“We say to ourselves that we need to see each other more often now”: the crazy story of the 50th anniversary of the Splendid told by Josiane Balasko

How was this book dedicated to the 50th anniversary of Splendid that you wrote together in favor of the Foundation for Medical Research born?

Initially, it was an initiative of Thierry (Lhermitte), he spoke to me about it and I told him that it would be good if the rights went to an association, but Thierry is actively involved in the Foundation for Medical Research (FRM), that’s how it was born, everyone agreed.

Thierry then asked us to find some old photos that had never been seen before and Jean-Pierre Lavoignat, a film journalist who we have known practically since our beginnings, was responsible for putting it all together.

He had a job: he collected the photos, he came to see us one after the other when we could be available, then had us comment on the photos he presented to us. We told him what it meant to us…

How did you experience this return in time?

What was interesting was that once the book was finished, we could read the comments. And it’s moving to know what each thought of the other. In the end, it proves that we got along well and were a harmonious team…

We still spent our youth together, we worked a lot, we wrote, we played, for us it was pleasure.

And then we were able to do what we wanted, films that worked, theater, and even, if we stopped writing together, no one was angry, everyone stayed, was able to develop their own personality and write your story.

Under what circumstances did you join the troupe?

I joined the band in 1973, 1974 if I remember correctly. Initially it was Valérie Mairesse who worked with the Splendid, she was also Thierry’s “girlfriend” at the time, after they separated she was called more and more by the cinema, so she left.

And when the troupe rented the lease on rue des Lombards, in Paris, borrowing money from everyone, to make it a café-theatre, they were missing a girl besides Marie-Anne Chazel to play the play they had just written.

As we knew each other through Martin Lamotte, we had mutual friends and they knew roughly what I was doing, I must have done a show or two, Thierry came to see me and said: “Would Do you want to be part of the troupe? We’re all writing together.”

I said, “Look, I don’t know if I can, but I agree!” And that’s how it started.

At the time, my companion was Bruno Moynot who, naturally, also joined the team, because Bruno is an outstanding handyman and, in a theater, we always need him. He then played notable roles.

Then comes this turning point in the history of Splendid, the play and film about Les Bronzés, inspired by your stays at Club Méditerranée.

I had to go once with them, but they went more often than me. Club Med invited a comedian or a troupe of young people who did sketches and they had a free vacation in Türkiye or Morocco. This is how they were able to attend the club more assiduously than me, meet the village chiefs, and observe, because there is a lot of observation in the first Bronzés.

Today that has changed, but at the time, Club Méditerranée was a meeting club, it wasn’t Meetic but almost (laughs), we went to relax, all in djellaba, so there was a slightly egalitarian side and we had time to have a story…

You push it even further then your characters in Les Bronzés go skiing…

The first film worked even though we were all unknown. So we were happy, but we didn’t want to make a sequel. The producer asked us for it and we finally did it.

We wrote this story based on rich characters, we wanted to talk about something else in this second film, but we kept this common denominator of people on vacation. So this time it was winter, in the snow and, again, I didn’t know anything about it… It was the first time that I had to put my feet in skis, while they, Thierry , Christian or Gérard are good skiers.

Was this shoot a little more trying for you?

There were times that were a little hard, not only for me, because it was cold and we spent days in the snow, it wasn’t very pleasant, but at the same time we were barely in our thirties , we were happy to work, to be there together, to make a film with Patrice Leconte that we had written, so the pleasure was stronger than the problems or the fatigue.

Santa Claus will then be one of the highlights of your collaboration, what memories do you keep of him?

The first two films, without being huge successes, had still worked, we weren’t losing money, so the producer told us that we could make another film.

Initially, we all created this Santa Claus play together, except for Michel (Blanc), because he had decided that he wanted to write alone. He had started doing things on his own. I didn’t play in the stage version, because I had another play at the same time, but I participated in the writing.

At the time, there were huge advertisements for SOS friendships, I don’t know if you remember that, but it was the association which responded to people who were struggling to live. We started from a situation where very very nice people, Thierry (Lhermitte) and Anémone found themselves forced to do horrible things (Laughs).

Anémone took the role of Thérèse which was for me at the beginning and she did well, because she is fantastic. It was also a way of making fun of this kindness which, sometimes, can turn bad. We also made real villains, like Santa Claus. There is poor Zezette, a social case, and Katia, a transvestite, rejected by her family.

But all these people were quite nice, we liked them. These are sort of wrecks that end up in an SOS distress-friendship center.

Your character of Madame Musquin was created for the film…

Yes, when we adapted the film, Patrice Leconte wanted to do other things and I then brought Jean-Marie Poiré, whom I introduced to them (this is where his abundant collaboration with Christian Clavier began, which will continue in particular with Les Visiteurs, Editor’s note), I had already worked with him and it worked straight away with the team.

At that time we created another character, this Marie-Ange Musquin, an extremely rigid person, the most rigid person to whom problems happened during that night. It amused me to do this locked-in character, who spends his Christmas in the elevator shaft.

Can we also see in this film, through some details, a nod to your original culture?

Yes, we used everything… I used my Yugoslav, Croatian origins, we took the opportunity to invent the surname of Preskovitch, who was the neighbor upstairs, very nice but a little clingy (Laughs) and who brought Kloug and the “spotsis” of Osjek, which is the town where my father was born.

In the film, it becomes doubitchous, which means “little ass” in Serbo-Croatian. We pulled out all the stops and it made us laugh to play this character who came from an unlikely country.

These roles have become cult, how do you analyze this unique bond that you have established with the French through these films?

I don’t know, we made films that worked, they weren’t flops, but they weren’t huge either, at the time some made millions of admissions, like Les Charlots, so I I think it happened gradually, it was the invention of the cassette, the rebroadcasts on TV, which made a lot of progress.

With video, we could suddenly see them again and, one thing leading to another, Santa Claus appeared regularly every Christmas on TV or almost, that’s how, I think, we entered into the French family album and, from generation to generation, and we could not have suspected that.

Les Bronzes 3 was a huge success, with more than ten million admissions, even if it was criticized.

We have never had critical successes, but popular successes. But then the same critics who didn’t like it watched the films in their video library (laughs), 10 years later, 20 years after that, so it doesn’t matter.

Your lines have become cult and resonated all the way to the funeral of your friend Michel Blanc.

Yes, this bastard left us over a misunderstanding, we’ve heard it ten times, but it’s true and it was terrible, it was a very, very bad joke that he played on us. What touched us was seeing the number of people waiting in front of the church. Even now, people tell us “we’re sorry, my condolences”, for them it’s family.

All these people knew Jean-Claude Dusse and, even if this character, sometimes, ran a little on the beans, he was the cousin of the family. Michel had a genius for formulas, he was a great author.

Michel always left first. He made us leave first, after a terrible, stupid accident, we say to ourselves that we must see each other more often, now, to avoid ending up in the cemetery.

Do you have other projects together?

It’s not easy to find, for the moment we don’t have a project together, but why not?