Paris

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Bonjour tout le monde. Today, we are travelling far away
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to sunny old Paris. Eddie Djokovic is away on relocation leave,
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so it's me, Gregor Pell, talking to Jasper Foley, the
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young Australian director of the re-energised Paris Fringe Festival, and
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Eric Gretsch, who is curating the film element. My recent film,
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which is still a work in progress, will be screened
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to a select group at the festival. Believe it or not,
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I began it nearly 20 years ago. It's called Chanson,
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and it's an outsider take on classic French chanson music
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and Paris itself. And voila, I think I've found a
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French person who likes it.
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André?
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Oui. Yeah, bonjour.
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Bonjour.
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Ecoutez.
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Je suis décelé. My French is just awful. It's not
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worth it.
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Well, my English is awful, so let's try.
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To make.
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It.
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It sounds pretty good to me. You said something really
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nice after we'd been discussing the technical and production difficulties
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of the whole thing, that you enjoyed it.
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I did. I did. Well, I'm French and actually it
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was really nice to hear all those music you selected
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all those uh french singers um and it kind of
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like made some sort of a feeling of nostalgia to
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me because well obviously in the film i don't want
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to give it too much but uh you get uh
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jacques brel and which i love you've got brassins also
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which i love there's uh uh eddie piaf there's uh
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there's plenty of uh singers like that who well passed
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away now but uh but you got also some yeah
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more recent some friends yeah more more recent uh french
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singers so.
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My feeling like i've been back and forth the last
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20 years is that It's more lost now than it
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was 20 years ago. People are forgetting a little bit.
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Is that true?
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Yes and no. I guess the new generation doesn't really
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listen to that then because my generation was on the
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radio and also what our parents were listening to. Obviously,
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we had to listen to that when we were kids.
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Even if we didn't like some songs, you still know
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the songs. You were forced to. But now it's a
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bit different because I guess kids can listen to anything
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they want and not necessarily the parents' choices. So maybe there's... Yeah,
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maybe something like this happens. But at the same time,
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when you go to family reunions or French parties, like
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gathering and stuff, it's usually when they put a song
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from those singers, you get everyone to sing it. So, yeah.
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Yeah, that sounds right. I did wonder what you'd think
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of our Australian humour, I guess, their particular take on,
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on French music. Cause it's, it's, it's looking at it
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from away, you know, like you don't really know and
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you're sort of learning and you half know these songs.
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What I felt was really someone who loves music and loves, uh, those, this,
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this French music that we, we tend to forget, like
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you said. Um, but, and, and it kind of, To
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be honest, after watching your documentary, I've put on some
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songs which I didn't listen to for ages. And then, yeah,
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for days I was just listening to that.
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Cool.
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Perfect. It gives really a warm take on French singers.
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And so it's really nice. It's really lovely.
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Yeah, merci beaucoup. That's the idea.
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You did a great job.
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Yeah.
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One thing I've noticed more generally in France is that
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I don't think that French people realise how special a
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lot of the culture is here to people on the outside.
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I guess you're bombarded with American and English stuff just
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like we are and you kind of forget there's this
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great stuff there.
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You tend to like more what's on the outside than
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in your own house somehow.
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Yeah.
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Is it hot? That's what I hear. Yeah.
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It has been. It's broken. The heat wave has broken. But, yeah,
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we were just discussing that actually, warming up with a
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bit of small talk before the podcast. Yeah, it's been
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a difficult summer.
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Yeah, well, Eric, that's what Australia is like.
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Constantly. Already? Okay, well.
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Yeah.
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Get down there.
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So, Jasper, you're an Australian. Eric, you're a real French person.
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Yes, real.
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Are you a Parisian?
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Yes, around the suburbs, actually.
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How long have you known Jasper, just quickly?
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2021. 2021?
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Yeah.
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All right. So five years now. It feels like longer.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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It does. Cause we made two films together.
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Yeah.
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So yeah.
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Yeah. We met through a short film, same, but different
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that Eric had, uh, worked on with a, with an
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old colleague in London, right? Jacob.
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Uh, Jacob.
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Yeah.
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Jacob Tindall was a writer in London. Uh, yeah. And
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I made a short film out of his, uh, dialogue, uh,
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Because it was like a 10 pages dialogue and we
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made a short film out of this. But it was
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just like a couple relationship. But we put the film,
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we speed it up to... one guy having lots of
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relationships and doing exactly the same dialogue.
