“Dusse, with a D like Dusse!” It’s hard to forget this line from Tanned people go skiingcult comedy from the Splendid troupe, which helped to endear Jean-Claude Dusse to the public. “The success (of Les Bronzés, editor’s note), for me, is Jean-Claude Dusse”confided Michel Blanc in his last interview given a few months ago to Paris Match. An interview published in full this Tuesday in the latest newsstand issue of the magazine, as a tribute to the man who died suddenly on October 3.
What Jean-Claude Dusse’s Michel Blanc really thought
In this interview, Michel Blanc returned to the other side of the coin of the popular success of Tanned. He who “previously filmed with Tavernier, Polanski or Claude Miller”was dismissed by auteur cinema. “I was never offered anything again, until Blier pulled me by the butt, if I may say so, to make Evening dress”, he said. The actor, whose funeral will be held this Thursday, October 10 in Paris, did not hide that he was ” felt prisoner of Jean-Claude Dusse” for many years. “Evening wear finally arrived quite quickly, six or seven years later The Bronzed. There, I have a prize at Cannes and I am reconsidered as an actor. But it’s true that in the first part of the 1980s, I was only offered sub-Dusse roles”. Asked about his departure from the Splendid troupe (Josiane Balasko, Gérard Jugnot, Bruno Moynot, Thierry Lhermitte, Christian Clavier and Marie-Anne Chazel) even before filming the successful comedy Santa Claus is trash, Michel Blanc explained last April that he “was afraid of being bored and boring people”. “There was a moment when I said to myself: ‘I’ve reached the end of what I could do in comedy'”.
Michel Blanc’s big regret about Les Bronzés 3
Michel Blanc reunited with his Splendid acolytes in 2006 for a third part of Tanned. If the film attracted more than 10 million admissions in theaters, the actor regretted having taken up the costume of Jean-Claude Dusse. “It’s not the best thing I’ve done! This is one film too many for me. Well, for me as an actor. Because Christian, for example, is extraordinary in it. It’s me who’s not good, I felt it while turning it. I no longer believed in Jean-Claude Dusse“, explained Michel Blanc to Paris Match last April, specifying that he was not happy with his performance and the result. “I find myself artificial (…) I understood from the second Tanned, that we had given the best of ourselves. And that what was done was no longer to be done. Hence the disaster of the third film”he concluded.
