How do you get to Canal +?
“It’s Pierre Lescure [un des responsables historiques de C +, NDLR] who called me in the spring of 1984. I was at TF1 at the time. I had known Pierre before, at RMC. We had affinities and kept a bond. He first called Alain De Greef [autre futur pilier de la chaîne, NDLR]then after me. I didn't think about it. I said yes straight away. I remember that the boss of TF1 at the time, Hervé Bourges, told me that I was making “the mistake of my life”. »
Why take this plunge into the unknown?
“It was the channel of my generation. Pierre Lescure, we are the same age, Charles Biétry [figure des sports de C +, NDLR] almost as well. We were approaching forty, we said to ourselves, “What do we do? Do we stay where we are or do we give it a try?” It was a risk-taking that was quite exhilarating. »
How was Canal + received at the beginning?
“There were only three channels before. Everything was settled. It was the politicians who somewhat controlled television. Now it's money. So, Canal is the first private channel to start, paid. We were condemned from the start by a large part of the press: France-Soir headlined “Canal +, it's already a failure”. They could have been right. I started on a morning TV show, the first in France, it was called “Le 7/9” and I commented on football matches in the evening. I never doubted. However, after six months, Canal + was not working. And then afterward, it took off. It's great to find yourself with a blank page, without market research. If there had been, Canal + might never have existed. »
How does Canal + end up being associated with a moment in the collective imagination at the Cannes Film Festival?
“At the beginning, I did the show “Zénith”, at the edge of a hotel swimming pool, with three chairs, with Coluche. The Croisette was deserted during the Festival at that time, we were riding scooters without helmets. It started like this: when we do Cannes, we live in a blockbuster for 15 days. We are in the same hotel as the people from the cinema, at the same restaurant, we go for a drink in the same nightclub, we have breakfast nearby. The director Wim Wenders told me “I meet you every year here, in the hotel elevator at 2:00 in the morning, it's funny”. I invited him on the show. I was identified. »
What was the recipe for success at Canal + when you were starting out, unknown, like Omar Sy?
“I was there at the beginning, for 30 years I saw them all happen. You have to be a little obsessed with your work, a little excessively, to succeed. Everyone who started with me, Marc-Olivier Fogiel, Jean-Luc Delarue, Yann Barthès, Christophe Dechavanne, initially did one-minute sequences. They arrived in the morning at 8:30 a.m., they left in the evening at 9:00 p.m. The minute they did, they saw her again, twisted her again. The girls who did the weather forecast]like Louise Bourgoin, Editor's note]it's the same, they worked a lot all day. The Canal + babies in my book* are now half of French cinema. Michel Hazanavicius started at Canal by making small montages and hijacking images. And later he won Oscars in Hollywood for The artist. »
What do you think of the channel today?
“I watch Formula 1 there. The production is fantastic and there is the talent of the commentators, it’s really great. I also watch films. But now, Canal has become above all a platform. We were a chain. It's not the same thing. »
*Author of Very first time published by Flammarion
France
