Grégoire Canlorbe

Grégoire Canlorbe

A conversation with Jean-Pierre Valère, for The Postil Magazine

A conversation with Jean-Pierre Valère, for The Postil Magazine

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Jean-Pierre Valère, whose real name is Jean-Pierre van Lerberghe, is a Belgian actor, weightlifting champion, and musician. He stars in Moloss (originally known as Lopak L’Envoûteur, Lopak the Enchanter), which premiered at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival, on August 31, 2022. Moloss is co-directed by Abdelkrim Qissi and Abel Ernest Tembo.

Grégoire Canlorbe: Are you happy with the screening of Moloss at the BIFFF [Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival]?

Jean-Pierre Valère: Yes, very happy. I had the pleasure of meeting an excellent journalist in you, and I also got to meet the whole team of the film, so many wonderfully talented actors. It was like a crowning for us, in such magnificent setting, on the occasion of the great return of BIFFF after this devastating epidemic.

Grégoire Canlorbe: What was the shoot like?

Jean-Pierre Valère: It was an honor to film alongside friends, Abel Ernest Tembo and Abdelkrim Qissi. Ernest is remarkable as a director cameraman. I saw firsthand his great art. Restrained, unassuming, he knows how to direct his actors without seeming to direct them. The staging subtly and brilliantly alternates the intimate with the explosive. Our two friends Abdelkrim and Ernest, really, know how to hit all the right notes in a perfect symphony of collaboration.

Grégoire Canlorbe: Did you like playing your character in the film?

Jean-Pierre Valère: I am so grateful for the chance Ernest and Abdelkrim gave me to play this offbeat role—offbeat in just the right way. The bits of humor that the character brings, like when he tries to reassure Moloss, whose best friend he is, are a contrast to the many scenes of violence and the almost constant feeling of dread found in the film. It was a shooting like no other, an adventure like I had never experienced before, which I had the chance to share with all these heroes that are the other actors of the film, all of them remarkable. I hope that a sequel will be made. Terminator did it successfully, why not Moloss?

Jean-Pierre Valère (on the right) and Grégoire Canlorbe (on the left)

[Spoiler alert! Skip this question and its answer about the film for those who don’t want to know about a crucial revelation]

Grégoire Canlorbe: A rather late revelation in the film is that your character, up till then, had been under the yoke of a hypnotic substance. How did you get into the skin of a character subject to such a chemical “spell?”

Jean-Pierre Valère: I like subtle acting, whether I’m playing bastards (as in the RTL-TVI series Affaires de Famille) or funny and nice characters (as in Moloss). Many humorists, if they want to be funny, must be good comedians first and foremost. I tried to play my character in Moloss with nuance—to bring out the state of mind he is in by playing him, paradoxically, as if nothing had happened. Whether it’s the role I play in Moloss, or the role of a local “J.R.” character, a real scoundrel (I love that!) that I play in Affaires de Famille, it’s all about the look, and a sincere and natural performance.

[End of spoiler]

Grégoire Canlorbe: Looking back on your weightlifting career, what do you see?

Jean-Pierre Valère: A very weighty career, if I may say so, since I was a finalist at the Olympic Games in Mexico, Munich, and Montreal, with a silver medal at the 1970 world championships. He was very proud of his little track record, this Valère guy, who was then known by his real name, van Lerberghe.

Grégoire Canlorbe: How does the art of using your hands as a musician differ from the art of using your hands as a weightlifter?

Jean-Pierre Valère: Excellent question. As you know, I have been in love with music—especially piano and guitar—since I was a child. As someone who likes to play classical improvisation, I was surprised to find out that weightlifting does not alter (no pun intended) the flexibility of the fingers when playing musical instruments; these are two reflex actions of the finger muscles that are quite specific, each in its own way. I was afraid that I would not be able to play the guitar or the piano properly after a training session, but I was amazed to discover that weightlifting and music are perfectly compatible disciplines; and that the improvement of the first one does not compromise the improvement of the second, provided, of course, that weightlifting is not too time-consuming to take away time from music. But I think that an artist, whoever he or she may be, should cultivate versatility as much as these meager twenty-four hours a day allow.

Grégoire Canlorbe: You played the main role in the Belgian TV-drama, Affaires de Famille (a total of 105 episodes, broadcast since 1996). What are your favorite TV-dramas?

Jean-Pierre Valère: My interpretation of Didier Barillot in Affaires de Famille, with the influence of Dallas’ J.R., is one of the greatest satisfactions of my acting career, as is my recent interpretation of Moloss’ best friend. I hope to have the chance to play other roles of the same quality in the near future. I used to enjoy the series Dallas, but I don’t watch any series nowadays.

Grégoire Canlorbe: Among the contemporary musicians, are some particularly dear to your heart as a music lover?

Jean-Pierre Valère: Lang Lang, an extraordinary person and a virtuoso pianist capable of an infinite number of nuances; Khatia Buniatishvili, whose physical beauty is matched only by her sublime piano playing. But above all, the Beatles—under an apparent lightness, the most inspired and diversified geniuses of the 20th century!

Grégoire Canlorbe: Jean-Claude Van Damme alone is nicknamed “The Muscles from Brussels,” even though such a qualification fits you just as well, if not more. What do you make of that?

Jean-Pierre Valère: The reason is simple—Jean-Claude is world famous. Here’s an interesting anecdote in that regard. We were both training at the Centre National des Sports in Brussels, me in weightlifting, him in karate. One evening when we were the last two in the weightlifting room and were doing our abs side by side, he told me about his plans to go to America and make a career in cinema. As I didn’t want to break his momentum, I said it was a good idea, never believing for a second that anything would ever come of it, considering the competition he would have to face. But we know what happened. I called him one day. He was in London. I hadn’t seen him in, say, twenty years; but he was still as nice and friendly as ever, just surprised to hear from me.

Grégoire Canlorbe: What do you remember about Vasily Alekseyev?

Jean-Pierre Valère: Fortunately for me, we were not in the same category. He was classified as a super heavyweight, and I was classified as a light heavyweight. He weighed in at one hundred and seventy kilos, and I weighed in at less than ninety kilos. In Belgium, weightlifting was at that time a despised sport, so that everyone had to train alone in his cellar, without any real professional supervision. The Russians were pros, and we were amateurs, so to speak. That’s why I’m proud to be vice world champion!