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And you were looking for a very neurotic, uh, self, uh, conscious, uh, character.
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Actually, I was more looking for a, uh, an actor
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that physicality because he needed some sort of, uh, yeah,
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funny physicality.
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And Jasper happened to be a clown, a real clown.
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So... Yeah, well.
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Let's get on to that. What's all this clowning business, Jasper?
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And why in Paris?
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Why in Paris? Well, because of the École Philippe Golière,
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the Golière Clown School, which is becoming a bit of
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a broken record story in Australia. I think so many
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of us at this point heard about the school and
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came over, but I came in 2018 when, uh, Philippe
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was teaching himself. I grew up in, in circuits and
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I had all these great performance teachers and they'd said
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to me, there's one great master from the 20th century
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who's still teaching. If you ever get the chance, go
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and work with Philippe Collier. So after a couple of
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years of working as an actor, I'd saved up enough
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money to come over. And, um, Yeah, it's the very
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essence of all performance, I think. I reckon clown's the
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best thing that you can study. I think it's the
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best thing you can study generally, but especially.
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For a performer.
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I think it's so freeing.
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It sounds like a bit of a joke, clown school,
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but I have worked with you, Jasper, and I could
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see the vision actually. Jasper's in my little film, which
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is going to be part of your festival.
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Yeah.
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And, yeah, you bought Pierrot to life. And I noticed
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a lot of people were videoing you in the streets
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of Paris. It was quite a scene. We gathered around
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our humble production.
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Well, my favourite moment and the biggest lost opportunity was
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when I was actually not on camera. I was off
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to the side just playing around, balancing a broom on
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my face or something. And we were next to Notre Dame.
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And you were filming an interview with, as four police
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came and surrounded Pierre, the clown. And I was so
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sad that we didn't get the shot because it would
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have been so funny to have the shot of the
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interview and then the camera just to turn and see
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that the clown was being accosted by the police.
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Yeah, we were a bit nervous that something was going
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to happen if we did that.
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Yeah, yeah. Well, they said I wasn't allowed to perform,
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but I wasn't performing. I was just hanging out next
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to the shot. Yeah.
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What's a clown doing in a documentary about Chanson? You'll
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have to find out. He's there briefly. He's a good addition. Jasper,
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you've been in Paris a few years and you've risen
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to the level of festival director, correct?
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Yeah, risen is one word for it. Like a souffle. Yeah,
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I'm running the Paris Fringe Festival now. I've been, well,
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since 2018, so nearly eight years. It'll be eight years
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next month that I've been in France. I've been running
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a whole lot of different shows. Spilling the Beans is
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the main one, true stories told by the people who
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experience them. And so I've met a whole lot of
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fascinating people over the years doing that, including the the
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person who used to be the artistic director of the
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Paris Fringe Festival, Anton Benici. And as we were working
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on his story together, he said to me, hey, we're
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actually looking for someone to take over because Paris Fringe
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kind of died of COVID basically in 2020 and hasn't
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been around since. And, yeah, at the time I was
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feeling like I had too much on my plate. But
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then I started working with all these brilliant people and
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realising that I couldn't do it alone and I didn't
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have to do it alone. Um, and so we took
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up the challenge. We did a, uh, uh, kind of
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prototype festival last year. I found myself living in this
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Chateau south of Paris, this castle on, uh, on an
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Island in a river. And, um, I had the great
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privilege and the great privilege of privilege of living there
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for a year. Um, and at the end of that year,
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we put on fringe Island, which was yeah. Prototype festival.
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I had a whole lot of friends from the fringe
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circuit who I knew from my time in Australia who
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were on tour at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which is
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the Mama Fringe, as one of the other artistic directors
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calls it, which happens in August every year. And so
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all these brilliant international performers were in Europe. And so
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I sent a whole lot of messages saying, hey, do
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you want to come to a two-day festival, perform your
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show in a chateau? we'll put you up and feed
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you and it'll be a lot of fun. And we
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did it and it was a lot of fun. It
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was great and was kind of the proof of concept
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we needed to go ahead this year. So this year
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we're doing the Paris Fringe Festival in the centre of Paris,
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bringing the fringe to the centre next to Gare de
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Lyon at a brilliant hub, venue hub called Ground Control,
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which is where we'll be putting on, I think, 14
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theatre and dance performances and two days of film. And
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that's where you come in, Craig.
