Kids interview Cami
by Charactorium · Cami · Literature · Performing Arts · 5 min read
Two 5th-grade students visit an exhibition on the press of yesteryear. In front of an old table covered in comic newspapers, a mischievous old man awaits them. It's Cami, the inventor of Loufock-Holmès, ready to answer all their questions.
—Where were you born, and what did you want to do when you were little?
You know, my child, I was born in Pau, a town in the southwest, in 1884. Imagine streets without any engines, just the sound of horses' hooves on the cobblestones. Very quickly, one thing captured my heart: making people laugh. Not mean laughter, no. Laughter because the world, when you look at it sideways, becomes completely crazy and joyful. So I went up to Paris. There, there were dozens of funny newspapers sold in kiosks, those little iron huts where you buy the gazettes. I decided to write in them. All my life, that's all I did: search for the grain of madness hidden in serious things.
The world, when you look at it sideways, becomes completely crazy and joyful.
—What was a workday like for you?
In the morning, I was already at my table, my pen in hand or bent over my typewriter. The newspapers were waiting for me, I had to deliver, deliver, deliver! I wrote short stories, little funny scenes, at a dizzying pace. In the afternoon, I drew the images that accompanied my texts myself. Yes, my child, I illustrated my own stories! The pencil and the pen, for me, were the same hand. Only in the evening did I go out to the Parisian cafés to breathe in the city's fantasy. Some said I wrote too much. I replied that funny ideas aren't something you keep: you give them away right away.
Funny ideas aren't something you keep: you give them away right away.
—What is Loufock-Holmès? It sounds like a weird detective name.
Ah, you've understood everything! I loved reading the investigations of Sherlock Holmes, that English detective who deduces everything through logic. So I had a mischievous idea: what if I created a detective who reasons completely backwards? That's how Loufock-Holmès was born, in 1926. He too solves his cases through deductions... but totally absurd ones! He very seriously explains why the thief must be a man with a green umbrella, with a delirious line of reasoning. And the funniest part is that in his world, it works every time! Imagine a very self-assured scholar who says anything with the utmost seriousness. That's my detective.
A detective who says anything with the utmost seriousness.
—Did you laugh yourself when you wrote those silly things?
Of course, my child! How can you make others laugh if you don't first laugh alone at your sheet? When I invented an impossible deduction for Loufock-Holmès, I sometimes laughed so hard that my pen trembled. That's a secret I'm sharing with you: the humor of nonsense, that is, the art of pushing logic until it becomes crazy, requires having kept a child's heart. Overly serious grown-ups can't manage it. They're afraid of being ridiculous. For me, the ridiculous was my job and my joy. I filled thousands of pages, but every silly idea I found was like a little gift.
Humor requires having kept a child's heart.
—Is it true that you wrote plays that lasted just a few seconds?
Absolutely true! I invented a genre of my own: the ultra-short drama. You know, in serious theater, a tragedy lasts hours, with kings weeping and long speeches. I wanted to reduce everything to the bone. Imagine an entire play performed in three lines, sometimes in just a few seconds! The curtain rises, two characters exchange three dramatic sentences, and boom, the curtain falls: it's over, the whole tragedy has passed. That was my way of gently mocking grand theater that takes itself too seriously. By shortening everything, I made laughter emerge where tears were expected. The shortest path to comedy is sometimes three sentences.
A whole tragedy in three lines, and the curtain falls.
—And the Baron de Crac, did he lie all the time?
Oh yes, and it was magnificent! The Baron de Crac is the French cousin of a famous German braggart, the Baron von Münchhausen. He's a hero who tells of his exploits... and exaggerates to the point of dizziness! In my stories from the 1920s, he swears he did completely impossible things, with an imperturbable seriousness. And here's my secret rule: the more improbable, the funnier. If he had jumped over a stream, no one would laugh. But if he jumped over a mountain holding his horse under his arm, then we burst out laughing! The Baron's lie isn't mean, my child. It's pure invention, a feast of imagination without any limits.
The more improbable, the funnier.
—Is it true that a great movie actor adored you?
It's one of the most beautiful surprises of my life. One day, Charlie Chaplin himself — yes, the little tramp with the bowler hat whom everyone admired — discovered my texts. And do you know what he said? He hailed me as 'the greatest humorist in the world'. Imagine my astonishment! He made the whole world laugh without saying a single word, in those films where they didn't yet speak. I made people laugh with sentences on paper. Yet we were doing the same job deep down: making people laugh through incongruity, through a grain of madness, never through meanness. Receiving such a compliment from such a man was as if laughter itself was thanking me.
We made people laugh through incongruity, never through meanness.
—Why is it important to make people laugh instead of being mean?
Good question, my child. You see, in 1940, Chaplin made a film, The Great Dictator, to mock a terrible man who was waging war across Europe. He fought him not with weapons, but with laughter. And laughter is a gentle but powerful force. When you laugh at a frightening thing, it suddenly becomes ridiculous, and it frightens you less. Mean humor, on the other hand, only adds harm to harm. I always wanted my laughter to be a light, not a slap. You can tickle the world without ever hurting it. That's the true art of nonsense: disarming seriousness without shedding a single tear.
When you laugh at a frightening thing, it frightens you less.
—How did you invent all those crazy ideas; where did they come from?
The secret is to look at the world sideways, a little askew. Take something very serious: a detective, a tragedy, a heroic baron. Then ask yourself: what if I push this to the farthest extreme? The detective's reasoning, I make it so logical that it becomes crazy. The tragedy, I reduce it to three sentences. The braggart, I make him lie up to the stars. It's like pulling on a rubber band: I stretch the serious thing more and more until it snaps into laughter. I wrote for comic newspapers from morning till night, so my brain never stopped. Every object, every word could become the starting point of a madness.
I stretch seriousness like a rubber band until it snaps into laughter.
—If children today read you, what would you like to say to them?
I would tell them: never be ashamed to laugh, nor to find the world strange. I spent my life writing stories for newspapers and imagining wacky characters like Loufock-Holmès or the Baron de Crac. Many grown-ups thought it wasn't serious. But laughter, my child, travels through time better than many important speeches. Look: I died long ago, and yet you are here, smiling at my silly ideas. That's my greatest victory. So invent, imagine, exaggerate, turn things upside down. The world always needs people who know how to look at it sideways to make it happier.
Laughter travels through time better than many important speeches.
This imaginary interview was generated by artificial intelligence from sources documented in Cami's profile. It dramatises what the figure might have said based on what we know about them, but does not constitute attested historical testimony. For primary sources and factual documentation, refer to the full profile.