Patrick Howard warns, “The best way not to become my friend is to start a sentence with ‘Today’s youth…'”
Patrick Howard knows all about the interconnected session that A.J Bye byeand the consequent risk of falling. Already, in 2003, he embodied Pierre-Carl Pelado in Séraphin Poudrier’s This is not goodbyea sketch that made its author Louis Morissette end up on the journalism mogul’s blacklist.
Nervous, approaching his first participation in the year-end review as a member of the official cast? A little bit, but only to the extent that no one wants to make a bad thing Bye bye He said during a long interview with Journalism.
But Patrick Howard hasn’t felt at all in recent months that the creators of the traditional December 31 meeting were hitting the brakes. His code of conduct regarding impersonation? “If I’m not in a hurry to show a sketch of the person I’m playing, I don’t,” the actor declares, specifying, of course, that this rule excludes our leaders, who, “they, often, deserve.”
We can be wrong, we are not infallible, but people want us to take a chance. If we are too comfortable we will be told, if we go too far we will be told. It’s like in F1: you want the driver to pass as close to the wall as possible. Even sometimes, the world doesn’t hate it, a little crash.
Patrick Howard
Thus he refuses to adopt the rhetoric of those who claim that the room for maneuver for this type of program, and comedians in general, has narrowed. “If you go on social media, you’d think the whole population thinks this or that isn’t said, but on the street, that’s not what happens,” he notes. The freedom of speech of comedians hasn’t changed. There are people who just raise their hands to argue that there’s a way to say things that Hurt them, and that’s okay.”
Sensitivity does not mean that he believes certain topics should be crossed. “When you don’t talk about a person or a group, in jest, you dismiss them, you think they’re so weak. If you have affection for the person you’re making fun of, I think anything can pass.”
very funny and youth
Patrick Howard’s pilot from January 6 on Prime Video lol – who will laugh lasta Japanese format available in dozens of markets, based on a concept as simple as it is exhilarating: for six hours, ten elite comedians, caught in one large room, must resist the urge to laugh, providing even viewers with a scarce focus. Pure (and sometimes purely boyish) laughter.
“Once I was Set up I thought to myself: Why didn’t I think of it myself before? ‘,” recalls the host of these six episodes starring Mary-Lynn Joncas, Rachid Badouri, Yves Pelletier, Arnaud Soule, Christine Morency, Laurent Paquin, Richardson Zephyr, Virginie Fortin, Matthew Dufour and Edith Cochran.
PHOTO CHARLES WILLIAM PELLETIER, PRESS
part of the distribution very funny : Mathieu Dufour, Yves Pelletier, Arnaud Soule, Richardson Zephyr, Laurent Paquin and Patrick Howard
lol – who will laugh last? Could it bring together the young audience that Quebec productions are struggling to seduce, as we wrote so much this fall? Howard says, “Of course, this is a topic that interests me, but it’s our fault, this problem. I don’t know what to say.” Also? Our man is clearly frustrated.
If your only response to the fact that young people aren’t interested enough in Quebec culture is to say: Netflix and the company are too big, we can’t compete with them, well, let’s shut down our platforms. If young people are using Netflix, it may be because we talk about them there more than we do on our platforms.
Patrick Howard
He talks about the success of his favorite teen shows like cottageAnd the An entire high school or concert Mammoth. “It is proof that if we challenge them, if we represent them, if we give them the means to tell their stories, young people will be there.”
Cinema lacks diversity
25 years ago, in December 1997, the first installment of the franchise boys It took the stage and surpassed at the box office, against all odds, the sinking American mega-boat. Comedies on Skates began a booming period for Quebec cinema, both in terms of quality and theater attendance.
Image from the movie boys (1997), Press Archives
Remy Gerrard, Patrick Howard, Patrick Labe, Marc Messier, Yvan Ponton and Serge Theriault in boys (1997)
“I’m part of the gang that worked so hard to stop people saying Quebec cinema is bad,” says Patrick Howard. At the time, the best compliment you could receive was: it’s good…for a Quebec movie. But we managed to make people proud of Quebec cinema. And there, now, I get the impression we’re back in the same damn pattern. »
Without concluding outright dissatisfaction, which the statistics may contradict, the director laments a show which he considers to be too little varied, and whose disconnect at Gala Québec cinema, which he laments, is perhaps not foreign. “We don’t make genre films, romantic comedies, biopics! It saddens me that we have escaped from the stick to the big American machine. It’s simple, and I’m tired of repeating it: it takes all kinds of films, because everyone benefits from the success of others. »
Back to the stage?
Rubbing shoulders with the comedians on set lol: who will laugh last Did it make Patrick Howard want to reconnect with the stage? “I’m starting to think about a topic,” drops the show, whose last run dates back to 2012. “I’d like to talk to my fellow friends.”
PHOTO LUC-SIMON PERREAULT, Press Archives
Patrick Howard at the Just for Laughs Festival in 1993
Those who use the word get up In all sauces? “Yes, as if it were a breed of zombies!” [Il éclate de rire.] There is propaganda around this word that works. We want to demonize it because we wanted to demonize feminism in another era. what is the word get up Calls us to do is just stay awake to what is happening around us. I can understand it brewing some of my buddies. Yes, there can be excesses. But do not come and say to me: Tse, young men, today … ”
Above all, don’t count on Patrick Howard to complain that he can no longer say anything. “It scares me, the columnists who spend hours on their multiple platforms saying ‘I can’t say anything’.” a leg, stop saying that you can’t say anything and say something. »
very funny – Who will laugh last ? , starting January 6 on Prime Video
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