welcome to the Ch’tis with more than 26 million admissions, a record that dethroned, in particular, The big mop.
This Wednesday, September 21, 2022, he is showing the film A Beautiful Race with Line Renaud, by director Christian Carion. It is the encounter between a 92-year-old woman who has to go to her last home, a nursing home, and a taxi driver. At his request to make a detour, he tenses up, since he has no time at all to take his time, until he begins to listen to him, to discuss, to go up the time.
franceinfo: In A great raceThere is a real look at sharing and the importance of transmission.
Dany Boon: In fact, what is very nice is that this woman who is radiant will bring back to her humanity this taxi which is very dark and which no longer realizes the beautiful sides of life. And me, what I liked a lot in the script when I read it, it’s the symbols of starting from the East of Paris, where the sun rises to go to the West, where it sets. and cross Paris as one crosses life. To make detours, as in life, a bit like cheating on death, and say to yourself: “Here, I’m going to take the time to go and see these moments of childhood again and then find what I experienced“.
The opportunity also to find the director Christian Carion, for whom you had filmed in Merry Christmas, a historical drama that earned you a César nomination. And in addition, icing on the cake, with Line Renaud who is part of Welcome to the Ch’tis since she played the role of your mom. In fact, it goes beyond the camera, we feel that there is something else, another dimension in this film.
And what was also very strong is that Line, playing this Madeleine Keller, was thinking about her own life. Of course, there was an echo.
The character of Madeleine Keller is very similar to Line Renaud and there were moments of acting that were experienced as if it were the two of us. It was the two of us!
What do you keep from your parents then? Speaking of family, your dad sadly passed away over 30 years ago.
Yes, my father was from Kabylie. He had come to France as a professional boxer, then later became a truck driver when he stopped boxing. I remember someone who was very hardworking, who never complained. He was much loved by people around him. He was quite hard in education, he had somewhat radical lessons like, in our northern settlement where we didn’t have much, he invited a family with kids who had even less than us. And in the end, he gave my toys to the kids… I wasn’t happy and he said to me: “He has less than you, you have to learn to be generous“. I think I saw him very heroic. He was a very important father figure even if we didn’t say “I like you“, in any case much less than with my mother…
Your mother is truly a pillar.
It is very important yes.
You were always drawn to the arts very early on. Does that mean that you understood very quickly that to build yourself, to be happy, you had to go through that?
“When I was a kid, I realized the extraordinary power of laughter, which both makes people love you and also makes people aggressive, harmless.”
First, when I was a kid, I used to make my mother laugh when she wasn’t well. I lived through complicated things when I was a kid. I saw that my parents were struggling. I had no recklessness. I worried a lot about them, about my mother, about my brothers. And I said to myself it does not matter, I will be a child when I am an adult.
How did you manage this notoriety, this celebrity which arrived with records of entries never equaled even today, knowing that you were from a family which had had a hard time getting by?
So I lived it well. What I experienced less well was that I became a product. I found myself on the cover of magazines, they said I was totally depressed with photos that had been stolen from a friend’s funeral two years before. And then, what was complicated, it was not to live that, it was rather compared to my children, to my family. I have a son and he had to change schools three times in the year Ch’tis because he got pissed off, beaten up, sometimes even insulted by some teachers. So we put him back in the school where he was before, where it went better, but these are complicated passages for them.
Do you lose friends with success?
True friends, no. In fact, what is incredible is that everyone around you says to you: “Don’t change, stay the same” and in fact the first to change, it’s them. Their perspective changes and they interpret everything that we can or cannot do in a different way. It’s important to take a step back, precisely, like Charles , in this film, with Line Renaud, where she makes him take it, saying: “All this is not so serious. You have to smile, you’ll see...” What is very pretty is what she says at one point: “A rant is getting old, a smile is getting young“…