He hosted the National Day show in Montreal in person. And his voice can now be heard in “Lightyear,” the all-new animated film from Pixar and Disney. Interview with a passionate voice, radio... and cinema!

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Pierre-Yves, what is your first memory of a movie theatre?

My cousin had taken me to see “La guerre des tuques”, I must have been in 1st grade. But I believe that before, I had seen “E.T. The extraterrestrial” in a drive-in in the family “station wagon”. We had sleeping bags and there was still the device that we installed on the door.

You were drawn to radio as a preteen. Why this love of voices?

It's the magic of the little box that emits sounds and all the imagination of what we can think about the decor, the positioning, the look of the people talking to us and the fact that we don't know who they are. For me, the radio is something mysterious, something that "grits"... This distant proximity.

Is it for this reason that you agreed to dub the character of Mo Morisson in "Lightyear"?

I fell in love with Mo in the audition, with the character, with his insecurity, with his humor, the modulations in his emotions and in his voice, in his somewhat clumsy gestures. I liked it a lot.

Your first remarkable film?

I would say, very young, “Back to the future”. For me, the versions of dubbed movies like “Rocky” and “Top Gun” that I have seen on Quebec TV channels are better than the original versions. It's because of the memory. These films are anchored in my memory as a child. Sylvester Stallone's voice is his dubbed voice. They are indelible and indelible memories of my memory.

And a newer one?

There are several of them. I really like the cinema of Martin Scorsese, of Stanley Kubrick. There is a connection with “Lightyear”, because I am a big “fan” of space exploration. Films that will play with the space-time line like "Interstellar" or "Arrival" by Denis Villeneuve marked me. The film "Contact", inspired by a novel by Carl Sagan, marked me a lot in my young years. This film is one of my favorite classics and it makes me think a lot, going off into the clouds and the constellations even today.

The soundtrack that rocked your adolescence?

That of “pulpy fiction”. I don't think I have a cult film. I believe there is good and bad in everything. There are periods of our life when we want to see things, others when we want to dive back into memories, sometimes we are thirsty for discoveries, works will come to reach us because we have certain vulnerabilities at certain times in our lives. We have just talked about exploring the universe, but a film like “Call me by my name” comes to me with other questions and other emotions. That's the beauty of life, cinema and art in general: there are too many beautiful ones to choose from.

The movie line you would like to see on your tombstone?

In the dubbed version of “Top Gun,” the corporal who is Maverick and Goose’s instructor tells them, “Don’t take me for a marble, Maverick.” It's probably a French expression and I like it. In life, I don't want people to take me for a marble.