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Yeah. What's the dates of it?
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The 9th to the 13th of September. We have the
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opening gala on the 9th. Shows at Le Peloton Studio
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on the 10th. And then from the 11th to the 13th,
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Ground Control will go crazy. And then Eric is directing
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the film aspect of the show.
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Uh first of all what have you got in store
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eric oh.
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We get uh we get a few short films but
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made by independent filmmakers and that's the whole idea of
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the uh the fringe is to uh to promote and
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and also give a platform to um all those independent
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filmmakers that don't usually have the opportunity to uh to
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show their films in big festivals or and here they
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have uh they're gonna have uh great audience and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, yeah. And, uh, this, uh,
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I tried to select the diversity of, uh, of, uh,
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genre and, um, story, uh, in those films. So we've
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got documentary, we've got a tale, we've got a fantasy,
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we've got a sort of, uh, horror film but i
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can't really call that horror uh but it's like it's
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just because it's about a spider not spider-man but it's
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a real spider so maybe that can frighten a little
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bit of people uh it's a great.
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Film uh yeah.
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And we got yeah we get um different type of
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films uh and we also have um a certain a
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certain documentary on french music i think yeah like.
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Can I just discuss a little bit the Australians in Paris?
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There seems like a lot of them. I've certainly met
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a lot. It's probably because I'm Australian, but how, why
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are they there and how do you feel about them, Eric?
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How do you feel about Australians, Eric?
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Well, I mean, I've been working with this guy and
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we've been friends for like five years now. So, uh, And, yeah,
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you should carry on.
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Yeah, keep them here. Yeah, yeah.
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Well, here's the thing. Australia, I went to New Zealand.
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It's got nothing to do with.
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Australia, but.
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No, New Zealand's virtually a state. They wouldn't like to
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hear me say that.
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No, but yeah, no, I mean, I'm constantly asking about
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your culture to Jasper. And I hope actually one day
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we can make a film in Australia.
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Yeah.
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Because you show me some places and I'm like.
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Oh, wow, let's put the camera over there. Let's get
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a story. Central desert around Alice.
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Jasper, what are you doing there?
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What's that? What am I doing in France?
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Yeah. You've been there for a while.
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As an Australian. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, there are a whole
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lot of things keeping me here. Mainly Eric. He keeps
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putting me in films. That's a big drawcard. And now you,
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even my Australian contacts putting me in French film.
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Yes.
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Well, there are a few things that have kept me here.
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I've got a whole lot of opportunities now, like the
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Paris French Festival. That's something that I would never have
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thought of working towards when I was living in Australia.
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But one of the really Practical aspects of living here
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is that I have a living wage. So in France
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they have a system whereby if you do enough work
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in one year, if you have enough gigs paid in
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the right tax bracket, the following year you get a
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monthly wage from the government and it's a living wage.
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So I qualified for that a couple of years ago
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and since then I've had monthly payments which have allowed
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me to create my own show to dedicate, I'm basically
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working full-time on the fringe now as a volunteer, and
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I'm able to do that because I have this monthly wage.
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So that's a huge drawcard, a huge thing that keeps
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me here. And, I mean, it's, I suppose, a political point,
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but it's a pity that Australia doesn't have something similar
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because you lose talented people when you don't have that infrastructure. Um,
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and I'd be very happy to be, you know, living in, in, uh,
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South Sydney. Where are you? Bulleye and jumping in the
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ocean every morning. But I don't have the same cultural access. Yeah,
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there you go. If I could do that and then
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head off to make a movie with Eric, I'd be
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very happy.
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Yeah, that French arts funding system, shall we call it,
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came up a lot when I was filming too. And
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it attracts a lot of people and, Yeah, it seems
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like a positive for creatives.
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Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, because then you can, I mean,
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you can get all the time that you need to
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put on your project rather than going to work on
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a cafe or whatever, you know.
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Yeah.
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And it's all about, I mean, it is a.
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Great thing that we have here.
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Although they try to kill it every year. But yeah,
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it's fantastic because that's how, well, if you want to
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make short film, for example, well, you know, short films
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are not paid.