Grégoire Canlorbe: So, tell us about your friendship with heavyweight Serge Reding.

Jean-Pierre Valère: A young man of incredible kindness! His shyness played tricks on him in competitions. He was as gifted as Vasily Alekseyev, if not more so, but he let himself be impressed by the Russian champion, who was not afraid of anything and who went through some formidable psychological training. When we both went to compete all over the world, it was always a wonderful adventure that we would remember for the rest of our lives; an initiatory journey to discover different civilizations. There is always something to learn and something to gain from meeting others—the calmness of New Yorkers in traffic, for example, or the eternal smile of the poorest of the poor.

Grégoire Canlorbe: Are you still weightlifting?

Jean-Pierre Valère: Now, I just do “maintenance of the machinery,” as they say. I go to a gym two or three times a week, with the idea of maintaining, as they say, the locomotor system and to prevent an inevitable loss of strength as one gets older. It is important to be able to keep one’s physical independence until the end. And, while we are at it, to maintain a well-balanced, or at least a presentable, body.

Grégoire Canlorbe: You are a songwriter, with a particular penchant for love songs if I am not mistaken.

Jean-Pierre Valère: My songs are not well known, but that doesn’t take away from the pleasure I take in writing them. I am a literary person above all else; some people ironically say that I speak like a book. I try, in any case, to bring a particular care to the choice of words, and to distil nuance, even humor.

Grégoire Canlorbe: So, tell us about your favorite songs.

Jean-Pierre Valère: I have a special affection for the Beatles’ songs, as they are practically the coming together of Mozart, Beethoven, Gershwin and rock. That four such talented musicians, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison, could team up is a unique event in the history of music! Other songs that blow me away every time I listen to them are the Eagles’ “Hotel California,” or Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” (a wickedly slow song, as they used to say back then, with infinite poetry!); and Jean-Louis Aubert’s “Les Plages” (a wonder of nostalgia).

Grégoire Canlorbe: By your own admission, you are a “literary man.” Who are your favorite French language writers?

Jean-Pierre Valère: I must confess that I read relatively little, suffering from a problem with the eyes that, when too active, get tired very quickly. The little I have been taught about French and Greek philosophers has been a fundamental background for me. Victor Hugo, Alfred de Vigny, or Montaigne I do particularly like. But the one I really like and prefer is Chamfort (not the singer, the other one!), for that art of his which can express a strong idea in a short sentence. I invite everyone to read Chamfort’s Maximes et Pensées, which contains true philosophy, and whose discovery in my adolescence, a time when I was precisely in need of philosophy, was formative for me.

Grégoire Canlorbe: Thank you for your time. Is there anything you would like to add or expand?

Jean-Pierre Valère: “The most lost of all days is the one in which one has not laughed,” wrote Chamfort. I would humbly add that the worst periods in life are those when one finds oneself without the slightest project, which throws one into the darkest depression. One project that is occupying me at the moment is a book that I plan to call, modestly, A Guide to the Universe, a title that I hope will be catchy. I hope to have time to finish it (which brings us back to a subject we discussed earlier—the little time we have each day). I plan to put my thoughts on things in it, and I have written about 20 pages so far. I have a few songs with a touch of humor and irony that I would like to record in the studio, with guitar accompaniment by myself. A lot of work to do, but you know how versatility is an ideal that drives me.

I was happy to meet you. You are considerate in your interviews and let your interviewee express himself—which is so rare that it needs to be highlighted.

That conversation was originally published in The Postil Magazine‘s November 2022 issue

A conversation with Sheldon Lettich, for The Postil Magazine

A conversation with Sheldon Lettich, for The Postil Magazine

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Sheldon Lettich is an American screenwriter, film director, and producer. He is notably known for his work in the action film genre—and his collaborations with Jean-Claude Van Damme, Sylvester Stallone, Mark Dacascos, Dolph Lundgren, and Daniel Bernhardt. Besides co-writing Bloodsport and Rambo III, Sheldon Lettich directed and co-wrote Lionheart, Double Impact, and Only the Strong.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: What is the situation with regard to your long-established movie-project about Vietnam?

  Sheldon Lettich: Well, I’ve written a lot of scripts about Vietnam, but none of them has been made. I wrote a script called Firebase. And it was kind of like that movie called Zulu. It was kind of like that. Basically, a small group of Americans on a hilltop firebase, and they got attacked by a huge number of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. That was the screenplay I wrote a number of years ago. And Sylvester Stallone read the screenplay, and he liked it. And that’s how I ended up working with him on Rambo III, because he had read that screenplay. I’ve written a few other Vietnam screenplays, but none of them has gotten made, yet.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: You collaborated with Sylvester Stallone on Rambo III. How did your team come up with the idea of the tank-versus-helicopter scene? Or the idea of colonel Trautman’s “In your ass!” line?

  Sheldon Lettich: The tank-versus-helicopter scene wasn’t my idea, that was Stallone’s idea. And I thought it was not a plausible idea, but it seemed to work. You liked it, right? A helicopter versus a tank just makes no kind of sense at all because a tank is not designed to shoot at something moving fast like an airplane. A tank versus an airplane or a helicopter makes no kind of sense at all. You’d have to be very lucky. It takes some time to aim that cannon on a tank. So for a tank versus a helicopter, I didn’t believe it, but it seemed to work. There we are, it was Sly’s idea. As for colonel Trautman’s line in the interrogation scene, that was Stallone’s idea as well. That wasn’t mine.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: What kind of movie could be done about the withdrawal of the US troops from Afghanistan? Perhaps a new Rambo installment, in which Stallone would rescue a group of hostages once again abandoned in Afghanistan and, in the process, decapitate his former Taliban allies turned into despots of the region?

  Sheldon Lettich: I don’t see a good action movie coming out of that because everything about that was very disappointing. That really shouldn’t have happened the way that it happened. I don’t think anybody would want to see a movie about that. And Stallone is in his 70s, now. He’s a little old to go back into Afghanistan. And I think he’s had his—I think Rambo has had—his Afghanistan adventure and doesn’t really need another one. So I don’t see that happening at all. I’m 70 years old. Stallone’s even older than me. I don’t know, he’s like 72. I don’t think he’ll want to do some crazy action movie where he’s running around firing a gun and killing all kinds of Afghans. It’s just not going to happen again.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Jean-Claude Van Damme served as an editor on Bloodsport, which you co-wrote. How much did he change the story with respect to the original screenplay?

