Road to recovery
Star Nicolas Pinson, director Jean-François Rivard and producer Lou Bélanger reflect on making Quebecois comedy-drama Bon matin, Chuck (Good Morning, Chuck), a series about the downfall of a morning-show host in denial about his drug and alcohol addiction.
While some television series might tip the scales in favour of style over substance, a French-language comedy drama from Quebec arrives with ample amounts of both.
Bon Matin, Chuck (ou l’art de réduire les méfaits) – English title Good Morning, Chuck (Or The Art of Harm Reduction) – was shot in black and white, while a chaotic jazz-inspired soundtrack serves to disorientate the action.
But as star Nicolas Pinson, director Jean-François Rivard and producer Lou Bélanger explain, it’s all part of their plan to tell the story of the titular Chuck, the beloved host of a morning show who finds himself on the front page of newspapers and gossip magazines after a scandal involving his drug and alcohol addiction is uncovered.
While his fans are shocked, those closest to Chuck tell him this is the final straw. And with his reputation on the line, Chuck heads to rehab to convince his spouse, his agent and the public of his determination to clean up his act. The only problem is Chuck doesn’t think he has a problem.
For Pinson, who plays Chuck, the project has been more than an acting role. He also co-created the 10-part series with Rivard, Mathieu Cyr and Émilie Lemay-Perrault, and drew extensively on his own life experiences to play the lead character.
“I’ve struggled with addiction for 15 years of my life and I’ve done three stays in rehab – the last one was in 2012,” he tells DQ in Cannes, where Good Morning, Chuck celebrated its world premiere at Canneseries ahead of its launch on Canadian streamer Crave last month. “I started my rehabilitation with humour, which helped me a lot, because I’m a funny guy. I love to make jokes and have fun with people.
“A big part of my rehab was to laugh about what I did and my addictions. Every time I spoke about it, everybody was laughing, but they were laughing with tears, with sadness. So I thought maybe I could do a story about it. [The series] is real life, real anecdotes, real events. All the characters in the show, I met them at some point in rehab.”
Pinson first met with Cyr, who directs alongside Rivard, to discuss turning his experiences into a series, before teaming up with Lou Bélanger, Marieme Ndiaye and Rafael Perez at St Laurent TV, which coproduced the show with Connect3 Media. Pinson, Lemay-Perreault, Patrick Dupuis and Sarianne Cormier then wrote the scripts.
Bélanger says he would have worked with Pinson on any material, but he was particularly drawn to Good Morning, Chuck as he knew the struggles the actor had faced during his career.
“But the raw talent, the pureness of his heart, the desire and the passion to do his job as an actor, as a comedian, were there,” he says. “We knew all we needed were the right ingredients and the right context to make him the star that he is. He was a star but nobody knew it.
“As it was based on his real-life experiences, it was way more touching because everyone in our families and circle of friends, we’ve got people who struggle with addiction. So I have empathy for people who go through that. It was a ‘yes’ from the get-go for Nico, and the concept and the fact it was based on his life experiences was the icing on the cake.”
Pinson says the series, which is distributed by Cineflix Rights, was built on his ambition to show another side of addiction – one where the subject puts it down to his party lifestyle – rather than seeing a drug addict lying in the street.
“Addiction is everywhere, in every family. This is the main point of view,” he says. “It was a very hard project for everyone and it touched everybody in a different way. This is based on what I lived but you can have a thousand shows about addiction and they will all be different. Everyone has a story about that.”
“It really spoke to me because I discovered another thing about myself writing this,” says Rivard (Happily Married). “I’m in denial with addiction and I’m struggling also. And the show really helped me. I’m not over everything – I stopped drinking for four months – but this show is pretty special. On every level, it’s a special show for me. It’s not a job.”
Speaking honestly about his struggles with addiction, Pinson says he was a binge addict. He wouldn’t do drugs every day, but when he did take drugs, it would be for four days in a row. “It was very intense and very hard,” he says.
The feelings of psychosis and paranoia he would experience then came to inform the show’s distorted soundtrack, with skittish trumpets blasting in the background to unnerve viewers and keep them off-balance.
The decision to shoot in black and white then came from Rivard’s insistence that the topic of drug addiction be presented in a way that shows how it can come to affect people of any colour, religion or social status. A colour version was later produced as an alternative for international audiences.
“When you see it, you have the feeling that everyone is on the same level,” he says. “It’s also beautiful, and it goes to the essence of acting because there’s less information. It’s more like a Buster Keaton/Charlie Chaplin vibe. There’s less information, but more truth. Everything should be shot like this.
“I was drinking and drinking at home and then I stopped drinking for six months. After two months, my girlfriend asked me, ‘How do you feel?’ The first thing that came to mind was that I could see colours. It’s weird. The black and white gives you that fog you have every day. Even if you didn’t drink the night before, you’re still a functional addict, so you’re there but you’re not there.”
Pinson adds: “The black-and-white [style] is at the heart of Chuck too. He misses some colour in his life. This is seeing the world through the eyes of Chuck. He saw life in black and white.”
Good Morning, Chuck was filmed on location in Sherbrooke, a city equidistant between Montreal and Québec City in southern Québec, where the story could take Chuck away from city temptations such as bars and clubs and place him in a suburban rehab house.
It meant the cast and crew had a two-hour commute from their base, which added a complexity to the production schedule. It was particularly strenuous for Pinson, who is in every scene owing to the fact the story is told from his perspective. The cast also includes Chantal Fontaine, Sylvain Marcel, Bernard Fortin, Marilyne Castonguay, Benz Antoine, Amélie B Simard, Hugo Dubé, Lyna Khellef and Nathalie Doummar.
When it came to portraying Chuck, Pinson initially thought it would be best to play the character as if it were himself. But Rivard instead told him to take a different approach and separate himself from Chuck.
“That’s the genius of Jean-François,” the actor notes. “He said, ‘Forget what you lived, just play the role. Be in the moment.’ And from that point, I played Chuck. I know the things, but I was Chuck. You write a story, it was Chuck, so Chuck is real, but I know what he went through.”
“I have a friend but I met a really good fucking actor,” Rivard says of working with his lead. “He had all the weight [of the show] on his shoulders, and carrying the kind of schedule we have in Quebec, I met an actor I didn’t know. I discovered how good he was. Eighty percent of directing is in the casting, and when you’re a maestro, you try to have the best musician. You’re not there to teach them how to play violin.”
Good Morning, Chuck is the latest Quebecois drama to land on the international stage, following in the footsteps of series such as Audrey est revenue, Les temps des framboises, and Portrait-Robot.
“The fact we are a small portion of francophones surrounded by anglophone culture in North America, it triggers a survival instinct where you want to see what you’re experiencing,” Bélanger says of the booming Quebecois industry. “We’ve got a cross-breed between Europe and North America. And where once it was like, ‘Oh, you guys have got an accent,’ I always felt proud of that and thought that was something that distinguished what we did, because we are unique – not worse, not better, but singular and different in culture and population. There’s something special that it feels good to share with people from all around the world.”
Pinson believes the series resonates with viewers because, while it blends heart-breaking drama and sometimes outrageous humour, he wanted the feelings and emotions of the characters to be as authentic – and therefore as relatable – as possible.
“The show is really about the truth, about what I learned,” he says. “This is the real thing because it’s based on true events. It was very important that all along the process, it was the truth. It’s real.”
tagged in: Bon Matin Chuck, Connect3, Good Morning Chuck, Jean-François Rivard, Lou Bélanger, Nicolas Pinson, St Laurent TV