Before an episode of Black Baron, Bruno Roger-Petit, memory advisor to the President of the Republic, is seething. How can we imagine a political series of such precision and support filming it elsewhere than at the Elysée? “Ask to turn here!” he tells Eric Benzekri, his creator. Drama, like politics, is an eye for detail: have we seen files and other presidential signatures so similar to those that sit on the desk of fictional President Francis Laugier? United by Mitterrandism, “BRP” and the screenwriter have known each other for several decades, enough for the former journalist to invite the former socialist to have a drink at the Elysée one evening between the two five-year terms, and suddenly Emmanuel Macron appears. The head of state swallowed Black Baron and waits for a break to watch Fever, his latest creation. During this meeting in 2022, he is campaigning for his re-election. To Benzekri, he asks a thousand questions. “How do you write political fiction? How do you make it stick to reality?”
Does the Head of State realize at this moment that he has before him an unusual specimen among those around him? Oracle, prophet of doom, visionary… This is how many define it. Isn’t he the one who wrote in Black Baron the slap to President Amélie Dorendeu before Emmanuel Macron is also a victim in 2021? And these demonstrations in front of the Constitutional Council: seen on TV, a few years later. In Fever, Benzekri tells the story of the civil war taking shape in a France where minds, manipulated by social networks and identity tensions, are tearing each other apart over a simple football story. So is this the future? Benzekri is not bothered by his interlocutor’s capacity for digestion. Whether the result displeases or horrifies, he doesn’t care. The makings of an excellent advisor, in short. Extremely rare in this political universe where we court like we breathe… And there are many who court him.
Kill the father
He knows politics. He spent a long time in the Socialist Party, in the “Socialist Left” movement founded by Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Julien Dray, then in the former’s cabinet, then Minister Delegate for Vocational Education. Last February, Boris Vallaud, leader of the PS deputies, invited Eric Benzekri to his office in the Assembly. Mutual friends kept telling him “see him.” A one-hour meeting that will last more than twice as long where we talk about the predatory power of Gafam and artificial intelligence, the future of the left of course, Mélenchon without pronouncing his name, ‘Henri Emmanuelli, whom both men knew well. Vallaud tests his strategic hypotheses and Benzekri responds with other advice. “He smells the times. His pen is steeped in reality and forged by experience. He is part of the left outside the walls, this intellectual, artistic left, which we must listen to when we have cultural battles to fight “, justifies the deputy from Landes, who is not the only socialist to come to be nourished intellectually. François Hollande particularly appreciates the man, whom he brings for coffee in his offices on rue de Rivoli.
Eric Benzekri, a must for all those on the left who “think about it”, whether their name is Vallaud, Hollande or Ruffin. The LFI deputy for the Somme, who no longer hides his desires, met him in 2022, after an interview in The world where the Insoumis put the Nupes score into perspective. “Right on the mark! Let’s see,” “Benzek” had strumed. They met in a café far from the Assembly, away from prying eyes and especially from those close to Jean-Luc Mélenchon whom Benzekri knew for so long, better than anyone at the time. This is also what François Ruffin is looking for, without admitting it: some advice on how to kill the father. A first date, then a second and a third. We chatted about the first chores, about the story to re-enchant popular circles that the left convinces less than the National Rally. The ambitious man delivers his reading, his ideas and doubts, Benzekri orally sketches the script of a political story. When Ruffin said to The Obs “I am a social democrat”, he curls up in front of this nice move that Philippe Rickwaert [NDLR : le “baron noir” de la série] would have applauded.
“I save my best ideas for my screenplays.”
In his office in the 17th arrondissement, small pink and yellow papers litter the walls. We can guess the beginnings of the storyline for season 2 of Fever, we note here a sentence from Churchill: “One of the problems of our society is that people do not want to be useful but important.” On the table, a pile of cascading books including The opium of fools by Rudy Reichstadt and Technopolitics, Asma Mhalla’s essay on the alienation of the individual from social media – her next read. He will say nothing about his political meetings. “Why does everyone want me to go into politics? It’s first of all a battle and it’s not the life I want to lead. I don’t want to fight anymore, sighs Eric Benzekri . I’m interested in talking with them and they like meeting artists. It’s a break in their schedule, I save them for my screenplays. Those who ask to see him believe they are meeting a political genius, a new Jacques Pilhan, this shadow advisor to Mitterrand who analyzed the movements of opinion like nothing, speaks to them to better concoct the next characters of a series. “The politicians of our time are dried up,” explains the essayist Raphaël Llorca, who became a friend and advisor on the series. If they are not intellectual dilettantes, they no longer find imagination. It’s structural. Meeting Eric is a makeover for them.”
In his previous life, he wrote speeches and staged intrigues within the PS. So we were moving the lines, but today? Eric Benzekri rather believes in the power of series. The meetings, on the left as on the right, involve at most a few thousand people. Who still listens to them? A series like Feverone of the most viewed and downloaded from Canal +, exercises an unrivaled intellectual and political influence, just as Zola or Balzac framed 19th century politics with the Rougon Macquart And The Human Comedy. “I just give elements of understanding of the world,” he admits, a modest Pythia behind his round glasses, sponge for the crises of our time, who sometimes offers his visitors his tears. “The prediction of the prophet of doom is intended to be transformative. He hopes that his prediction will make it possible to prevent the predicted future from happening; the effect of the announcement must provoke an action capable of averting it. Any prediction made marks on the contrary, his failure Where some place his mastery, he rather sees his failure”, writes the philosopher Milo Lévy-Bruhl in a file from the Jean-Jaurès Foundation dedicated to the series and its author.
“I traveled through violence”
In writing Fever, Benzekri’s insomnia has started again. Completed in eight episodes in its first version, the affair did not suit it. The civil war was approaching, the communicators were chatting, the identitarians of all sides were giving it their all and the politician remained absent and powerless. “They are romantic characters. It is not because it is a violent world that there cannot be greatness”, he wants to believe, he who saw in the pantheonization of Missak Manouchian one of these ” moments of collective political greatness. A break from the violence. In the darkness of these restless nights, an apparition: Philippe Rickwaert, the “black baron” who became president at the end of season 3 of the series of the same name. The screenwriter had turned the page, he had sworn it, but Fever says too much about our times. “I traveled through the violence of social networks, conspiracy forums, anti-Semitics, neo-Nazis and so on to prepare this series. I did not come out unscathed. These people exist.” So, he puts Rickwaert back on stage, a twist from the last episode. His hero. The prophet of doom nonetheless remains an idealist, one of the last, who still believes in the saving power of politics.
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