  Sheldon Lettich: The first cut was very bad, so Jean-Claude got involved. And he basically recut the fight scenes because he was involved with those fight scenes. He knew how the fight scenes should work. And there was another editor that Cannon brought in to recut the movie and to restructure it. And so they fixed it up. But Jean-Claude basically worked on the fight scenes, and he made those work really good. In the meanwhile, they got some other writers involved who made some changes. Most of the changes, I thought, were very good, actually. What I mostly did with Bloodsport is I came up with the idea. I structured it. I came up with the three-act structure where the beginning is that everybody’s getting ready to go to the fight. The middle is the tournament, and the movie ends after Gong Li is defeated and Jean-Claude goes home. So, that’s the structure that I came up with.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Before Bloodsport, had you been involved with Karate Tiger?

  Sheldon Lettich: No, I had nothing to do with that. That’s the first movie that I saw Jean-Claude in, here in the US. It was called No Retreat, No Surrender. And that was the movie—when we were looking for an actor for Bloodsport, that movie came out in theaters. It was playing in theaters here, in Los Angeles so the producer, Mark DiSalle, told us, “We found this new actor, Jean-Claude Van Damme. Go see his movies in the theaters, right now.” And that was No Retreat, No Surrender. And we were very impressed with him. And that’s pretty much—that helped him solidify the role in Bloodsport.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: After Bloodsport, did you get involved in Kickboxer?

  Sheldon Lettich: Well, I was involved just in that Kickboxer was the project that Mark DiSalle approached me with. When I first met Mark, he was looking for a writer, and he had an idea for a martial arts movie called Kickboxer. And so, he pitched me the idea, and I thought I had a better idea, which was Bloodsport. Bloodsport had not been written, but I’d been talking with Frank Dux about his experiences. Turned out that they weren’t real experiences: he had made all that stuff up.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Please tell us about your partnership with Jean-Claude Van Damme in writing Full Contact, which is known as Lionheart in the US if I’m not mistaken.

  Sheldon Lettich: Yes, Lionheart. Actually, I got together with Jean-Claude and he came up with the basic idea. That was his idea. It was called the Wrong Bet, at first. We sat down in a coffee shop, one night on Sunset Boulevard to talk about it. We were in that coffee shop for about three hours, and the manager wanted us to leave because we were taking up—it was kind of empty, but he still wanted us out of there. He thought we were there for too long. And we told him to leave us alone. “We’re working on something, right now.” And then, he called the cops. So actually, we had some sheriff’s deputies come in there and tell us to leave. But in those three hours, we came up with the basic story line for Lionheart. But it was Jean-Claude’s original idea, that whole thing about—I think I came up with the Foreign Legion idea, but he came up with that idea about his sister-in-law, and she’s got a little daughter, and he has to fight in order to make money to take care of them. That was Jean-Claude’s.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: The fight between JCVD and Bolo Yeung at the end of Double Impact is quite an epic moment. How was it shot?

  Sheldon Lettich: Actually, it was shot in two different locations because we shot part of it in Hong Kong. I’m just trying to think about. We were on a ship in Hong Kong. No, the exterior of the ship was in Hong Kong, the interior of the ship was in Los Angeles. That was in San Pedro. And so, we actually shot on this ship, and then we looked at the footage later. We were kind of rushed that day. We didn’t have enough time to really do it right. And so we had a set built in Santa Clarita, also in Los Angeles, to shoot some additional shots. So it was basically like—it looks like it’s all done at the same time, but it was actually done in two different locations at two different times. We cut it all together, and it looked really great.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Why did JCVD never act with Bolo Yeung again after Bloodsport and Double Impact? After all, three is a magic number as they say.

  Sheldon Lettich: Well, he made two movies with Bolo. Bloodsport has Bolo, and Double Impact has Bolo. It’s hard to just keep using the same villain over and over again.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Are you concerned for the future of the cinema of Hong Kong as the Chinese Communist Party will be extending its grip on the city?

  Sheldon Lettich: I’m not an expert on that, but obviously, we’re not going to see Hong Kong movies like the old ones. It’s all going to change now because the Chinese have taken over. So there are certain things you can say, certain things you can’t say. The Chinese government controls whatever is going on in Hong Kong. So you’ll never see those Hong Kong movies like we saw before, the Jackie Chan’s. Oh, Jackie Chan, of course, is doing movies in China, also. But they’re not going to be quite the same as those John Woo movies. I don’t think he’ll be able to make movies anymore in Hong Kong with corrupt police officers. Basically, the way that the Chinese government sees it, there are no corrupt police officers in China. There are no gangsters in China. So, basically, everything has to change. They’re up to do a lot of historical stuff. So, you’re probably not going to see any contemporary stories like in those Hong Kong movies where you’ve got good cops, bad cops, gangsters, all kinds of stuff like that. I think that’s going away. And all they’re going to see out of Hong Kong and China is stuff that takes place hundreds of years ago in earlier eras in China, but not contemporary. Because contemporary means that you’ve got to have good guys and bad guys. And in China, they want everybody to believe that China is a perfect country. There are no gangsters, there are no corrupt cops. So everything is wonderful in China, which means you can’t have much drama for a contemporary movie. So, that era—the era of the John Woo movies and Ringo Lam and all of that—that’s pretty much over, for now.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Please tell us about The Hard Corps, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Vivica A. Fox. How did such great movie with such great cast end up as a DTV?

  Sheldon Lettich: Well, we were hoping it was going to go to theaters. And the problem was that the producers just didn’t want to spend the money to get other actors that we needed to make it a theatrical movie. Because originally, it was supposed to be Jean-Claude and Wesley Snipes. So the boxer was supposed to be played either by Wesley Snipes or Cuba Gooding, which would have made it a much bigger movie. Basically, they said, “We’ve got Jean-Claude Van Damme. We’re paying him a lot. If we get Wesley Snipes, we’ll have to pay Wesley Snipes the same amount of money we’re paying Jean-Claude, and that’s going to make the budget too big.” Now, in my opinion, it would have helped the movie. We would have had a bigger name in there. We would have had three big names. We would have had Jean-Claude, Wesley Snipes and Vivica A. Fox. And I think for sure, it would have been a theatrical movie. And that’s why it didn’t go theatrical because we just didn’t have the money we needed to get the right cast.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: I’d like to hear you about The Order, which easily ranks among your best collaborations with JCVD. The scene in which Van Damme is dressed as a Hassidic Jew is just exceptional.

