“That, Dominic, it’s absolutely true,” exclaims Véronique Cloutier to your journalist, sitting next to him at the back of the small Fenplast room.
We are in Longueuil, on April 26, for the second running date of her husband’s first solo show, who is then, in the spotlight, recounting a particularly painful night during which he had to ask his wife to helping him put his shoulder back into place which is constantly dislocated, an increasingly humiliating anecdote as the story moves to a… toilet bowl.
For a long time, Louis Morissette told himself that he would sleep when he died. But one day, a doctor told him that the hearing in his left ear, of which he could no longer hear anything, would probably never return. Worse: if he continued to drive at full speed, he risked losing his hearing on his right side, a tragedy for anyone and, even more so, for anyone making a career in the world of communications. Conclusion: if he didn’t want to sleep forever, he had better take a long nap.
Beyond the controversies he returns to during Under Pressure, this is undoubtedly what is most disconcerting, even disturbing, about this show: the extent to which the comedian has stubbornly refused to listen to his body, riddled with nagging aches and pains ( including an acute case of bruxism) symptomatic of a phenomenal inability not to work, work, work all the time.
“It is certain that my sister’s disability [Eve, who lives with cerebral palsy] immediately contributed to me seeing rest as a weakness, because I have always been aware of the privilege that I had to walk,” confides the Drummondville resident in his office at KOTV, the TV production company he founded in 2011.
On the wall: a large black and white photo of his wife and three children, football memorabilia and a poster highlighting the 250,000 tickets sold for Morissette, the popular tour that traveled the province from 2014 to 2019.
It was following the cancellation of the Morissette II tour, announced before the pandemic then postponed and postponed, that Véronique Cloutier suggested to her lover to finally tick off the old dream of a solo show, which he has been carrying around since leaving the National School of Humor in 1996.
The graduate in marketing and international business from McGill University had registered there like others going on a trip to Europe, to treat themselves to one last splurge before entering the priesthood of adult life. Or, in his case, before taking over the reins of his father’s company, Venmar Ventilation. Which, in the end, never happened, the call of laughter being louder than anything.
In 2010, Louis Morissette had already risked a few attempts at numbers, alone at the microphone, during various comedy evenings, in bars where his wife accompanied him, whose “wisdom” and frankness, he says , have always been beneficial to him. “But the two or three attempts he made didn’t bring anything particular to the landscape of humor,” she recalls in an interview. It was stand-up for the sake of doing stand-up, it wasn’t embodied. »
A reproach that would be difficult to level at Under Pressure, a show that no other comedian could present, to the extent that no other comedian shares his daily life with one of the most famous presenters in Quebec and that no other comedian is at war with the boss of Quebecor. Such is the reckless bet of this laying bare, in which Morissette aspires to touch the universal by not erasing anything that is not universal in her life at all.
Reminder: in 2003, Louis Morissette signed a sketch for Ceci n’est pas un bye bye inspired by A Man and His Sin, transposing the couple Pierre Karl Péladeau and Julie Snyder into the costumes of Séraphin Poudrier and Donalda. A parody that the press magnate had received with very little self-deprecation.
At the beginning of 2004, the comic guy immediately learned that the host of the TVA reality show For better and for worse was being taken away from him. Nearly 20 years later, the conflict between Pierre Karl Péladeau and Louis Morissette, although less vehement, has still not been resolved and KOTV has never yet collaborated with a branch of Quebecor.
Does Louis Morissette still hold a grudge against PKP? “I don’t know if I blame him, but I sure am proud. Véro has often told me that I have pride in running shoes. »
The producer admits to having negotiated the numerous chapters of this conflict with arrogance – he does not hesitate to add a layer of it to his show – but nevertheless hopes for a relaxation. “I called his office [located a few blocks from his in downtown Montreal], I told his team that anytime, if he has a canceled appointment , a hole at the end of the day, I would like us to talk to each other like gentlemen. But I was told: “Forget it, he doesn’t want to see you.” »
Would you actually go there, Louis? “I would definitely go. Life is too short. »
Louis Morissette also discusses in Under Pressure the stratospheric failure of his VIP show and the media soap opera caused by Bye Bye 2008. And even if it is difficult not to conclude that there is relentlessness when seeing the pages scrolling on a giant screen frontispieces of the Journal de Montreal accusing the couple of all the wrongs, some of the sketches of this edition of the end-of-year meeting were undeniably in questionable taste, which their creators admitted.
Is there not a risk in reopening these closed files?
But, Morissette insists, anyone can recognize their own setbacks in these events which do not happen to everyone. “That’s why I worry that a lot of the interviews I give emphasize that I’m talking about my life, when in fact I’m talking about life,” he says.
“The show is me wondering why we run around like idiots all the time. Are you really for the rest of us or, in my case, to show that I’m not just the boyfriend, to show my father that I wasn’t wrong to follow my own plan, to show that I had my place ? »