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So that's one way of.
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Going to your desk and writing and know that you
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can pay your bills and try to gather some people
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and make the films. And that's, yeah, that's a privilege
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that we have in France. That's great, great, great privilege,
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I must say.
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It's such a tough industry, really. And maybe with AI
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and all this sort of stuff going on in the
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world we live in now, everywhere is going to have
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to support people in a similar manner. It might end
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up like that.
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Yeah. Yeah, well, that's another infrastructure problem. They need to
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work out how to do that in a timely manner.
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Look, let's wind up with like Paris. What's it like today?
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Living there?
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Yeah, well, I was not here when you were making
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the film early on, so you should start. When did
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you first come to film here, Craig?
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It wasn't 20 years ago. I was probably 17, but
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that's still a while back. I hadn't really thought that
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much about it. I did know some of that music,
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like a little bit. And the more I learned, I
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started to really enjoy it. In fact, I learned some
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of the songs and played them when I came back here.
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But all that stuff about the city of love, the
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kind of cliches, weirdly, they were true. But I think
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it's because.
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People have it in their heads and you act differently
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in that environment or something like that.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there might be some of that
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in people here not realising what they've got because, you know,
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all places become mundane if you spend long enough in them. And,
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you know, there are all sorts of aspects of Paris
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that are aspects of every big city and that can
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be unpleasant. But when you come here just for a
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short amount of time, it really is magical and, like,
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it's so rich in history and offerings, cultural and otherwise.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, hard not to be enchanted by it.
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It's quite a contrast with Australia's culture. shall we say.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, very much so, unless you go way back.
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Eric, what do you think of the kind of French stereotype,
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do you know what I'm talking about, that we think of?
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What are you talking about?
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Yeah, well, I think there's, well, every city has sort
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of a, you know, sort of a fantasy behind it.
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That's why Amélie Poulin, Amélie went so well on cinema
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all over the world because it was like a fantasy
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of Paris. When I moved to London, I was, uh,
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I was excited because I lived there.
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For, for quite a while.
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And, uh, I was expecting to have fogs then, you know,
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but it didn't happen.
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I saw the fog.
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But, uh, great city anyway. I love this city. That
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is true.
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I love this city.
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It's one of the most, uh, uh, exciting city for
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me in the world.
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It's great.
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Uh, but yeah, I think, I think, Every culture has
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a sort of fantasy out of another culture. It's funny
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when you have... tourists and they have the beret and
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you feel like well that's just you that doesn't happen
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anymore you know I remember a film with Mark Wahlberg
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I think it was the remake of Charade and it
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was by Jonathan Demme And in one scene, you get
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Mark Holberg with a baguette and in France, everyone was laughing.
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I was like, wow, you don't do that anymore. But
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at the same time, it's also why... this city and
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all those cities are keeping alive, you know, because you
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have fantasy. I think that happened in England also with
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the Queen. Everything, you know, it was like sort of
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a legend all around.
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So it's good.
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I love that because it's, I feel it's part of
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the culture, even if it's, yes, stereotyped to some point.
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It doesn't matter. It's just, it's nice to have, you know,
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I mean, Our stereotype for Australia is Crocodile Dendy.
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Yeah, that's what it's like. Yeah.
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Even my daughter is asking, well, Jasper, he's in Australia
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with crocodiles?
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It's funny because some of the things are true. Like
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people talk about kangaroos hopping down the streets and I
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00:23:24.420 --> 00:23:26.140
just saw one before and it was.
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Hopping down the street. So, yeah.
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There's that seal in Tasmania at the moment that comes
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back every year to hang out in the streets and
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knock over street signs.
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00:23:38.190 --> 00:23:40.890
Yeah, it's so noisy here. That's what I noticed the
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difference in Paris. Like the birds are just ridiculous. And Paris,
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you barely hear a peep out of a little.
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Well, I learned something about that actually, which is totally
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off the topic of Paris or film.
399
00:23:55.140 --> 00:23:55.299
Yeah.
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00:23:55.759 --> 00:24:01.900
But Australian birds have a cacophony. They don't sing individually.
401
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They kind of yell together. And European birds are virtuosic.
