For its 20th anniversary, Caméra Café is back in a special episode “Caméra Café: 20 years already”. For the occasion, Bruno Solo and Yvan Le Bolloc’h confided in the microphone of Allociné.
20 years after making an impression on viewers, the cult series Caméra Café returns for a special Camera Café episode: 20 years already.
For the occasion, Bruno Solo and Yvan Le Bolloc’h, the interpreters of the unforgettable Hervé and Jean-Claude, find their acolytes for a last lap in front of the coffee machine.
Allociné: How did the idea for this project come about?
Yvan Le Bolloc’h: Personally, I loved Camera Café. I loved writing it. I loved interpreting it. I loved making it. When I look back thirty years, when I left my suburbs and I had dirt under my shoes, I tell myself that Camera Café brought me a lot. It’s not even quantifiable.
Given where I came from and the connections I had in the profession – that is to say none -, finding myself on the bill of a program that has conquered so many people in France and abroad , it was unexpected.
It is therefore something that is very very dear to me. Besides, if I had been told to redo an episode to celebrate ten years, I would have done it with as much pleasure as for twenty years.
Did you have carte blanche to address the subjects you deal with in this special episode: Charlie Hebdo, the attacks, the #MeToo movement…? And how did you choose the topics to be covered?
Bruno Solo: Carte blanche, we gave it to ourselves. That is to say that we decided that we could not come back with a program that is lukewarm and that denies the very idea of Camera Café, a series that has always treated current affairs in a somewhat fierce way .
We have always represented two rather monstrous characters, full of vices and turpitudes. Still, we had sympathy because we love these overwhelmed morons who think they’re above the fray.
When we told M6 that we were going to make this special episode, they suspected that it would not be in fear of social networks who judge before they saw. We said “we go straight or we don’t“.
They played the game but we were still a little cautious. Self-censorship is not a problem if it really serves the cause of humor. In the end, we were able to find the balance that seems the fairest to us.
Regarding the subjects chosen, we looked in the newspapers at the major events that had crossed France over the past fifteen years. Just look on Google. There were attacks, yellow vests, natural disasters, the arrival of the iPhone, social networks…
All of these subjects make it possible to find a humorous and fierce angle, so it was not the most difficult. Above all, we had to get it accepted and find with our authors the switch that allowed us to laugh about it.
Yvan Le Bolloc’h : Inevitably, there are subjects that fell by the wayside because we did not see the possible connection with the members of the company. So there have been oversights.
Bruno Solo : And what also seems to us to be the real good idea is this famous continuous day around the eviction of Jean-Claude where we evoke these events through an object, a photo or a memory.
This evocation had to be in front of the camera because we didn’t have the means to stage the events evoked. And if you evoke them, as we have always done through a theater scene, that’s great.
The day continues, which is for once very cinematographic, was funny but on the other hand, the significant events, it is an assumed camera face. On the concept, I think we had an original idea.
Yvan Le Bolloc’h : Knowing business life well means that when you’re fired, it’s always the same. You return your badge, you pack your boxes.
We all know the images of Lehman Brothers when the bank closed in 2008. You saw the guys taking out their lives in a box. So the idea came from there. Jean-Claude is heavy, he is in his office with his buddy and they are filling his little box. And that will systematically send us back to the past.
Was it complicated to bring together all the actors in the series?
Bruno Solo : No. It took three phone calls. There were a lot of emotions. When everyone arrived on set and saw the setting they left fifteen years ago, it was poignant.
I imagine that there was a particular emotion to find oneself in the sets of Caméra Café with the whole team of the time?
Bruno Solo : Both of us prepared for it because we wrote for almost a year so we felt the thing going up. We saw the sets redone, we chose the colors, etc.
On the other hand, Alexandre Pesle, Armelle or even Jeanne Savary hadn’t seen anything before arriving and it was a kind of temporal shock. They said to themselves “I still took 20 years“. At the same time, it’s cool to go back to those 20s which is the most symbolic and charming age there is.
Yvan Le Bolloc’h : We sometimes handed them the handkerchiefs.
Bruno Solo : Some had the small tear.
What is your view of the success of Caméra Café and your contribution to short comedy programmes? Do you think that without Camera Café, series like En famille or Scènes de Ménages could have existed?
Bruno Solo : It’s all the funnier because En Famille and Camera Café are produced by Alain Kappauf, the co-creator of Camera Café with us. Undoubtedly, there is therefore a filiation on the form. Basically it is very different.
You have nevertheless brought something to the French audiovisual landscape…
Bruno Solo : We were among the first. But we have the honesty to say that it was the huge success of a Canadian format called Un gar, une fille that allowed us to launch Camera Café.
We created Camera Café long before Un gars, une fille, but it wasn’t on the air until 2001. Despite everything, it’s thanks to Un gars, une fille that people said to themselves that short formats could walk. We took advantage of this momentum but I think we went a little further in the vision of a certain society.