Published yesterday at 7:00 am.
“The desire to be loved is something you can never cure,” thinks Louis Morissette. Hoping to be respected by your peers is a normal feeling. But let’s say I was 9 out of 10 before and now I’m closer to 4 or 5 out of 10.
Last April in Longueuil in the Fenplast room, Louis Morissette seemed a little nervous as 8 p.m. approached, but not so much that he chased the many guests crowding there, including his wife and their son Justin, out of his small dressing room. (who will be opening acts during their tour), their director Pascale Renaud-Hébert and their screenwriter François Avard. To lighten the atmosphere, Véronique tells of the time when an audience member stood up to insult Louis during a Morissette performance in Quebec.
PHOTO DOMINICK GRAVEL, THE PRESS
Véronique Cloutier, François Avard and Louis Morissette
Luckily, no one will be yelling at him during this second run of his solo show. But ? “Well, it wasn’t easy tonight, my Louis,” Avard tells him with his usual nonchalance when he’s back in the dressing room. His performance was anything but a catastrophe, but was nevertheless interrupted by some hesitations, after all, the young man in his mid-fifties has rarely been on stage alone in the last 20 years.
“The room was a little cold, it took my rhythm away, but I was aware that night as I was doing it that it wasn’t a finished product. “Nobody does anything like that anymore, tearing up twenty-one hours at a time,” he explained in an interview a few months later, referring to his colleagues who typically perform their shows number by number in comedy cabarets. “But even if it wasn’t funny at all, my ego would have been hurt, but it’s nothing like the stress of a ‘bye bye.’ »
Why does the successful producer, the sought-after actor, the screenwriter with diverse ideas subject himself to this ordeal? “I think it’s because he has to do business for fun,” replies Véronique Cloutier, who admits that from the early stages of creation she was afraid that her boyfriend would try to throw away too much. “He’s still a fundamentally proud person and I wondered if he wouldn’t be too keen to show that he’s capable of doing well. »
“There is no amount of success or amount of money that can take me away from the foundation of this profession, which is to put myself in danger,” explains the man who wanted to reconnect with the creator within him. For Louis Morissette remains a figure torn by numerous paradoxes, both artist and businessman, fiery and open-minded, arrogant and fearful, although in this case perhaps sometimes one was the manifestation of the other. One thing is certain: being locked in a hut irritates him deeply.
I think I’m a good producer, but it annoys me when people call me that. I am not just that.
Louis Morissette
The journey of “little Narfé”
At the Maison de la Culture in Lachine on September 14, Louis Morissette seemed much more relaxed after a whole summer of training, oscillating naturally between introspection, reflection, anecdotes and jokes about his wife, about whom he multiplies the gently disgusting sentences. Jokes that the audience receives with a mixture of cheers and guilt, while the main character always reacts with explosive hilarity.
Relax, Louis Morissette? Let’s not exaggerate, although he spares no effort to address his toxic workplace relationship and his numerous health issues. His friend and golf partner Louis-Jean Cormier introduced him to the beneficial effects of meditation.
“I have been completely obsessed with my job for 20 years. Here I am going into my 50s and would like to live the rest of my life differently,” says Morissette, adding with a laugh: “I would like to be able to play golf under 85.” [un très bon score]. And I know that one of the secrets is to be calmer. But I’ve always been a bit of a narcissistic person who shocks himself. Louis-Jean repeats it to me: It’s no use being shocked by your last move, look at the next one instead. »
Véro also helps to appease her husband and remind him of the original goal of this tour, which was to be rather short (around a hundred dates) and, if possible, end in relatively intimate settings.
“Sometimes I have to pull him back when I hear him having great ideas on the phone with the person planning his tour,” she says, with all the kindness in the world in her voice. “That’s when I told him: Let’s start small. The goal is not to boast about having filled a large room twelve times. Let us not think about wealth, success and pride, but rather about pleasure. This is the best way to avoid anxiety. »