  Sheldon Lettich: I made another movie in Israel—I did a movie there with Dolph Lundgren, The Last Patrol. So I got to know Israel pretty well. The cops trying to catch Van Damme, it was basically my idea. But I didn’t write the original script for The Order. It was written by this guy, Les Weldon. I wanted to make it more like an old Hitchcock movie. Hitchcock made a movie called North By Northwest and another one called The Man Who Knew Too Much. And that’s what I wanted to do with The Order.You’ve got the bad guys and the cops all after Jean-Claude. So, basically, he’s in trouble with everybody. And that’s how all those Hitchcock movies worked. I rewatched North By Northwest just recently. It was on TV. And I realized there were a lot of ideas that I took from North By Northwest. And I even forgot that I took the ideas, like this one scene in North By Northwest with Cary Grant. He’s trying to disguise himself, so he puts on some dark sunglasses. I did the exact same thing in The Order. We got the cops looking for Jean-Claude, and he’s putting dark sunglasses on to disguise himself. So that’s the kind of movie it was supposed to be. And Hitchcock put a lot of humor into those movies, too, and I put a lot of humor into The Order.

  There was a Jean-Paul Belmondo movie called The Man from Rio. It was in the 1960s. I saw it in the theater. And so I wanted to make it a little bit like that. The same thing where everybody is chasing our hero. The cops and the bad guys were all after him. And then, there was another movie I saw. It was a French movie. So those two French movies, right there. It was called The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob, where some guy was anti-Semitic. He’s got the mafia after him, and he disguises himself as a Hasidic Jew. And then, the bad guys and the cops are all chasing him. So that’s another part of that idea that I had. And then, just being in Jerusalem and just seeing these guys walking around, I just thought that would be a good disguise for Jean-Claude to have if he was trying to get away from the cops. So that was what pretty much led to that. And I really wasn’t sure if Jean-Claude would go for it, if he would actually do that. And he did. He totally went for it. He put the beard on and everything, and that’s my favorite sequence in the entire movie. I really love the way that whole sequence turned out. So that’s my favorite part of The Order.

  Our producer was Avi Lerner. And one thing Avi told me before we did the movie, he said, “l want an action scene every 10 minutes. Lots of action.” And he paid for it, too. They had the budget. We did a lot of crazy stuff in The Order. We were at the airport. Can you imagine shooting—nobody else has done that in Israel, but Avi had some connections. He had a cousin who was a pilot for El Al. That was how he got that jet where Jean-Claude was trying to get around the jet and just coming through. That was Avi’s cousin in the cockpit. And then, Avi was a good friend of the Mayor of Israel at the time, Ehud Olmert. And that’s how we got permission to shoot in Jerusalem. I mean, can you imagine? We’re doing this crazy chase scene, and we’re really on the streets of Jerusalem for most of it.

  It was very hard to shoot there. It’s very crowded. And the people who live there, it’s divided between Jews and Muslims. And they disagree on just about everything, but they all love Jean-Claude Van Damme. All of them are Van Damme fans. So we had a hard time getting away from them because they’d be surrounding us and chasing after us. They were like, “Van Damme! Van Damme!” They wanted him to sign autographs. It became very difficult to shoot in Jerusalem, so we ended up building sets in Bulgaria to look like Jerusalem. Half of that chase scene was shot in Jerusalem and on the real streets, and then the other half we shot on a recreated version of Jerusalem in Bulgaria. And what I find interesting about this is that even people who are from Israel or who’ve been in Jerusalem many times don’t realize that we shot in two different places. They think that we shot the entire thing on the streets of Jerusalem. So we did a pretty good job recreating that Jerusalem look.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Before Mark Dacascos acted for Christophe Gans in Crying Freeman and Brotherhood of the Wolf, he was revealed in Only the Strong. Please tell us about your collaboration with Dacascos.

  Sheldon Lettich: Well, he had a manager named Katherine James, and she was the one that was pushing Mark. She got in touch with me, said, “You need to work with my client, Mark Dacascos. He’s going to be the next big action star.” And so I met Mark and I liked him very much. And one thing I found out about him was that he was very good with gymnastics. He was a good acrobat, and I think he’d already been studying some capoeira at the time. And that was an important part of the movie. It was all about capoeira. So Mark was willing to go to classes with this real capoeira master from Brazil. So he learned all that stuff and was very willing to do anything I asked him to do. And it ended up working out great for the movie because he was able to do so much stuff that Van Damme can’t do, for example. Like Mark was good with the gymnastics. He could do flips. He could jump in the air. Jean-Claude can’t really do that kind of stuff. He’s good with the kicks and the punching, but if he has to do something gymnastic, we generally have to get a stunt double to do it for him. And also, Jean-Claude was not good with weapons, like martial arts weapons. He can use a gun. Of course, anybody can fire a gun, but he couldn’t do like the sticks and poles and all that kind of stuff, and Mark could do all of that stuff. We realized that in the movie, we’ve got him having fights with people using sticks and everything. And with Jean-Claude we couldn’t do that.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Scott Adkins is sometimes thought to be Jean-Claude Van Damme’s spiritual heir. How do you assess his performances?

  Sheldon Lettich: I think he’s great. I met him a few years ago, and I knew he was going to do great as an action actor. And he’s been doing terrific. He’s been doing a lot of great action movies. Unfortunately, we’re in a different era, now. Had I met Scott in the 1980s, he probably would have become a much bigger star because those kinds of movies were popular back then, in the 80s and 90s. By the time Scott came on the scene, those kinds of movies were not happening, anymore. And now, it’s become superhero movies. So superhero movies have kind of taken over as far as action movies. And Scott has certainly done a number of action films, and he’s been great in them, but that’s just not the kind of movie that’s getting the big theatrical releases, nowadays, which is unfortunate.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Do you share Martin Scorsese’s, Ridley Scott’s, and Denis Villeneuve’s recently expressed reservations about Marvel movies?

