King Dave challenges filmmaking conventions

We spoke to Quebec director Podz, actor/playwright Alexandre Goyette and producer Nicole Robert about their remarkable new film.

King Dave 2
Alexandre Goyette

King Dave was Alexandre Goyette’s first real claim-to-fame. A graduate of the CEGEP Saint-Hyacinthe acting program, he was virtually unknown when he wrote and presented the play (on his own dime) in 2004. (Since then, you’ve seen him in both Laurence Anyways and Mommy as well as in the French version of 19-2, where he plays the burlier, slightly less-detestable SQ cop that dogs Chartier.) Suffice to say that Goyette has carried this character with him for the better part of his career — but when asked if this is the film he’d imagined all these years ago, he’s categorical.

“It’s not the film I’d imagined because I wasn’t imagining anything,” he says. “When I wrote the play, my first objective was to get through the three-week run and reimburse my credit line. That’s it. Not even my credit line, at the time — my credit card. The show did so well. People liked it, some even came back to see it twice during the following runs at Périscope and la Licorne — it was audience members who started calling it cinematic. When I was writing it, I was trying to channel the energy of cinema, knowing full well that what I was doing was theatrical. I was thinking of the speed, the action. Of course, in theatre you can’t blow stuff up, so what can you do to approximate that feeling?”

This is hardly the first time Goyette has collaborated with Podz. He’s appeared on two TV shows and in one film directed by the prolific director, but even with their professional background, Goyette stood slightly awed. “When I approached Podz, it was total wishful thinking,” he explains. “We were working on C.A. at the time. I was watching him work and I could already tell — well, I and everyone else could already tell — that he was an incredibly talented director. But I thought it was beautiful to watch him work. He’s a real creator, a real director in every sense of the word.”

The particular technical pyrotechnics necessary to pull off King Dave on the silver screen might seem daunting to most actors, but Goyette had lived with the character and the script for so long, it felt like anything but. “It wasn’t daunting because it was a dream come true,” he says. “In fact, not even a dream, because I didn’t even think about it — it seemed practically impossible. Sometimes in television we have to do single-shot sequences or elaborate tracking shots, usually because we’re running out of time — it happens. Here, it’s not just an artistic choice, but a choice that brings something to the story. We were confident with the story; we’d done it in front of all kinds of audiences, even in front of teenagers. It was never written directly for teenagers, but I’d done it for kids in high school. Even if it talks about all kinds of things they don’t know anything about, they loved it. In fact, that’s probably why they liked it! But I would’ve lost my mind if I’d seen a movie like this as a teenager.”

Goyette is quick to point out that he’s not Dave — and that Dave doesn’t necessarily need to be likeable for the film to work. “We don’t need to identify with Dave, that’s not the goal in this case, even though it usually is,” he explains. “Not this time. Here, you just have to think of someone. What we’re betting is that everyone knows a Dave: your grandma knows a Dave, a journalist the other day told me his nephew was a Dave, I have friends who ended up in Mont-Saint-Antoine… I could’ve become Dave. My starting point was that Dave’s entire character revolves around one major bad decision followed by a series of smaller, equally bad decisions. Dave’s not a bad guy.”

With over a decade spent in Dave’s shoes (and white hoodie… and earrings), I ask Goyette if he still loves it as much as he did the first time he stepped on-stage. “Yes. Yep,” he laughs. “I’d still do it on-stage. I’d start it again any time. It might happen. Maybe not — maybe it’ll happen with a different actor, I have no idea. After this, I’ve got nothing lined up professionally — well, I’m on a great show, but after that’s done… I’m excited, but I’m nervous. I’m confident that good things are ahead.” ■

King Dave opens in theatres on Friday, July 15. Note that the film is screening in French only.