Jean-Philippe

Have you ever heard of Jean-Philippe Smet? Have you ever heard of Johnny Hallyday?

If you've never heard of him, don't bother reading this post. It's a French Pop/Rock Culture thing! Some of you may disagree with the word "Culture" in there, but it's part of my culture, so don't knock it. I guess you have to grow up immersed in it to appreciate it. Most of the stars of French culture seem to endure well into their 60s and beyond. Think Michel Sardou (I'll refer you to my Connemara post), Gilbert Bécaud (my September Morn post), etc. This is a very cultural blog, underneath it all!!

Anyways,.... Johnny Hallyday is one of the big stars of French Rock. He's about 60 and has sold millions of records. His real name is Jean-Philippe Smet, and us Belgians like to highlight that he comes from an area near the Belgian border (actually I just read on wikipedia that he was born in Paris, but that his father was Belgian - so we can add him to the list of famous Belgians). I never particularly liked him - actually, I can only think of one song by him "Quoi ma gueule? Qu'est-ce qu'elle a ma gueule?".

On our Aer Lingus flight over to New York last week, we picked 2 movies:
The first one was "The wind that shakes the barley". It's a movie about the Irish war of independence and the civil war. To be honest, I didn't think much of it. It had got big praise in all the papers, but I felt that the core premise of the movie, i.e. that families were split apart by the civil war, wasn't developed very well. Anyway, I'm digressing again. It didn't do much for me.
The second movie was "Jean-Philippe", a French comedy in which the main character is a big Johnny Hallyday fan, gets a knock on the head, and wakes up in a parallel universe where Jean-Philippe Smet never became a big star, never became Johnny Hallyday. It's very French, but Brendan enjoyed it too, so I think it translates well. It's very funny, and Johnny Hallyday, who plays himself in the movie, is really dead-pan. It's hard to know if he is a good actor or if he really is like that. So, even if you've never heard of Johnny Hallyday, I'd say you'd enjoy it.

Et pour ceux d'entre vous qui veulent le résumé en français, le voici: Jean-Philippe. Et voici l'article wikipedia sur Johnny Haliday: article wikipedia.