Un excellent article de la Gazette:
http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/Justiciers+masqu%C3%A9s+unmasked/2402900/story.html
Meet les Justiciers masqués
Quebec's princes of prank have fooled Sarah Palin, Tiger Woods, Britney Spears and Bill Gates
By KATHRYN GREENAWAY, The Gazette
MONTREAL – For the last 10 years, Marc-Antoine Audette, 29, and Sébastien Trudel, 28, have been playing radio pranks on celebrities and people of power. They are called les Justiciers masqués/The Masked Avengers and they've pranked some of the biggest names in the world including Paul McCartney, Britney Spears, Bill Gates, Jacques Villeneuve, Bono, Tiger Woods, Céline Dion, French president Nicolas Sarkozy, former French president Jacques Chirac, Mick Jagger and Donald Trump.
The duo was thrust into the international spotlight in November 2008 when the international media heard their prank call to Republican presidential candidate John McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, made just days before the presidential election. Audette, posing as French president Nicolas Sarkozy, spoke with Palin for over seven minutes before revealing that she was being pranked.
The two left their radio home CKOI-FM in June to concentrate on new projects including a live show, set to launch in the fall of 2010, two film scripts and a regular television gig on MusiquePlus.
Their weekly, 15-minute television spot will be a mix of skits and a look at entertainment news. Trudel describes it as "Entertainment Tonight on acid." It debuts on MusiquePlus, Thursday at 7 p.m.
Were you a funny child?
Trudel: Funny looking, yes. But not really funny. My uncle, who was once married and is now a priest, is the funniest member of the family. I make my family laugh when I'm at work, not at home.
Audette: When I was little, I would buy joke books and memorize them and then tell the jokes at family parties, and I would rent comedy videos and watch them again and again.
Trudel: Yeah, like Chevy Chase movies. He was our idol. I remember we saw him walking down Crescent St. and got so excited we started chasing him, calling out for his autograph. He ran away from us. I think we scared him.
Where did you two meet?
Audette: We met in English class at Collège Jean de Brébeuf. It was Halloween and the costume theme was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I dressed as a pirate or something, but Sébastien showed up dressed like the Godfather. I told him (in English) he was stupid.
Trudel: I told him (in English) that he was stupid too. I remember I'd stuffed my cheeks with tissue paper so I could barely speak.
Audette: We were two nerds among the nerds.
When did you realize you could be funny together?
Audette: We discovered theatre together and then writing. We had to become funny, we wanted girlfriends, after all.
Trudel: Yeah, you had to either play guitar, play hockey or be funny. We couldn't do the first two so we were obliged to be funny.
Audette: I wanted to become a lawyer and Sébastien wanted to be a journalist. But we did radio together at Université de Montréal and we had a lot of fun so we decided we'd give comedy a shot, full time, for one year. We sent our demo tapes to all the radio stations. We'd get rejected, but we'd also get good advice.
What makes you laugh?
Audette: Everything. I like comedy that breaks taboos. I like the edginess of Chris Rock. I like to mock authority and people in power.
Trudel: When I was growing up I would rent Rock et Belles Oreilles videos and watch them again and again. I love Family Guy and John Stewart's The Daily Show. I love the instant nature of Stewart's comedy. You read the paper in the morning and then he gives it his treatment that night.
What was your reaction to the attention the Sarah Palin prank call received?
Audette: I remember the day the story broke I turned on the television and we were on every channel. That was kind of cool.
Trudel: We came back (from all the interviews) fluent in English.
Is there a line you won't cross in your comedy?
Trudel: It's not about a line we won't cross; it's about having judgment. If we're not sure about a joke, we try it on each other. If we both like it, we keep it.
Audette: The holocaust is not funny; the Polytechnique massacre is not funny; 9/11 is not funny. Tragedy can be large and it can be personal. The closer the tragedy is to you, the less it could ever be funny.
Trudel: But when Saddam Hussein was captured, we made jokes. Our boss told us to stay away from it, but we went ahead anyway. What is unfortunate is that things are becoming more and more politically correct in Quebec over the past years.
Audette: Quebec comedians can no longer write as freely as they did in the 1980s. The public are being treated like children, like they won't understand a joke.