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So they'll have one bird that calls out and does
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a tune and then another that will respond. But we've
404
00:24:14.650 --> 00:24:19.470
got galahs and gang-gangs and cockatoos who just go... And
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they do this thing all together, but then they're able
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to differentiate within that cacophony environment. the individuals that are,
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that are with them. So yeah, completely different style. And
408
00:24:29.549 --> 00:24:31.549
maybe that plays out in the humans as well.
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00:24:34.609 --> 00:24:40.519
Yeah. Well, let's, let's leave it there. Anyway, look, I'm
410
00:24:40.559 --> 00:24:44.019
looking forward to this festival. I'm sure it's going to
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be amazing. Jasper, you've done well to get it going
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and good luck.
413
00:24:51.000 --> 00:24:51.759
Oh, thanks guys.
414
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Yeah.
415
00:24:52.240 --> 00:24:55.950
Well, first of many years to come. Yeah. And you too, Greg,
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good on you getting this film together. It's going to
417
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be fantastic.
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Yeah, I just got one question about the film for
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your film, Greg. Why did you feel you had to
420
00:25:06.730 --> 00:25:10.170
make that film a few years ago? What came up
421
00:25:10.190 --> 00:25:12.910
with the idea of why did you feel like, oh, yeah,
422
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I love so much French songs that I want to
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travel once in a while in France and try to
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gather information about it and make a documentary all along
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these years?
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Well, to be honest, Eric, we don't have the same
427
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arts funding system here. And really he's a friend, right,
428
00:25:36.910 --> 00:25:40.960
but he's someone who can fund things and he'd funded
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one about Bossa Nova and that was quite successful. And
430
00:25:47.680 --> 00:25:49.400
we finished that and he said, why don't we do
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French music? And I said, why not? um yes and
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00:25:56.289 --> 00:25:58.569
look i was like i said i didn't know that
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much it's really in your subconscious from all the french
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stereotypes and like sitting in restaurants or whatever and yeah
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i learned so much i'd still know so little but
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it was fun beautiful music and we're fortunate enough to
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00:26:16.140 --> 00:26:19.059
interview people like jane birkin who's English, weirdly.
438
00:26:19.119 --> 00:26:22.039
Oh, yeah, but she's really much part of the French
439
00:26:22.079 --> 00:26:23.779
culture since quite a while.
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She was.
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00:26:25.140 --> 00:26:29.490
Okay, well, thanks very much and I look forward to
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00:26:30.509 --> 00:26:36.289
your festival and any Australians in Paris or any Parisians
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00:26:36.809 --> 00:26:39.960
in Paris, come along and see some of this stuff.
444
00:26:41.319 --> 00:26:41.559
Yeah.
445
00:26:42.119 --> 00:26:44.470
You'll see some great stuff and independent stuff.
446
00:26:44.490 --> 00:26:47.400
So it's good. And from all around the world. Yes.
447
00:26:47.539 --> 00:26:50.740
From Armenia to Australia to Ireland.
448
00:26:51.420 --> 00:26:53.839
It's a melting pot. Yes.
449
00:26:53.980 --> 00:26:54.559
Yeah.
450
00:26:54.619 --> 00:26:56.380
That's the beauty of it.
451
00:26:57.339 --> 00:26:58.019
All right.
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00:26:58.059 --> 00:26:59.339
Well, keep melting away.
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00:27:00.500 --> 00:27:01.319
Thanks for having us.
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00:27:01.519 --> 00:27:04.220
Yeah. Thanks very much. And thanks, guys, for listening.
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We'll see you soon. Au revoir.
456
00:27:07.559 --> 00:27:08.279
Au revoir.
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00:27:09.220 --> 00:27:11.269
Thanks for listening. And if you'd like to see the
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00:27:11.329 --> 00:27:15.009
Paris Fringe Festival or the condensed chanson film, check their
459
00:27:15.130 --> 00:27:18.390
Instagram page. If you'd like to see the full film
460
00:27:18.509 --> 00:27:21.089
at a private screening and you're in Paris on the
461
00:27:21.349 --> 00:27:23.839
11th of September, message me on Facebook.
462
00:27:23.859 --> 00:27:26.779
I love you. I love you.
463
00:27:26.880 --> 00:27:27.559
Yes, I love you.
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00:27:38.309 --> 00:27:39.839
Oh, mon amour.