  Sheldon Lettich: Well, personally, I’m a Marvel Comics fan. From a long time ago, I was reading all those comic books in the 60s when they came out. I would go down to the to the store. The day that they put the comic books on the stands, I would go down to the store and get them. So I had all the originals. I had the first Fantastic Four and the first X-Men, the first Spider-Man. I had all those. I was a big fan of Marvel comic books back then. And then, when they started making the Marvel movies, I thought the first few were really great. I loved the first Iron Man movie, for example. And the first Captain America movie, I thought that was terrific. But then, they just started getting just too big for my taste. They’re too big, too many characters. And I started losing interest in those Marvel movies. They’re well-made, but there’s a sameness to them. They have the same kind of structure. They all end up with these huge action scenes with lots of special effects, lots of CGI. And personally, CGI is great, but I prefer action films that have some real stuff going on screen where people are actually fighting. They’re not relying on CGI.

  I was a big fan of the earlier James Bond movies, the pre-CGI James Bond movie. I was a big James Bond fan for many years. But with some of these more recent ones, once they started getting into too much CGI, and I wasn’t seeing real stunts anymore, I started losing interest in those. Although the Daniel Craig ones, I think are really good. They basically made some real changes with those Daniel Craig versions. But even so, I’m just not the Bond’s fan that I used to be many years ago. And the Marvel movies, Scorsese says they’re not real movies. Well, they really are more like just an assembly line product. There’s a sameness to all of them, now. It just feels like you’re watching the same movie: lots of CGI, lots of explosions and crazy weapons, crazy flying machines. But they just don’t have the same kind of heart that they had in the earlier ones, the first few that they made.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Do you share the commonly heard criticism that Christopher Nolan’s action scenes are as much bad and poorly shot as his screenplays and concepts are astute?

  Sheldon Lettich: Christopher, I think he’s great. See, his action scenes feel fresh and original to me because he’s basically running the show. He’s coming up with these movies. He’s not recycling some comic book characters. He’s doing original movies, coming up with original action scenes. Whereas with the Marvel movies, the producers are pretty much telling—they’re hiring directors who are basically traffic cops and telling them, “This is what the movie is going to be. This is what the action scenes are going to be. And you get out there, and you just tell the actors what to do.” They just move the characters around. And with Christopher Nolan, it’s not like that. He’s basically making Christopher Nolan movies. He’s doing action scenes that are fresh and original and doing them the way he wants to do them. And I really admire him for that. And James Cameron, too. James Cameron is another example. I love the Avatar movie. I’ve watched it a number of times. The action scenes are great. Everything about Avatar is fantastic. But James Cameron, basically, he’s calling his own shots. He’s basically saying, “I want to do this movie called Avatar. These are the actors I want.” And he goes and makes the movie. And he’s got no studio executives telling him how to structure his movie, what characters are going to be in it. It’s basically his show. And that makes a big difference.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: How do you explain that Hollywood, which used to be somewhat conservative and patriotic in the Reaganian era, has become so woke in the last few years?

  Sheldon Lettich: No, it wasn’t really conservative in the eighties. It was not Hollywood. That was Stallone. That was Stallone’s own point of view. Stallone was somewhat patriotic. He was a big supporter of Reagan, America. Reagan was, I don’t know—I wouldn’t call him a close personal friend, but he knew Reagan. He voted for him. I’m not sure if he campaigned for him, but they were very closely aligned in their politics. The rest of Hollywood was not. Stallone was kind of an outlier when it came to Hollywood. Oliver Stone, for example, has a completely different point of view. So that was Stallone and Schwarzenegger. Both of them were Republicans. Schwarzenegger even ended up being the Republican governor of California. So that was really their point of view, but that was not Hollywood. Hollywood was actually much more liberal during that period.

  And that’s why the Rambo movies got such bad reviews, too. Like Rambo III, I mean, we got a Golden Razzie Award for Worst Screenplay, Worst Movie because most of the press was very liberal. And so they were not really voting their conscience about the movie. It was all about politics. “Because Stallone is a conservative Republican, we’re going to say that his movie is shit.” But actually, Rambo III, I think, is a pretty damn good movie. I like Rambo II even better. But basically, that was not the Hollywood attitude at the time. That was Stallone, Schwarzenegger—Bruce Willis also ended up being a Republican. So a lot of these action stars had a different point of view from most people in Hollywood. Like even Van Damme, he’s very conservative. He’s not an American. I think he is an American citizen now, actually. And he was a Trump supporter. Even Stallone and Schwarzenegger were not Trump supporters but Van Damme was. We’re not talking about Hollywood in general, we’re talking about action stars who, for the most part, tended to be more conservative and lean towards the Republicans more than the Democrats.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Please tell us about this recent movie of yours whose main character is a soldier dog, Max.

  Sheldon Lettich: Well, that brought me back to Afghanistan because the beginning of the movie takes place in Afghanistan? So rather than Rambo in Afghanistan, Max was really Rambo with four legs instead of two. He was basically a Rambo character. Max, he’s a soldier in Afghanistan. He gets sent back to the States. And then, when some bad guys are threatening his family, well, then he uses all his skills to defeat the bad guys. So it was really Rambo with four legs and a tail. That was basically Max. And I got the idea for that because I got some puppies a number of years ago at the pound, and supposedly, they were German Shepherds. They were little, so it was hard to tell. So I got these two puppies, and months later, I discovered that they were not German shepherds, they were Belgian malinois. And so I did some research on Belgian malinois, and I found out that the army and the police are using these dogs because they’re the best dogs for that kind of work. So I was doing my research, and I saw that there were a couple of dog handlers that died in Afghanistan or Iraq. And then, their families asked, “Well, my son is dead, but can I have his dog? Can his dog be part of our family because that’s all we have left of him from his time in the military?” And so these families ended up adopting the dogs, and that was the basis for Max. Basically, this dog handler gets killed, his dog survives. And then, the family back in Texas wants to adopt the dog. And the dog ends up being their protector, coming to the rescue.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Thank you for the opportunity to do this interview.

  Sheldon Lettich: You’re welcome. That’s funny, I was just exchanging text messages with Brian Thompson. And Brian is in The Order. And Brian is a real expert with swords. He was in the Conan Show at Universal Studios. So he used to work with swords all the time. He’s really good with them. And then, our stunt double for Jean-Claude in The Order was David Leitch. Well, David is also really good with weapons, so Brian and he worked out a great sword fight sequence. And David, by the way, has now gone on to be a director. He directed Deadpool 2. He did that one, I forgot the title of it, the one with Dwayne Johnson. He did this really huge movie with Dwayne Johnson [Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw]. And he was our double for Jean-Claude.

