Nothing to do: in 2024, Philippe Labro continues to extend the year 1954. Elvis Presley then begins to act up in Memphis and the young Frenchman sadly ends his exchange program at Washington and Lee University, in Virginia. Will he have to pack up? “I was having a blast on this campus, I wanted to stay but I had to leave. One evening, after the graduation ceremony, I was a little drunk – it was really drunk there. I complained to some alumni from the so my scholarship wouldn’t be renewed. I worked for the newspaper, I liked the place, and those bastards didn’t want to keep me. I almost called out an old man. I ended up going back to the dormitory drunk. … The next day, the dean asks for me. I put on my suit and tie and I arrive in his office petrified with fear. He asks me if I know a certain Bland Terry – the old gentleman from the day before, one of the. wealthiest alumni of Washington and Lee, ran a shoe company in Florida, having heard me, he had just requested my file and, given my grades and my ranking, he had decided to create a scholarship especially for me. I owe everything to the generosity of this man who allowed me to do one more year.”
Seven decades have passed and, telling us the anecdote in a salon at the Gallimard house, Philippe Labro is moved. On his left hand, he still has the Washington and Lee signet ring, never taken off since: “Most Americans abandon it after a few years after their studies. I kept it as a fetish. It’s lapis- lazuli. She’s beautiful, isn’t she? People made fun of me in Paris, they found it vulgar, redneck.
There is a lot of nostalgia in Two gimlets on 5th Avenuethe charming novella just published by the eternal foreign student, now 88 years old but still as lively, both written and spoken. The action of the book first takes place in Paris, in 1961. A girl dumps a boy. They meet by chance in New York in 2001, just after September 11. Over a few gimlets (the cocktail that gives the novel its title), they tell each other about their lives. Will they get back together forty years later? After all, America is the continent of second chances…
For his part, Philippe Labro has never denied his passion for the United States, of which he is a specialist – he was notably there in 1963, during the Kennedy assassination. He is being polled on the presidential election of November 5, but he is cautious: “I am incapable of predicting the result. It is a much more fractured country than in the past. The Republican Party, which was that of Abraham Lincoln , of human rights and civil rights, is now that of Donald Trump, the opposite of a large part of our values. Nevertheless, Trump has qualities: he is energetic, combative, clever, charismatic… Manipulative. , also, above all, he had understood before Hillary Clinton that there are equivalents of the yellow vests in America, which we must be concerned about, when she saw them as ‘deplorables’… Hillary Clinton had made very serious mistakes, Kamala Harris. commits less.”
The Bolloré “fiacre”
Is Philippe Labro a right-wing man? With a certain dandyism, he likes to deny it, comparing himself to a windshield wiper. It is true that, as a media man, he always defended factual journalism against ideological bias. The old camaraderie that links him to Vincent Bolloré, with whom he launched Direct 8 and Live Morning in 2005, doesn’t she still classify it a little? He denies it: “When I experienced a terrible depression, then a pneumological problem, Vincent was there. Jean Contrucci, journalist at Provencetold me during the publication of The Crossing : ‘Friends are like cabs, you don’t find many of them when it rains.’ Vincent, it’s a cab! He is faithful and loyal. On C8, I have my independence and my freedom. On my show The Essential at LabroI invite whoever I want, writers, artists, singers, for fifty-two minutes of pure culture, without political positioning.”
In truth, more than an illusory right-wing, it is his eclecticism that has always been criticized for Philippe Labro. How can we please Telerama or on the Medici Prize jury when we presented the Antenne 2 television news, held the reins of RTL, directed films and wrote songs for Johnny Hallyday? Tom Wolfe’s former friend laughs about it with the same mischievousness as the author of Park Avenue leftism : “Too bad if I didn’t have the Goncourt for The Little Boy in 1990. I am like Piaf: I regret nothing, neither good nor bad… The recognition of readers is the only thing that counts. From Kléber Haedens to Eric Neuhoff via François Nourissier, I have always been treated to many beautiful articles. But this happened: in the chapel which extends between the 5th and 7th arrondissements of Paris, no one accepted the idea that this guy who ran a popular station and benefited from a chauffeur could be a novelist. . It didn’t make sense! It was unacceptable, unbearable. The year of publication of Little Boyat the Brive Book Fair, André Stil, communist sworn member of Goncourt, said to me: ‘You have unleashed a storm of jealousy!’ The members of this small society cannot admit an ostrogoth like me.”
The lesson of Pierre Lazareff
No offense to the envious, the ex-boss of RTL has built a real work, as recalled American writingsthe volume published last year in the Quarto collection. Of all that he has produced, what does the main person remember? “You have to try to take a step back. Two or three of my films hold up, that’s not bad. Writing books, around twenty novels and stories, is what matters most to me. I am especially proud of Poorly extinguished firespublished in 1967, where I deal with the Algerian war. As Johnny’s lyricist, I would like to be rememberedOh ! My pretty Sarahof Son of no one And Poem about the 7th grade. Don’t forget that I have also written for Jane Birkin, among others Lolita Go Home And French Graffitiquite provocative song. Go listen to it again, you’ll say to yourself: what did little Labro put in there for us!”
Curious reader, the great Philippe remembers two books from this fall: Accounts of certain events by Yasmina Reza and Hut by Abel Quentin. Always in the game, he never misses an opportunity to pay tribute to those who put his foot in the door. During our discussion, he praises Jean-Pierre Melville, Pierre Desgraupes, Pierre Dumayet, Jean Farran… When Labro was young, Pierre Lazareff (“this genius of the press”) gave him this advice: “In the absence of be intelligent, be intelligible.” He learned the lesson: “To see, to show, to be clear and limpid: I kept this concern for limpidity, to be read by everyone. I am not sure I will have heirs – frankly, I am very modest on this level But I had mentors I had a devotion to Simon Leys, who was ironic, fooled by nothing, very shrewd when he dissected other writers (his. Proteus on Gide is a marvel). The Orwellian, Aronian, Camusian family: in the end, it is this school of thought that prevails over the others.”
Two gimlets on 5th Avenueby Philippe Labro. Gallimard, 123 p., €17.
.