“Mom, it’s over”, mascot Victor’s legendary cry of despair, has never sounded so true. The Just for Laughs festival will present a final gala on July 20, before putting away its flagship concept for good, with among its guests the father of Quebec humor, Yvon Deschamps.
Patrick Rozon, Chief Creative Officer at Just for Laughs, has been thinking about this for a long time. “It must have been at least three years,” he says of his decision to repackage the concept on which the festival he pilots has established its fame, that of galas.
Intimately linked to the identity of Montreal’s great celebration of laughter, and to its presence on the small screen, the Just for Laughs galas have seen the parade over the past 30 years of all the stars of Quebec humor as well as many comedians besides, whether they make sculptures with their genitals or change clothes at the speed of light.
But these events, devoid of their former glory, looked more and more like TV shows shot in front of a paying audience than stage shows captured for TV. This is what the four journalists from The Press assigned to cover last summer’s galas had risen, each in their own way.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Patrick Rozon in 2021
For the past three or four years, we have felt a decline in interest among festival-goers, but also among artists, for whom there are more opportunities to play than ever and for whom it had become a nostalgic trip more than anything else.
Patrick Rozon
While a Just for Laughs gala was, in another era, a rare opportunity to see such a distinguished line-up of comedians on the same stage, the offer in terms of comic cabarets (like Le Bordel), evenings in bars, thematic shows and other comic festivals will have reduced its exceptionality.
“What we tested last year were the event shows, which it is impossible to see the month before in Valleyfield or the following month in Brossard, and we have never experienced anything like it” , explains Patrick Rozon, recalling the happening of David Goudreault at the Maison symphonique, that of Mathieu Dufour at the Bell Center as well as the recording of the podcast under listening by Mike Ward, which was held in a home of the CH filled to the brim.
“And that’s when we realized that events like these were one of the best ways for the festival to remain important for the comedy industry”, continues the programmer. specifying that this turning point does not mean that the next edition of the Just for Laughs festival, from July 14 to 29, will only take place in large enclosures. “For us, something special can take place in a room with 150 or 15,000 seats. »
PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, PRESS ARCHIVES
Yvon Deschamps in 2022
When Yvon proposes
At the same time that Patrick Rozon and his team were juggling the fate to be reserved for the galas, the Yvon Deschamps Centre-Sud Foundation, which helps young people in this neighborhood of Montreal, reached out to Just for Laughs so that they imagine a partnership together.
And while we were brainstorming with Yvon, I started sharing with him my thoughts on the future of galas, talking to him about how humor had changed. And that’s when he said to me, ‘Why don’t you make one last? In any case, I would participate in it.”
Patrick Rozon
The Gala Ultime thus marks the beginning of a three-year collaboration between Just for Laughs and the foundation. Mr. Deschamps, whom only eleven days will separate from his 88e birthday, will not only be there to provide moral support, but rather to offer a number. Thirty-eight other names have already confirmed their presence on the boards of the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier on July 20.
Not the end of stand up
It was the late Serge Grenier who hosted the first Just for Laughs gala on July 15, 1983, with guests such as Normand Brathwaite, Jean-Paul Farré, Jean-Guy Moreau, Yolande Moreau, Roland Magdane and Sol. “A very well articulated, very effective show, particularly well dosed in terms of humor with a happy mixture of European humor, absurd humor and cynicism”, wrote in The Press the next day Jean Beaunoyer.
For many comedians of the millennial generation, the Just for Laughs galas, by their fixed form, were among the main responsible for a certain formatting of Quebec laughter. These events, however, continued to bring together the best of local humor: four of the five numbers cited in the category of Comedy Number of the Year at the last Olivier ceremony were presented in a Just for Laughs gala (including the Korine Côté’s winning number).
Although Yvon Deschamps has piloted no less than 15, it is Laurent Paquin who holds the record for the greatest number of galas, as a host, with 17. The Anglo counterpart of the galas will outlive its French counterpart, the presence of stars from all over the planet naturally giving them a unique character.
“It’s the end of the galas in their traditional form, concludes Patrick Rozon, but comedians who do stand-up, it will continue to be at the heart of what Just for Laughs is. »