  So, we were supposed to have a sword fight at the end of The Order.But Jean-Claude, like I said, he’s not good with weapons. We tried doing a few things with him. He wasn’t comfortable with it. He’s comfortable with what he’s good at, with the kicks and the punches and all of that. So he said, “Guys, let’s not do this. I can’t do this scene.” And basically, Brian and David were going to do most of the scene with the swords. And we were just going to need some close ups of Jean-Claude just swinging a sword or something. And he just didn’t feel it was going to work. So we went away from that whole sequence. And it’s a bit disappointing because I thought we needed a really good sword fight at the end of The Order, but we ended up not getting it. It’s kind of a disappointing scene.

That interview was originally published in The Postil Magazine‘s March 2022 issue

A conversation with Christine Lewicki, for The Postil Magazine

A conversation with Christine Lewicki, for The Postil Magazine

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Christine Lewicki is the founder of the company O Coaching Inc., based in Los Angeles, California. Author of the bestselling book I Quit Complaining (with more than 300,000 copies sold), Christine is also a certified leadership coach, speaker, and Mastermind group facilitator. As a global entrepreneur, her clients hail from the United States, Canada, Asia, and Europe. Several media outlets, alongside her respective clients and peers, have constantly commended her work at O’ Coaching. Christine takes part in a wide array of panels, radio programs, and television shows: she was interviewed on France Inter, Europe 1, RTL, RMC, Sud Radio, Radio Bleue, France 2 and Direct 8 and 6, and her articles have been diffused in the French press (Le Monde, Le Figaro, Elle, Marie Claire, Marie France, Top Santé, Psychologie Magazine, and many others). More on her website.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Your passion is to help “ordinary people” create “extraordinary lives.” You write so yourself, and I quote, “by cultivating modesty, we end up cultivating mediocrity.” What is the origin of our all too common psychological docility towards the limiting ideal of modesty, which hinders us from honing our talents and obtaining personal achievements? What rituals and concrete resolutions do you recommend to help us escape our comfort zone?

  Christine Lewicki: We very often impede ourselves from developing our unique personality and renounce what animates us deep down in our hearts because our parents and our respective societies have inculcated the importance of modesty. We are also ultimately taught to make ourselves small. We, therefore, gradually lose that connection that renders each and every one of us unique; and when there comes a time to finally disclose it—when we need to know who we truly are, when we want to know what we can bring to this world, we find ourselves distraught.

  What is often named a “comfort zone” is something I would rather label a “mediocrity zone,” because the “comfort” that is referred to here is the one felt when nurturing an exaggerated form of modesty. It may seem paradoxical, but despite the frustration and the anger resulting from a life of not reaching our high expectations, there is still something reassuring and satisfying in a humble and easy life, even if it is very often too bleak.

  I would say that the first thing that makes our “mediocrity zone” that comfortable is the reassuring feeling of being accepted by a group. Handling our lives often means distancing ourselves from a few people, which means asserting who we truly are rather than embracing the image others have formed about us. Moving forward in our projects, formulating our own ideas…. These increase the risk of being mocked, harassed, envied, or even excluded by others. Taking the lead in our life sometimes requires leaving behind the image others have of us, and thus, the comfort of social cohesion.

  What makes the mediocrity zone that appealing and captivating is that it is also easier to remain passive, to give our dreams up, to satisfy ourselves with what we already have, even if it does not fully make us happy or content. Maintaining control of our lives, achieving projects that we hold dear, inspiring cooperation and respect are all appealing things, but they demand courage and work. Oftentimes, we tend to avoid overthinking and changing anything in our barely satisfying lives.

  In addition, it is comfortable to be able to point the finger at the culprit and consider ourselves as victims of other people’s nastiness, lack of comprehension, or simply bad luck. This approach is comfortable because it erases our responsibility. By assuming at the outset that “it is always the other’s fault” if our dreams do not come true, if life is boring, if the unexpected is annoying, we likewise give up having more power in our own lives. We admit that we do not feel capable of turning around the established order in our existence and that is it easier and more tempting to wallow in the idea that “it is never our fault anyway.”

  To escape one’s comfort zone requires going through three concrete resolutions: first, accept to be more independent of the people around us; second, renounce the pleasure of living a passive and convenient life that does not necessitate effort and overcoming challenges; and finally, stop running away from responsibilities and blaming others for our misfortune. I frequently claim that brilliant and talented individuals were once mediocre and hesitant to change their habits. Going out of one’s comfort zone is never easy, but it is worth the trouble.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: In your book I Quit Complaining, which has been a bestseller in France, you describe complaining as a toxic habit, which impedes us from becoming the best version of ourselves. You invite your readers to get rid of this poisonous attitude—and to start by taking up the challenge of not complaining at all for 21 days in a row. Could you remind us of why you make the case that complaining is detrimental, psychologically and socially speaking? What are the forms of anger that help us acquire the actual power to inspire respect, foster cooperation, and unleash our potential?

Christine Lewicki: When we complain about the coffee machine that does not work, about the e-mail box that does not open, about a partner not answering phone calls, an employer lacking empathy or professionalism…. it first has a concrete physical consequence in that it consumes a lot of energy. At the end of the day, we go to bed exhausted and drained. In addition, this habit illustrates how we are on automatic pilot and allow the victim’s position to take control of our daily life. By adopting this systematic position, by reacting mechanically as a victim to everyday hazards, our cognitive mechanisms get directly affected.

  Steven Parton, the author of The Science of Happiness: Why complaining is literally killing you, explains on the website Psych Pedia that the habit of complaining alters our brain’s synapses and is even more damaging to our mental health than we think. Within our brain exist synapses, which are little zones in between two neurons or nerve cells assuring the transportation of information from one cell to the other. The space wherein these synapses are located is an empty space called the synaptic cleft. Every time we have a thought, a synapse sends a chemical product through the synaptic cleft towards another synapse, creating hence a “bridge” on which an electrical signal can pass while transporting the relevant information at stake.

