COMEDY IS BIG BUSINESS
Quebec’s humorists are bigger than its rock stars: Kelly
When I told Louis-José Houde the topic of our discussion — that Quebec’s standup comics are our rock stars — he immediately launched into a joke. Of course he did. He’s a comedian. That’s what he does. He told me he’d written a joke to do as host of the recent ADISQ gala, involving exactly that idea. “That was the premise, but the joke never made the final cut,” said Houde. “It worked, but it was a bit off-topic for my opening monologue. I won’t tell you the whole joke, but the starting point was: Here we are at the music awards ceremony, but the real rock stars are the comics. There’s Mike Ward, who we’re never sure if he’s in prison or not. There’s Phil Roy, who is on the verge of a heart attack at every show. We have François Bellefeuille, who is a death-metal band. He’s got long hair, he’s screaming and he’s already castrated cats (in his career as a vet).” In fact, the idea isn’t so much that the province’s funny men and women are like rock stars in their style or performance, but that they have become more popular than Quebec’s rock and pop stars. Back in the day, musicians such as Michel Rivard, Richard Séguin and Jean Leloup could headline well over 100 concerts across Quebec and sell wads of pricey tickets, while their albums were going platinum. Today, like everywhere else in the world, the music business chez nous is hardly a business any more, with album sales a fraction of what they once were. And for years now, ticket sales for francophone Quebec musicians have been on the decline. As the musicians make less money, the comics make more and more. It almost seems like the same audience that used to buy tickets to rock and pop concerts ici is now buying almost exclusively tickets to see Quebec comedians. Houde, for example, has sold 1.2 million tickets since the debut of his first one-man show in 2002. That’s an astonishing figure. Martin Matte, another of Quebec’s hottest comics, told me he’s not sure how many tickets he’s sold, but he provided a few eye-popping tidbits. He is in the midst of what he calls “a small tour,” titled Eh La La ..!, but “small” for Matte means 120 dates across the province. He did more than 300 shows for his previous tour, Condamné à l’excellence, which started in 2007 and sold more than 400,000 tickets. These tickets for A-list comics sell at rock-star prices — between $50 and $70. Matte, who headlined two shows at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier of Place des Arts this week, figures he has played that 3,000-capacity hall at least 50 times. He also has headlined the Bell Centre a few times, in a configuration that fits around 10,000 fans. It’s not just the veterans such as Houde and Matte who sell tickets by the truckload. Roy has sold over 100,000 tickets for his first headline tour, Monsieur, with the 250-date road trip set to end Feb. 14 at Cinquième Salle of Place des Arts.
Ticket sales for francophone Quebec musicians have been on the decline. As the musicians make less money, the comics make more and more.
The box-office exploits of Mariana Mazza’s first solo tour are even more impressive. She launched Femme ta gueule in the fall of 2016, and won the Félix award for comedy show of the year at the 2017 ADISQ gala. At last year’s Gala les Olivier, the annual Quebec comedy awards ceremony, she won the public-vote Olivier de l’année, the soiree’s most prestigious prize. Mazza has sold 240,000 tickets over the course of the tour, which will continue throughout 2019. “We are rock stars and, yes, we really have a big influence on people,” Mazza said. “If you ask me, here in Quebec, people have to fall in love with the comic for the comic to become successful. They fall in love with the personality, then they need to go see your show. They listen to us. I’m convinced that if the premier was a comic, people would pay more attention to politics. We laugh at ourselves, at other people. We don’t have a choice. We have to be authentic. “Also, this is a country that’s very cold and people need to warm themselves up. They need to laugh. They need to feel that they’re not alone.” The agency and production company Groupe Phaneuf is the perfect example of the shift in Quebec’s cultural landscape. Founded by Luc Phaneuf in 1970, it represented many of the top Quebec musical artists, including Plume Latraverse, Offenbach and Claude Dubois. Phaneuf died in 2015, and the company is now run by his son Benjamin. The outfit began dabbling in the comedy biz in the early 2000s, booking Houde’s first tour. Last year, Benjamin Phaneuf decided to move almost entirely to comedy. (The only musician they still represent is Latraverse.) “We decided to focus only on comedy because we were working with so many comics and we wanted to give them the proper attention,” Phaneuf said. “There are more than 60 comics on tour right now in Quebec. When I started in comedy, there were maybe 12 at any one time. I think one of the big factors was the creation of L’École nationale de l’humour (in 1988).” The comedy school counts many of the province’s most famous comics as alumni, including Patrick Huard, Houde, Philippe Bond, Matte, Ward and Claudine Mercier. The other reason comedy is booming and music ticket sales are sagging is that there are plenty of ways to consume music — via streaming, downloading and so on — but standup is an art form that thrives on stage. “Music consumers don’t need to go see live shows, with all the music that’s available on the web, in contrast to 20 years ago,” said Joanne Pouliot, director general of the Association des professionnels de l’industrie de l’humour. “With comics, you have to see them on stage. It’s that or nothing. There are (almost) no albums, there aren’t many DVDs anymore.” Meanwhile, Quebec comics are more present in the media than ever before. It’s almost a must for every major show on a franco FM station to have a comic as part of the team, and you can’t turn on local French-language TV without stumbling across a standup comic. One of the most popular Quebec TV shows in recent years was Les beaux malaises, a TVA sitcom created by and starring Matte, who (à la Jerry Seinfeld) played a popular standup comic named … Martin Matte. Matte says he believes the Quebec standup boom is directly related to the fact that comics are cracking wise en français about notre culture. “I went to see Louis C.K. when he came here, and he’s a very accomplished comic, but he isn’t telling us about Quebec,” said Matte. “It’s a whole other thing to hear comedy with our accent, our vision as francophones in this sea of anglophones. Even comics from France don’t have the same impact. There’s something unique about Québécois comics.” Houde notes that the phenomenon began even before him and Matte, thanks to bestselling comics like Lise Dion, Jean-Michel Anctil, Jean-Marc Parent and Le Groupe Sanguin. “But I have no idea how this all happened,” said Houde. “I think the comedy business became more structured during the 1990s. Production companies were founded. But I’m not sure how it is that the public’s taste changed. “I think people listen to music just as much as they ever did. But it is incredible when you think of the size of the francophone population here and how many shows someone like me can do. It’s a real privilege for us.”