Jean-Marc Parent will end his tour in a few days Utopiawhich he has been taking to the four corners of Quebec since 2018. And already, the 61-year-old comedian has his eyes on his next show, the title of which he already knows: JMP à la carte. “It’s already planned. I know what I’m going to do for the next five years,” says the verbomotor who would like to give shows until he’s 75 “like Yvon Deschamps.”
• Read also: Seven notable moments in JMP’s career
Jean-Marc Parent doesn’t really know what happened with the tourUtopia. When he gives the last show, Wednesday in Brossard, he will stop the clock at 201 performances. Not bad for a show he wasn’t even sure he would do!
“Before, each tour, we were happy to see 300,000 tickets sold,” he says in the dressing room of the Zénith de Saint-Eustache. But there, I told my team that we weren’t going to count the tickets because I would be doing a lot fewer shows. I did two shows a week, three weeks a month, seven months a year. And ultimately, we reached nearly 200,000 spectators. I don’t know where it happened! »
Having reached the milestone of sixty, Jean-Marc Parent has decided to slow down the pace of touring. Because he wanted to spend more time with his loved ones during the weekends, the comedian even had the audacity to schedule his shows only on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays!
“When I was told it wouldn’t be easy to sell, I replied that if it didn’t sell, we would retire! In the end, it all sold out two years in advance.”
“I don’t think I’ll stop”
WhileUtopia is coming to an end, Jean-Marc Parent is already thinking about what comes next. Next year, he will have “a summer of festivals”. “They call us every year and we keep putting it off,” he explains.
In 2025, he plans a “completely sabbatical” year. And the following year, he will launch his next show. “It won’t be a specific show like the ones I’ve done for ten years,” he says, in reference to Urgency to live, Torture et Utopia. “It’s going to mix up everything I’ve done a little bit. There’s going to be a lot of improvisation, once again.”
When asked if JMP à la carte will be the last tour of his career, which began in 1988, Jean-Marc Parent replies that he has no idea.
“I don’t want to say it’s over and the next year say I’m starting again. If I’m fit and healthy, and the world is still coming to see me, I want to continue. I don’t think I’ll stop, really. I can’t see myself doing nothing. I have enough nonsense in my head, I’m going to look at myself too much! I will continue, but at a much shorter, much slower pace. […] I have so much business to tell, I don’t want to tell this [seulement] to my 12 friends!”
2013 vs. 2023
In 2013, to mark his 25 years of career, The newspaper met Jean-Marc Parent and asked him for his opinion on various subjects. Ten years later, we wanted to know if his point of view was still the same.
-TV
2013 : “I don’t know if I would want to do it again, honestly. TV is fun, but it’s very dangerous. It eats all round. Everyone has the right of life or death over you […] If I did TV again, it wouldn’t be the same way. I have a great idea for a series in my head that I would like to do.”
2023 : “I think exactly the same thing. I wouldn’t embark on a daily routine again. I made little specials of JMP which we filmed at the Quebec Armory and at the Espace St-Denis in Montreal. I would do this again once a year if it was offered to me. […] The idea for a TV series was to be called The collector. It was a series about people who had troubled pasts. They were hour-long episodes that weren’t comic-driven. But when I presented it to producers, they wanted to bring it back to funnier half-hours. It tempted me less.”
-Personal regrets
2013 : “I would have liked to have children. That’s the only thing. I wanted to have some, it was my girlfriend who didn’t want it. […] There are two kinds of happiness in life. Having children must be wonderful, but not having them is another joy. We have freedom, we travel and we take a lot of care of our nieces and nephews. Personally, this is perhaps the only small matter, otherwise I am very happy with my life.”
2023 : “I am very happy still in my life. I’m going to have a hard time saying this, but my little niece is gone [il retient un sanglot]. I learned it in France. I brought my two sisters to Paris. It was dreadful. It’s been a month… Otherwise, the only anxiety I have is my health problem. I’m still afraid. I am always worried about the smallest matter.”
-To get old
2013 : “I had a crisis in my twenties, thirties, forties and fifties. If I get to 60, it’s going to be horrible! It’s probably because of my family history. I lost my father when he was 54 and my mother died at 48. It’s definitely influenced my way of life.”
2023 : “It’s the same thing at 60, a little more horrible. At 60, you can no longer say that in 20 years, you will buy a chalet. Yes, I find it hard. If I make it to 70, I’m going to cry one shot. But that doesn’t stop me from enjoying the present moment a lot. I’ve always done that, basically, since I was young.”
Jean-Marc Parent’s career in figures
–1988 : His number The disabled made a splash at the Just for Laughs Festival. He received the Discovery of the Year prize, tied with Stéphane Rousseau.
–11 : Provincial comedy tours, Open from the top (1989) to Utopia (2018).
–684 223 : Tickets sold in total for his last three tours (Utopia, Torture et Urgency to live).
–1,6 million : Viewers who watched JMP Timetwice, in 1996 and 1997.
–400 000 : People who attended his summer tour Splash Molson Grand Nordin 1996, in 10 cities.
–12 : Shows presented at the Montreal Forum, including the closing of the amphitheater on March 31, 1996, which attracted nearly 21,000 people.
2023-11-18 09:12:38
#JeanMarc #Parent
