It was in 1991 that the phone call came that would change Luc Dionne’s life. The man is 31 years old. Ex-music student, ex-political attaché, he has neither defined profession nor precise goal in life. One day, an author friend gave him the summary of an FBI report on a case dating from the mid-1970s: Operation Fountain Pen. She doesn’t understand much about it. Dionne devours the report and becomes passionate about the case. He ends up calling the FBI. In Washington.
Published at 7:00 a.m.
In very imperfect English, he introduces himself as an author – which he is not – and indicates that he intends to write a book on Fountain Pen – he does not have the slightest publishing contract in his pocket. He asks to speak to the two double agents who were the heroes of this first FBI undercover operation for two years.
Incredibly, he succeeded.
In a hotel room in Sacramento, California, Jack Brennan and Jim Wedick tell him about the mission in which they took unprecedented risks to infiltrate organized crime. Their story is breathtaking. “I’m really excited,” says Dionne, still enthusiastic 30 years later. This is exactly where it comes from Silence. I said to myself: we should make a series about double agents. »
Dionne – who has never written a line in her life – gets down to work. He is writing the first two episodes of his future series. With his script under his arm, he goes to see the author Jean-Pierre Plante.
[L’auteur Jean-Pierre Plante] said to me: “I don’t know if it’s really you who wrote that, but if it’s you, don’t worry about what you’re going to do in life. You’re going to be a screenwriter. »
Luc Dionne
Dionne will take her two episodes to a producer, who is interested in the project. The author gets to work, the series is written, the casting is done. It is difficult to find an actor of Italian origin to play the Montreal godfather of the mafia: it is the restaurateur Dino Tavarone who inherits it. “It was the miracle of the Madonna! “, Tavarone says with a laugh.
PHOTO DAVID BOILY, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
The comedian Dino Tavarone, in 2015
Three weeks after filming began, there was a bone. The director, Michel Poulette, does not get along with the author. Incredibly (again!), the completely neophyte author gets the nod from the experienced director. We start the series again from zero. A million dollars thrown in the trash. “It was a nuclear bomb in the industry,” remembers Dionne.
Almost all of the 34 actors are fired. The actor Gildor Roy was one of them. “In the first version of the series, I was Luc Picard! » Dino Tavarone also remembers it very well. “They changed everything. All the actors! That left me, Claude Blanchard and France Castel. »
In the meantime, the new director, Pierre Houle, read the script. “I remember being up most of the night reading that. It was a page turner. The problem was that there were no characters! So we started from scratch. »
There were obviously characters, but they were sorely lacking in depth, admits Dionne. “I learned my trade with those two,” he says. These two are the director Pierre Houle and the producer Francine Forest.
Leave nothing behind
The director and author go into research mode. “We went to the Italian cafes, the little rooms in the back where they play cards. Cafes where no one has coffee, where there are three Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Maseratis outside. The guys with the chains stuck in their hair, we saw them! », says Houle.
Dionne drags her director to a hot dog restaurant in Laval similar to the one run by Claude Blanchard in the series, where all the “cooks” are armed with pagers and regularly leave their hotplates to deliver many other things than fries.
We went to meet them, the SQ double agents. The Hell’s Angels lent us their motorcycles. The Rock Machine lent us their premises. There is nothing that we have not done in terms of research.
Pierre Houle, director ofSilence
Before being filmed, the script was also reread by police officers… and also by members of organized crime.
Luc Dionne wrote at the pace of a machine gun, remembers Pierre Houle. “It was a typewriter. Phenomenal. In a week, he could rewrite a new version of the script. »
The character of double agent François Pelletier falls to actor Luc Picard. “It’s the kind of role you dream of having. My first big role in a big TV series. Luc and I kind of started together. »
In a feverish atmosphere, changes to the script continued even in the editing room, remembers Francine Forest. We made the choice – audacious, at the time – to focus on a very present soundtrack with the jazzman Michel Cusson. “We didn’t want to look like Godfather. We wanted to make a modern series,” illustrates the producer.
Upon its release, Silence triumph. “Monday 8 p.m. arrives, and everything stops at my house,” writes the almighty critic of The Press Louise Cousineau. Like her, two million people are glued to their television every Monday. Dino Tavarone, unknown before Silencenow gets stopped in the street for autographs. Buses stop in front of his restaurant. “Look, it’s Scarfo!” »
Five years after his phone call to the FBI, Luc Dionne’s career as a screenwriter was definitively launched.
