“The Voice”, “Who wants to be my partner? “, but also Netflix documentaries, “La Cuisine des mousquetaires” or trailers for arthouse films… Jérôme Commandeur is wide-ranging in the programs that he parodies over the eight episodes of his “Magical World” launched this Wednesday at 9 p.m. on Canal+. Each time, the result is hilarious as the comedian, actor and director knows how to aim just right by finding the right balance between the absurd and the exaggeration. A know-how of which he has the secret that 20 Minutes sought to break through… Here, according to Jérôme Commandeur, are the six commandments of a successful parody.
A love of parody you will have
“When someone says ‘parody’ to me, I think of that of ‘Dossiers de l’screen’ by the Splendid in Grandpa resistsLes Nuls, les Inconnus, le Palma Show… I’m also thinking of Il Trio, who are the Italian Unknowns. My family is Italian, when I was a kid and we watched their shows on TV there, I rolled on the floor. Parody, I love it. As soon as I have a moment of slack, I watch some, like that of “Cinéma cinémas” with the “upsetting” and Didier Bourdon as Tuscan du Plantier… I told myself that, if one day I had to suggest something to a channel, it would be parody. I went to see Maxime Saada [le président du directoire du groupe] at Canal+, I told him what I wanted to do and he was convinced straight away, I think. »
To speak to all generations you will seek
“I liked the somewhat old-fashioned idea of recurrence, which has disappeared a little. Today, in general, we tend to see special evenings with comedians in a single prime time. I wanted to offer a meeting with two episodes per week. 26 minutes per episode is quite enjoyable to watch. I wanted to talk to everyone. In the 1980s and 1990s, I watched “Champs Elysées” and “Surprise sur prize” with my parents and my sister. I would like the show to be watched like it was then. Nothing would make me happier than to come across, after the broadcast, a family telling me “We followed The Magical World… with the kids and the grandparents during the holidays”. For the parodied themes and programs, I wanted to have fun. I told myself that we needed the general public and what I call “down the hall on the right”, that is to say which is not necessarily known to everyone or, at least, which is not something immediate. I am thinking in particular of call quiz Saturday and Sunday morning on M6 where people call to piece together a puzzle by answering questions. »
Various personalities you will invite
“For the guestsinvited to play in the parodies, I wanted to cast a wide net. They range from Lena Situations to Thierry Lhermitte via Panayotis Pascot, Alison Wheeler, Karin Viard, Pio Marmaï and Guillaume Gallienne. I was a bit like a kid in a toy store. I would love to tour with anyone who makes an appearance. There is also Laurent Delahousse who pays a nice tribute to Yves Mourousi, of whom he was a very fan. On set, I felt like I had my own doll’s house. »
The right tone you will find
“Where should we place the cursor so that the parody is funny and relevant? I could say “I don’t know” but also respond for two hours. That’s all the work. I’m not an imitator. I have never stood in front of a mirror or a tape recorder to try to adjust my voice. It’s more a question of “climate”: the decor, the costumes, the language tics, the breathing. A successful parody, it’s graceful. I love this sentence: “Baraka is part of good management”, that is to say that you may have planned everything, if up there it doesn’t help you a little, it doesn’t work. … You have to be in the acceptable neon, in neither too much nor too little. On all the shoots that I have done as a director or actor there is always someone who, at one point, says: “But no, we wouldn’t do that in real life” and someone who replies “Yes, but we’re not in real life”. And in the end, the answer is “We are at the service of the film”. There it’s the same, we are at the service of parody. If we reproduce the broadcast in the narrow senseit doesn’t work, and if we shift it too much by making boxes, it doesn’t work either. You have to feel your way. »
Limits, you will not necessarily put yourself
“When I’m working on a one-man show, I sometimes say to myself, ‘You can’t write that, it’s not possible, people will find it disgusting.’ And then finally, in the middle of a show, a little drop of that, which, cold, on paper, looks a little crude, will go over very well in front of 2,000 people. At Europe 1, [où il livrait des chroniques humoristiques dans la matinale] I was always told “Be careful, people have their heads in their toast, you can’t do anything”. It’s not just a question of freedom of tone, it’s a question of code, you have to take the roundabout the right way. In the assembly of the episodes, we show things in episodes 6 and 7 that we would not have put in the first episode. The viewer needs to be a little familiar with what we’re parodying and how we do it. I often say that it’s not because an old lady wants to have fun that we arrive at her house with our feet on the table. »
What won’t be funny, you will throw away
“We shot some parodies that didn’t work, but I won’t say which ones or what they were. They do not appear in the final cut. We didn’t throw away many – fortunately as I produce the show, it would have bothered me. It’s inexplicable. You go in with all your guns, you’re happy with your guests, your script, your sets, you shoot the sequence, you edit it, you look at it and you notice that it doesn’t do it and you would almost be incapable of say why. That’s all that makes the magic of it. »
