Ken Scott was tapping away on his laptop in a café when he overheard a group of criminals discussing how they wanted to change their lives.

Six years later Les Doigts croches reaches our screens; it’s a feature film relating the epic of five petty crooks setting off on the 839 km Way of Saint James as an act of redemption.

“There were these guys from Narcotics Anonymous sitting next to me.  There was such a contrast between their appearance – they were covered in tattoos – and the profound personal damage they were talking about.  For me, there was the basis for a good comedy drama,” says Scott whose girlfriend had, at that time, completed the 839 kilometres of the road to Santiago de Compostela.

“That’s how I knew the way and, as far as I was concerned, it really was the perfect spot to illustrate change. It became a sort of road movie on foot,” says the writer of the successful screenplays La grande séduction and Maurice Richard.

Les doigts croches is the first film that Ken Scott has directed.  With 33 days of shooting in Argentina and a budget of around $5m, let’s just say that his début wasn’t a walk in the park.

“It was a huge challenge.  Screenwriting and directing are not similar jobs.  Of course both want to tell stories.  The difference is that the screenwriter invents the story and the director creates it.  You work with reality, with actors, locations.”  He was fortunate enough to bring together an all-star cast.

Not everyone, indeed, has the good luck to rely on Roy Dupuis, Patrice Robitaille, Claude Legault, Paolo Noël and Jean-Pierre Bergeron for his baptism behind the camera.

“That was part of the reason why I wanted to direct this film.  I made a list of people I wanted to work with, telling myself that if I had them for my first directing effort, it would be exciting.  And I got everyone I wanted.”   

You can tell that Ken Scott really enjoyed working with these veteran actors who all came on board straight away.
“I already knew Claude as well as Roy, who was in Maurice Richard. I knew Patrice a little, but I got to know Jean-Pierre and Paolo whom I hadn’t met.
“Roy is a pillar of authenticity. Patrice brings a pleasant air of relaxation to the set.  Claude brings generosity and a comic sensibility. Jean-Pierre has something singular about him, something special.  As for Paulo, he has such natural charisma.  Each one brought something very powerful,” says Scott who discovered the ravishing Aure Atika, who plays Roy Dupuis’ love interest, on a trip to the Tokyo Film Festival.
“For this character I needed someone who was comfortable with drama and comedy.  I needed an actress with a smile to die for.  When I was doing the casting I immediately thought that she was the actress I required. 

And returning to the theme on the film, can people change?   The question makes the director smile.  “It’s impossible, impossible, impossible.  To make radical changes anyway.  You can make adjustments, but you remain who you are.  Without giving away the ending, I would say that the guys in the film changed to the extent of their potential.”

Roy Dupuis: The Capacity to Change

If the director of Les Doigts croches expresses serious reservations about the capacity of humans to change, his lead actor is convinced of the opposite, pointing to himself as a living example.

Roy Dupuis, who plays Charles Favreau, the brains behind a not very bright group of robbers, recalls how he turned his back on alcohol and drugs fifteen years ago, and says yes, you can change.
“In addition, I stopped smoking four months ago.  It’s easy.  I have to say that I stopped drinking in the past.  That was more difficult because it required me to change my way of life.  I invested a lot of time and energy in bars and clubs.  After that I had to relearn how to enjoy myself without it.  It’s a bit more complicated than stopping smoking,” says the actor who considers he was able to quit because he decided to change his habit for good reasons.

“You have to change for yourself and no-one else.  You have to want to do it as well as having the means of quitting.  When you’re in unfavourable surroundings it’s maybe more difficult to quit.”

“When I stopped drinking I did it for myself.  I had a choice between living and dying.  I told myself I loved life and managed to stay alive.  But I don’t regret what I went through.  At the time it wasn’t funny.  By the end I could lose four days.  Now I often draw from that dark period, to develop the characters I have to play.”   
What’s more, Roy Dupuis maintains that he’s not at all afraid of a relapse.
“As far as alcohol is concerned, I went in the opposite direction.  When I have people round I open a nice bottle of wine, taste it, but I don’t finish the glass.  I can’t do it any more.  As soon as I feel it sedating me, I don’t like it.  I’m afraid of missing something.  In the past I loved the sedative effect.  Now I’m afraid to miss a moment of life.”

While the actor has made draconian changes in his life, his character in Les Doigts croches is not to be outdone.
“He’s probably the one who changes most of the five characters.  At the end of the line, he’s the one who ends up saying that he’s going to finish the trail.  He doesn’t finish it for the money, for anyone else, he no longer has a woman, nothing.  He finishes it for himself.  That’s the message my character carries.”

At first, associating the name of Roy Dupuis with a comedy may appear to be against the laws of nature.  The party concerned maintains that he’d not thought about it, dwelling particularly on the quality of the screenplay presented to him.
“Anyhow, it’s a situation comedy.  It’s not Louis de Funès, clowning, or Commedia dell'arte.  It doesn’t have to be forced,” he says, recalling the role he played in André Forcier’s Les États-Unis d’Albert.
“He’s a more frivolous character, but I never went for laughs.  You play the situation.  The rhythm of the script helps.  You just have to find the authenticity in it, to make the character believable.”

On Roy, the off-set comic

Claude Legault :
Legault quickly cemented friendships with Dupuis, Robitaille and co.  “This started on the flight with Roy, whom I knew vaguely.  Three hours from take-off and we were crazy as shit on the plane.  I discovered the guy was a lot funnier than I’d thought.”

Patrice Robitaille :
“I knew Claude Legault a little before the shoot, but the person I’d worked with previously was Roy Dupuis.  I’d got along well with him, but this time I discovered him to be less enigmatic, less sombre.  Roy looks very deep, not easily approachable and a bit of a loner, but I saw him larking about in his underpants in the Winnebago.  I never knew this side of him.