Imaginary interview with Pierre Desproges
by Charactorium · Pierre Desproges (1939 — 1988) · Performing Arts · Literature · 5 min read
Cramped dressing room at the Théâtre Fontaine, an evening in 1987. Between two wisps of cigarette smoke, the man with the cutting voice adjusts the collar of a dark shirt, a glass of Bordeaux resting on a pile of scribbled pages. He agrees to talk, on condition that he not be asked to be funny on command.
—How did you, the meticulous writer, come to don the robe and cap of a comic prosecutor?
By sheer imposture, and I took a guilty pleasure in it. On France Inter, between 1980 and 1983, I was given the role of a prosecutor on Le Tribunal des flagrants délires, which is like giving a flamethrower to a pyromaniac while recommending caution. I put on that black robe, that ridiculous cap, and every day I would deliver an indictment against some poor famous guest who thought he was coming to a party. Real justice bores me; its parody delights me. People listened to me at the Maison de la Radio, microphone against my lips, spouting indictments I had polished that very morning like sharpening a knife you don't quite intend to use.
I was given the role of a prosecutor, which is like giving a flamethrower to a pyromaniac.
—Do you remember the indictment against Jean-Marie Le Pen in September 1982?
I am reminded of it more often than my witticisms, which proves that a provocation lasts longer than a joke. On September 28, 1982, the man was sitting there, opposite me, and I opened with a question I had been carrying for a long time: “Can we laugh at everything? Can we laugh with everyone?” I answered yes to the first without hesitation, and as for the second, I conceded that it was difficult. That was my entire moral code in two sentences, slipped under the nose of a man whose ideas gave me hives. The fake prosecutor said something very serious that day, beneath the cap.
—Did that phrase, “You can laugh at everything, but not with just anyone,” become a prison for you?
A prison whose bars I forged myself, which is the only elegant way to be locked up. “You can laugh at everything, but not with just anyone”: I stand by every syllable. Black humor is not a permission for cruelty; it is a demand for company. I can joke about death, illness, the slaughterhouses of history, provided I have someone in front of me who understands that we are also crying. Laughter, for me, excuses nothing; it keeps things at a distance. I have spent my life choosing my partners in laughter more carefully than a man chooses his seconds for a duel.
Black humor is not a permission for cruelty; it is a demand for company.
—Why do you dwell on such despairing subjects as death or misfortune?
Because they are the only ones worth it; the rest belongs to the merchants of happiness in a tube. Look at my Manuel de savoir-vivre à l'usage des rustres et des malpolis, published in 1981: I dismantle good manners precisely to get at what they conceal—fear, stupidity, ordinary cowardice. Satire that attacks only the little people is just another cowardice. Comfort comedy sickens me like an overly sweet dessert; I prefer dishes that scratch the throat. One should only have the right to make people laugh after looking the worst in the face without flinching.
—You joke about your own cancer on stage. How do you pull that off?
By barely cheating, for irony is the last piece of furniture you take with you. I have lung cancer, a faithful gift from all those cigarettes that punctuated my stage silhouette like a punctuation mark. I could complain about it; I prefer to turn it into a number, since the room is already booked anyway. In my Chroniques de la haine ordinaire, in 1986, I often ended with a “Remarkable, isn't it?” that is worth more than a sob. Laughing at your own death is not courage; it is politeness toward those who remain: I spare them the painful spectacle of a man taking the matter seriously.
Laughing at your own death is politeness toward those who remain.
—What do you say to those who find it indecent to laugh when you are condemned?
That the indecency would be to burden them with my sadness on top of their own. Death does not deserve to be stood at attention; it already has enough pretension as it is. My “Remarkable, isn't it?” is not a bravado; it is a shrug in the face of the absurd, that nonsense which serves as my religion. I continue to write in the morning, to perform at night, because a condemned man who stopped working would make a useless gift to the illness. As long as I craft a correct sentence, I steal an hour from what is eating away at me—and that little accounting pleases me enough to keep me standing until that spring of 1988, which I feel will be the last.
—People think you are entirely on stage; yet your mornings belong to the typewriter. Tell us about it.
The stage is just the tip; the real wages are earned early in the morning, alone, at the typewriter. I am a slow craftsman, a stonecutter of language: I rework a chronicle ten times, I weigh each word like a suspicious goldsmith. Within reach, a dictionary that I frequent more assiduously than my fellow men, because I love unearthing rare words, classical turns of phrase that general laziness has left to rot. This contrast amuses me: serving crudeness in porcelain. People think I am spontaneous; I am the most premeditated man in France. Improvisation, for me, is rehearsed for weeks before it appears natural.
People think I am spontaneous; I am the most premeditated man in France.
—Where does your taste for rare words and classical language come from?
From a stubbornness of ownership: the French language is the only inheritance I was not robbed of, so I maintain it. In my Manuel de savoir-vivre, as early as 1981, I enjoy marrying the most polished syntax with the coarsest truths, because nothing is funnier than an impeccably conjugated insult. A precise word is worth three easy laughs. I hate lazy vulgarity that thinks it is funny by being dirty. My comedy is a scholar's comedy: I want people to laugh and learn a word in the same breath. It is my way of respecting the audience, by assuming they are intelligent—a risky bet, but I haven't found a better one.
—What does Châlus, that village in Limousin, represent for you compared to Paris and your career?
Châlus, in Haute-Vienne, is the flip side of my backdrop, the backstage of a whole life. Paris gives me theaters, microphones, spotlights, and that hustle that earns my living; Limousin gives me back silence, roots, childhood. I am attached to it as a man is to the land where he will end up—and it is there, far from the neon lights, that I wish to be laid to rest one day. The city wears you out; the village repairs you. Between tours, to return to that corner of the countryside is to close the parenthesis of noise. People think I am Parisian to the core; I am just a provincial on an extended visit to the capital.
People think I am Parisian to the core; I am just a provincial on an extended visit.
—After the show, what pleasures console you for the hardships of the stage?
The table, sir, the table and its accomplices. Once the curtain falls on Vivons heureux en attendant la mort, my one-man-show from 1983, I dream only of a white tablecloth, a stew, and a great wine that would have the kindness to outlive me. I am a fine gourmet without repentance: I celebrate gastronomy and oenology as others celebrate saints, with more constancy in devotion. Misanthropy helps me there, by the way: “The more I know men, the more I love my dog,” I used to say on stage, and I would gladly add, raising my glass, and my Bordeaux. A good dinner among friends is worth all the ovations in the world.
The more I know men, the more I love my dog—and my Bordeaux.
This imaginary interview was generated by artificial intelligence from sources documented in Pierre Desproges'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.