Trudel: We're told not to make fun of Quebec stars because we might run into them on the street. We don't care if we run into them.
Audette: As a writer and a comedian, if you have to censor yourself, it doesn't work. Sometimes, these days, it feels like we might be entering into a second Dark Ages.
Trudel: Just look at the reaction to the Sarah Palin prank. It was just a joke, yet all the big political panels on television were debating it as if it was a real issue.
Audette: Yes, it was a joke. I based my Nicolas Sarkozy impression on Pepe le Pew.
In 2006 you wrote a skit about Stephen Harper and George W. Bush getting cozy in a tent in a television parody of the gay-themed love story Brokeback Mountain. Parti Québécois leader André Boisclair, an openly gay man, agreed to participate in the skit. When an excerpt was leaked before the broadcast, the media jumped on it and Boisclair eventually appeared on the talk show Tout le monde en parle to apologize and distance himself from the the skit. How did you react to his appearance on the talk show?
Audette: He and his staff were fully aware of the content of the skit before he participated. When the media reacted, all he had to do was say it was a parody, made in good fun, and move on. But he apologized and that fed the news cycle. We felt he turned against us.
Trudel: We had been defending him for weeks before the talk show.
When you tried to reach Bush in 2007, you ended up procuring the telephone number of the Situation Room at the White House. Have you ever been contacted by the FBI?
Audette: The only time the FBI has ever paid attention to us is after we pranked Ozzy Osbourne. He was completely confused when we spoke to him. During the call we invited him to visit Quebec. All he could remember about Quebec was that there were Hells Angels living here. So he thought we were Hells Angels and that we were inviting him to Quebec to kill him. His people contacted the FBI. They contacted the RCMP and the RCMP contacted the Sûreté du Québec. The SQ knew who we were, so there was no trouble.
How do you get the contact numbers for all these famous and/or powerful people?
Trudel: We have a few tricks. Sometimes we have to be a bit aggressive. Other times we act stupid. Stupid works.
Audette: It took two months to set up the interview with Bill Gates. We finally got the number on April Fool's Day (2002). We had been talking with Gates' personal assistant (pretending to be people from Harper's office). She kept on telling us that we couldn't get an interview because Harper wasn't important enough, yet. I got emotional, telling her I was a lowly staffer and would lose my job if I didn't get the interview. She gave us the number. (Gates was civil, but only marginally amused.)
Are you scared when you hear the telephone ring when you are about to do a prank?
Audette: The fear is not stronger than our will to mess with power - to see if these people are still human. And the adrenalin rush is huge. You only have two or three minutes after spending days, weeks or months to set up the call. You don't want to mess it up.
Is there anybody you would have loved to prank, but missed your chance?
Audette and Trudel together: Michael Jackson.
Trudel: We tried three times, but he kept changing staff and firing his managers, so we'd call and the guy would say, "I don't work for the %@*& anymore" and hang up.
kgreenaway@thegazette.canwest.com
BEST AND WORST OF LES DEMASQUES
Most gracious prank victim: It's a tie. Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger.
Trudel: The bigger the star, the kinder and funnier they were.
The least gracious: Jacques Villeneuve.
Audette: No sense of humour whatsoever. That guy has a Napoleon complex.
Most serious: Tiger Woods.
Audette: Very focused. I'm guessing (at the time) he hadn't hooked up with his harem yet. Actually, he asked for Britney Spears' phone number. (It's a joke folks.)
Most impressive: Former French president Jacques Chirac.
Audette: He was witty and yet still presidential.
Least impressive: French president Nicolas Sarkozy.
Audette: Very short-tempered. He hung up on us.
Fastest to figure out he was being pranked: Olympic sprinter Bruny Surin.
Audette: Fastest on the track. Fastest to catch the prank. He figured it out in 15 seconds.
Biggest scoop: Janet Jackson in 2004 following her wardrobe malfunction at the Super Bowl which resulted in her right breast being briefly exposed.
Trudel: We got her before she did the Larry King Live show. King had been told he could not ask her about the incident. We talked to her for close to six minutes about what happened. It was nerve-racking.
© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette
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