  The problem—as explained by Parton—is that every time this electrical charge is launched, the synapses get closer together to reduce the distance the electrical load has to travel through. The brain creates its own circuit and changes physically to facilitate the sharing of electrical signals and help the thought’s activation. Therefore, having a thought makes it easier for the brain to channel another thought, which means that ultimately, our minor complaints enhance other complaints subconsciously. These synapses brought closer day after day make one an unpleasant and embittered individual, who is a slave to everyday hazards and always ready to point a finger at others due to his or her misfortunes.

As our complaints multiply, we bring closer the pair of synapses that represents them. When we are confronted with an ordinary frustration in our daily life and we must choose an appropriate reaction, the winning thought will be the one having the least distance to go through, the one who would have created the most quickly a bridge between the synapses. As a result, we are trapped into a spiral of negativity that we passively allow to control us and make us miss the potential richness of our own lives. We embody the role of the victim, which constantly spreads its control on our reactions to events.

There are, however, as you rightfully reminded, healthy forms of anger. It is possible to live and express anger without it becoming a complaint, without having to adopt the position of the victim. I would say that a healthy manifestation of anger can be identified thanks to two things. Anger must first come from a deliberate choice of letting oneself fully feel the emotion, the choice of letting it express itself inwardly, instead of trying to contain or ignore it. Once one unleashes and then decreases the anger and everything surrounding it— disappointment, confusion, hatred— once one has let the storm abate on its own, it is then possible to step back and avoid making bad decisions.

To live one’s anger in a healthy way is also being able to address others without conveying a victimizing discourse. It is being able to tell the other that “this is not what I want, and I would like it to change.” The main principle is to emphasize the “I” rather than the “You” in the discourse. “I disagree, and I would like it to be otherwise”: this is the way to inspire cooperation and incite the other to take our needs into account. This position is completely different from blaming the other: “You annoy me!”, “You did not understand anything,” “It is always the same thing with you,” “I’ve been asking that a hundred times!”.

By confining oneself to a discourse emphasizing the “you,” one keeps the victim’s position. Why? Because this approach does not allow us to think of ourselves as equal to the one we consider guilty. Instead of inciting cooperation, we let the other decide on whether to ignore our request or take it into account. The other party is not encouraged to respect us, and even worse, the solution of the problem is put in his or her hands. To take care of our quality of life starts by giving up our comfort zone and this humiliating position when interacting with other people. It starts by avoiding this mentality of victimhood and accusation. The challenge is certainly difficult. But sooner or later, if we hold on to it, our efforts will be rewarded.

  We have on average 60,000 thoughts on our minds every day. That corresponds to around 40 thoughts each minute. 95% of these thoughts are the same as the ones of yesterday or even the day before…. and 80% of those thoughts are, by and large, negative. However, scientific research also shows that positive thoughts work as efficiently in the opposite direction… which reveals that to stop complaining, celebrate our everyday life, assert our personality, and call for others’ respect is anything but pointless. In fact, this allows us to work our cerebral muscles, our synapses, and nurture them with germs of serenity, pride, and optimism that will allow the development of our mental and social well-being. The scientific phenomenon works both ways. By consciously doing an effort for three weeks, or 21 days, we can gradually readjust our brain and launch a virtuous circle.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: When it comes to our vitality at all levels, we all seem to go through phases of ebullition and numbness, including women. At the peak of their exuberance, women exhibit a conquering energy, a sense of control, and an insatiability that even Robert Palmer celebrated in his song “Hyperactive.” “She’s got a date for lunch in Singapore, holds stock in I.B.M. and hates Dior. Well, she puts her make up on at 6.00 a.m. She goes to work, gets home, then puts it on again. And it’s a mystery how wild that girl can be. She’s got so much energy. She’s such an expert at surprising me. She’s hyperactive when she starts to dance. She’s so attracted to a wild romance. And I’m persuaded by her argument. She’s hyperactive.” How do you think a keen understanding of the psychical cycles of women helps them     multiply the richness and magic of their everyday life?

  Christine Lewicki: It is true that sometimes, we wake up in the morning with the feeling that everything is possible, and we indeed accomplish a lot during this kind of day. While on the other hand, some days we stand on the other end of the spectrum: we are barely optimistic and see the glass half empty rather than half full. We even lack energy, ideas, and creativity to overcome the challenges we are beset with.

  It may be a hormonal cycle or just simply “the cycle of life,” but the reality of daily life is that we all, men and women, go through those ups and downs. And I think it is an illusion to assume that we can always be in excellent form. It is rather a strength to be able to accept having good and bad moments. When we hit rock bottom, I advise that we accept to embrace it fully: let anxiety, boredom, or frustration pass through, as I was saying a little earlier about anger.

  I also recommend taking care of our flame deep down inside and carefully avoiding it from being put out while going through a bad time. To achieve that, we need activities and rituals, daily meetings with ourselves, as I see it, to nourish this flame and revive our blaze even when we feel disappointed. It may be dance, yoga, outdoor walks, meditation but also krav maga, climbing, drawing, being passionate about manga, spending privileged moments with one’s cat…. one can think about a wide array of examples! It is up to each one of us to find the occupations that allow our inner light to shine every single day of our life, and not only during relatively positive moments.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: When it comes to the practice of meditation, it is sometimes said that a number of perverse effects are linked to an excess in indolence and passivity. For instance, Thomas Jefferson did not hesitate to warn one of his friends that his “love of repose [would] lead, in its progress, to a suspension of healthy exercise, a relaxation of mind, an indifference to everything around [him], and finally to a debility of body, and hebetude of mind, the farthest of all things from the happiness which the well-regulated indulgences of Epicurus ensure; fortitude, you know is one of his four cardinal virtues.” Do you think that an excessive or clumsy practice of meditation may indeed lead to such a state of inner, psychological inertia?

  Christine Lewicki: I have to admit that I have never heard of this before, according to which meditation would lead us to become “lifeless.” The reason why meditation is popular today is precisely that we have never been solicited so much. We are harassed, that is, on our phones and screens by e-mails, Facebook messages, tweets. We are stimulated by a lot of different things that demand our attention: the media, reality shows, the school our children attend; clients, friends, or family.

