1995 Articles

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=130 BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#F7F7FF"> <div> <IMG SRC="4937ad40.gif" border=0 width="122" height="212" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#F7F7FF"> <div> 1995 Articles</div> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>LE DEVOIR OCTOBER 21st. 1995</B><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#FFCC66" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="243ecb10.gif" border=0 width="236" height="177" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"><IMG SRC="48ecfea0.jpg" border=0 width="207" height="234" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"><IMG SRC="48da2eb0.jpg" border=0 width="162" height="235" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>The Return of the Infant Prodigy </B></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>When he was small Roy Dupuis had an idea one afternoon to gather together his friends not far from the house where he lived at Amos in Abitibi. It was summer and he led them all into the woods to show them a very tall tree in which, high up, he dreamed of building "a huge hut". Eyes sparkling, little Roy explained his plan, gesturing in all directions and pawing the ground with impatience at the idea of being up there with his father’s hammer. "You’re sick Roy, dammit, it’s too high. You’ll kill yourself. Forget it." They left him in the lurch. He built his hut all alone. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>It’s been the same all his life. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Roy Dupuis who has the same name as his father, born on the day of the Fête des Rois, is now 32, and for several weeks, if not months, he has been getting ready once again to gather together his friends to talk to them about another of his projects - in Peru; to climb MT Coropuna, 6600m high, just 2000m less than Everest! This time without even opening his mouth he knows the answer, but he asks just the same, only to hear once again, "Hell, Roy, have you gone mad?" </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"I often find myself alone when I want to do something", he pitches in over the smoke of his cigarette. "It was like that when I was little. It’s still like that today. I’m demanding on myself, and I’m very hard on those who are continually looking for an easy life. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>He who used to cruise the bars and would go away to the Rose Bowl for three days non-stop to play tenpin bowling, spent the summer travelling, playing golf and watching Channel D, particularly fascinated by the programmes on sharks. Actually he is getting ready for the release of two films in which he stars - Aire Libre (aka Passage des Hommes Libres), a co-production with Venezuela, Quebec and France, and Screamers, a Canadian-American science fiction film which tells the story of two groups at war over the control of mineral rights on a distant planet. "I’ve seen it, it’s good." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>As for the rest, Roy waits. He says he is waiting for the world to begin to dream. Meanwhile, the scripts pour into his agent’s office. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"I make choices", he says. "My career brings me pleasure and good moments, but nothing yet with which I would be entirely satisfied. Amongst everything that is actually being offered me, absolutely nothing bowls me over. At 32, I would like to work with someone who dreams, and who would like to explore his imagination with daring. I need to go and see other places, smell other things, taste other things. I’ve had enough of realism. That leads nowhere." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Pierre Houle, one of the directors of Scoop, said that he played the role of journalist Michel Gagné "on automatic pilot", that the lack of challenge sometimes made the time pass slowly on the set. He has nothing to add. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"If the public learns to understand the world of the media and of journalists thanks to Scoop, then so much the better, but for me as an actor this was not enough, it is no longer enough. I have the desire to play something which has never been done before. People don’t dream any more - it’s very serious." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>He has dreams. One especially. "I want to conceive, write, direct and perform in my own film." He wants to carry through the project from A to Z, to feel what it’s like to dive into the void and risk one’s reputation. He doesn’t yet know what he is going to do or what it will be about exactly, but one thing is certain, he says, "It will be original. It will be new." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Roy Dupuis has designed himself to rely on only one thing - his instinct. If some people have the tendency to intellectualise their roles, it’s by digging into his experiences that he suffuses his characters with the animal intensity and the accuracy of expression that has made him the most watched actor of his generation. "When he comes on the set, he arrives with his box of tools," says director Jean Beaudin. "And believe me, his toolbox is full to bursting." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Beaudin, who knows him well having spent three years with him filming Les Filles de Caleb, and Pierre Houle, who was close to him on the Scoop set, state that fame and success have not yet succeeded in changing him, that he remains this secret and solitary being for whom communicating will always be less interesting than doing things. "’I have nothing to learn, I have things to do,’ that’s what I always say." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"And he wants to do everything, try everything," adds his friend Jean L’Italien with whom he goes back a long way. Despite being one of the biggest stars in Quebec and passionately loving his job,  Roy Dupuis believes more and more that life is passing him by, that what he is doing and what is happening are forcing him in the wrong direction. "One is always missing the boat; me, you, everyone.  I have the impression - although it’s very difficult to explain because it’s still abstract in my head - that there’s something very important to understand and to do here, but which completely escapes us. It’s a very strong feeling that I have, the impression that life is something else. What exactly? I don’t know. I would like to meet God and ask him!" </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Since Ovila Pronovost won for him the almost hysterical admiration of three quarters of the female population of Quebec, it has been said over and over that he likes to freak out, that he drinks a lot,  and that his good looks, his talent and his acting are perhaps reminiscent of Brando, but that his jaunts were on display to such </B></div> <div> <B>a point that he was becoming rather a symbol of irresponsibility.    Used, however, to shutting up those who are frustrated and jealous, he shrugs his shoulders - and lets it all out. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"I stopped drinking in January. Completely. I still like to party,  but excess and lack of moderation ends up making me miserable.   I have also been in therapy for two years. When I can I go twice a week. It’s there that I make my most beautiful journeys and I find out at what point my brain has forgotten things." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"He’s a deeply hurt man," Jean Beaudin believes. "He had a rough time of it when he was younger, I’m convinced. This depth which he has onscreen, this troubled and troubling look, it’s not an act, it’s his soul." He has never dared to broach the subject directly with him. "Out of respect," he says, "but also </B></div> <div> <B>because I know you have to work pretty hard to get this guy to speak." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"Something is burning him inside, it’s obvious," adds Pierre Houle.  "But his battles, only he knows about them." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Roy Dupuis says that he is not yet ready to talk about this, that he has scarcely begun to discuss the question with those close to him,  but he does so all the same .. measuring his words. "Let us say that </B></div> <div> <B>I have a deep dissatisfaction with regard to the model I had as an child,  and that this has created a void which hasn’t stopped growing and hurting me as I gradually become aware of what happened." He says </B></div> <div> <B>only that his mother and he left the paternal home when he was 14,  "without a word" ("we would still be there otherwise"), that he has hardly seen his father since, but that "quietly we are trying to get </B></div> <div> <B>nearer to recreate the bonds." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"What counts for me actually, is to continue to maintain this equilibrium  between my compulsions and the discipline that I try to impose on myself in order to face reality without becoming numb." A decision inspired in part by the love which now colours his life, to the great joy of his friend Jean L’Italien, who has "never </B></div> <div> <B>seen him like this. He no longer has this instinct for death which often characterised his behaviour before," he observed. "He’s still a bomb and hypersensitive, but love has calmed him. I think also that he has </B></div> <div> <B>a lot less to prove." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"Wrong!," replies Roy, eyes flashing. "I have still plenty things to prove to myself. True, however, I feel a little better in my skin." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Still not a happy man, he says, but "happy more and more often."</B></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>    <IMG SRC="49123250.gif" border=0 width="291" height="37" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B><B><IMG SRC="49123250.gif" border=0 width="291" height="37" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#9900FF" FACE="times" ><B>7 JOURS INTERVIEW. JANUARY 1996</B></FONT><B>                                         </B><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#9900FF" FACE="Arial" ><A HREF="id5.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="1996 Articles"><U><B><IMG SRC="1a064230.gif" border=0 width="100" height="35" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></U></A></FONT><B> </B><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#9900FF" FACE="Arial" ><B>             </B></FONT></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>