Riad Sattouf this Saturday in Toulouse: “Vincent Lacoste was not bad enough for the role”
The comic strip author Riad Sattouf recounts in “The young actor” the debut at the cinema of Vincent Lacoste, in the film “Les beaux gosses”. He is signing this Saturday at the Ombres Blanches bookstore in Toulouse.
The comic strip author Riad Sattouf recounts in “The young actor” the debut at the cinema of Vincent Lacoste, in the film “Les beaux gosses”. He is signing this Saturday at the Ombres Blanches bookstore in Toulouse. Interview with the author of “The Arab of the Future”.
Why have you now drawn “The Young Actor” and not as an extension of the film “Les Beaux gosses”, the first role of Vincent Lacoste …
My books come on their own and I don’t decide when. During confinement, I had finished volume 5 of “The Arab of the Future” and I wanted to take some distance with this series. I had this project in mind with Vincent Lacoste for a long time. When he shot in my film, he was barely 14 years old. He was naive, had no desire to become an actor and I had seen him take off as an actor, with the shootings, the notoriety, the requests… There was a very interesting field for a comic strip there. It is the youth of an actor who did not have adolescence.
Without you, he would probably never have become an actor …
It’s life that wants that. Vincent is the first person I felt responsible for. I was very afraid that he would fail and I absolutely wanted him to pass his exams, not to do drugs, not to drink alcohol… Vincent had the adolescence that I would have loved to have at his age. I would have loved for a director to come to my college and say “You’re ugly enough to play in my film”!
How do you rate his acting career? Is he your Antoine Doisnel?
He is better than Doisnel! I am very proud to see him go from one success to the next. He became a popular person and somewhere I initiated him a bit. But this comic is also a way of telling something more universal. Commentary someone ordinary ended up having an extraordinary destiny.
You often tell teenage stories about whether they are popular or not. Have you thought about what happened to you if you were popular in middle school and high school?
It’s very difficult to remake history! Unlike Vincent, no one chose me to do anything other than occupy my assigned place. I think if I had been popular, I would have made exactly the same choice, comics. I loved comics too much, I couldn’t have done anything else.
Why do you represent yourself as blond in your books when you are not blond at all …
(Laughs) I don’t feel like I’m blonde in my books. If you look closely I am drawn with a blue flat to show that I have brown hair.
Do you regret not having taken your first choice of casting, much uglier in your opinion than Vincent Lacoste?
Not at all. The other was fine, but just too obnoxious. In the end Vincent was not so ugly but a thousand times better!
You talk a lot about ugliness to describe your teenage characters. What are your criteria of beauty or ugliness, we imagine that they are not only aesthetic …
I tend to reverse the criteria of beauty and ugliness. For me for example, actors like Ryan Gosling or the one who plays the role of Thor in the Marvel films (Chris Hemsworth, Editor’s note) are repulsive. When I say ugly, I mean real life faces. In my film, I wanted unconventional physique, not considered beautiful. Besides, Vincent was too handsome, he had to be made ugly.
Are you going to shoot a third film after “Les Beaux gosses” and “Jacky au kingdom des filles” with Vincent Lacoste?
My projects are always top secret because I am very superstitious. But yeah, I’m writing another movie.
What about your other projects?
I can only speak about the sixth and final volume of “The Arab of the Future” which will be released in the fall of 2022.