  In the numerical era, never has it been easier to ask restlessly for someone’s attention. We are being asked about everything on all sides, so much so that we do not know where our priorities stand anymore. We are like chicken whose heads have been chopped off. Meditation is what helps us reconnect with what serves as an inner compass. What we truly need today is to sort out all those requests, all the possibilities, and information surrounding us to know where to direct our attention to. Meditation affords us this opportunity to prioritize, which is paramount to our well-being and daily performance.

  The idea is not to meditate for the sake of meditating, but the contrary. It is not about going through “transcendental” spheres but instead coming back to the playground life. Meditation allows us to reconnect with our inner compass, and it thus gives us a sense of direction. It does not transform us into lifeless people, but on the contrary, helps us to be the architects of our respective lives.

Grégoire Canlorbe: Thank you for your time. Would you like to add anything?

Christine Lewicki: I have noticed that nowadays personal development is a fashionable subject: more and more people and companies have been interested in it. It is a wonderful opportunity to uplift humankind. More and more people peruse personal development books, attend lectures on the subject, or watch videos. Yet what I have also observed is that many of these people still feel frustrated or stuck because there is a first obstacle that they have not yet overcome: their position as victims in life.

  While we stay in that dynamic/attitude—pointing the finger at whom we find guilty and holding others accountable for our daily miseries, we cannot gain control of our lives. Once we will stop considering ourselves as victims, however, then we will be able to take advantage of the lessons inculcated in the books that we read, the videos we watch, and the lectures we attend… The doors will finally be open and our lives transformed.

  A slightly different version of this interview was initially published in French in the December 2016 edition of the printed magazine Agefi Magazine. A translation into English was initially done in January 2017, then the English text was revised and updated in January 2022. The English version was originally published in The Postil Magazine’s February 2022 issue.

A conversation with Abdelkrim Qissi, for The Postil Magazine

A conversation with Abdelkrim Qissi, for The Postil Magazine

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Abdelkrim Qissi is a Belgian-Moroccan actor and boxer. A close collaborator of Jean-Claude Van Damme, Qissi notably played the antagonists Attila and Khan in two cult Van Damme films—namely Lionheart and The Quest. He is the brother of Mohamed Qissi, actor of Tong Po in Kickboxer and Moustafa in Lionheart.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Could you start by telling us about your coming co-directed movie Lopak l’Envoûteur [Lopak the Enchanter], which will be released in next April?

  Abdelkrim Qissi: Originally, I was called upon to act in a scene from a movie whose story revolved around a cannibalistic killer. The script was largely non-existent and the shooting improvised. Abel Ernest Tembo, who was in charge of directing, proposed to me that I appear in a few more sequences; what I accepted on the condition that we rework the story thoroughly and give the film a script worthy of the name. Ernest immediately accepted. I went into production and we agreed to make the film together. The work of the image, camera, light and grading would be mainly his doing; developing a story, playing the lead role, directing the cast and writing the script mostly mine. During the Covid period, a story was born, a new film was born, only the title remained. Then, a year ago, we started shooting what was now a feature-length film, a shooting almost finished as I speak to you [November 9, 2021]. I would like to salute the work of Abel Ernest Tembo, a man excellent with the image.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: In Lopak trailer, the character you play, Molosse, evokes the bees in a furtive and mysterious mode. Could you satisfy our curiosity by telling us what is going on with those insects in the scenario?

  Abdelkrim Qissi: I cannot say too much about the plot of the film at the moment; but Molosse in the scenario feels invested with a mission, that of “healing” humanity, whom he considers corrupted by greed and whom he aspires to turn into bees devoted to the common good. To that end, he uses hypnosis and a serum that, annihilating consciousness, leaves only the subconscious and unconscious. He hopes to put thus an end to borders and to all that divides humanity; and change the Earth into a perfectly balanced hive where everyone in its alveolus perfectly knows its place, its mission, and selflessly works for the hive’s well-being, where no one encroaches on anyone and where everyone support everyone. In his quest, Molosse will be led to do things that will trigger a whole tumult around him—whether on his family’s side, or on the side of his old friends.

  As it stands, so, I prefer to avoid revealing too much about the film itself and its message; but to those young and not so young who have the desire to shoot their own feature films and who, nevertheless, are reluctant to run to fill out files, submit requests to commissions, receive financial aid, the work embodied in the film sends the following message. “Do not wait to be supported, taken seriously, introduced to big names; take your camera and shoot. Let the big names come to you as you build your own success.” To those young and not so young who have the desire to shoot their own film, who have the talent and the passion but are not particularly well known to the general public nor really involved in the right networks, I venture to hope that Lopak the Enchanter will prove that, whatever the means they originally have, the people they surround themselves with at the very beginning, it is possible for them to achieve their goal and make the film of their dreams happen.

Abdelkrim Qissi (on the right) and Grégoire Canlorbe (on the left)

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Alongside Mohamed Qissi and Kamel Krifa, you played in Lionheart (also known as Full Contact). How did the three of you end up on the set?

  Abdelkrim Qissi: Jean-Claude is a boy I have known since his childhood. I met him in a sports center where both (as well as my brother, Mohamed) came to train, where Jean-Claude practiced karate (with Claude Goetz); and for my part, boxing. I also met there, among others, Jean-Pierre Valère, who was kind enough to agree to appear briefly in Lopak. When they met, Jean-Claude and Mohamed became more than friends: inseparable, fusional, they were truly brothers. It was not uncommon for Jean-Claude to come to sleep at home.

  One fine day, sharing the same dream of breaking into the cinema, both left for America. After long years of sufferings and adventures, they made this dream come true by playing in Bloodsport, then Kickboxer. I cannot accurately relate the circumstances that led to my participation at the age of 29 in the filming of Full Contact. But briefly, they boil down to the fact that I was Mohamed’s brother (who had just played Tong Po in Kickboxer); and that he and Jean-Claude offered me and the producers that I take on the role of Attila. I was very happy with that offer and jumped at the chance. As for Kamel it is a friend that we encountered in Brussels, that is how he too found himself by our side on the set of Full Contact.

From the left to the right: Abdelkrim Qissi, Kamel Krifa, and Mohamed Qissi in their roles in Full Contact

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Lionheart’s final fight pits Leon Gaultier, character played by JCVD, against a brutal fighter who is nonetheless affectionate towards his cat. Leon, suffering from a broken rib, progressively lets himself dominated at first; then takes over in extremis over the character you play, Attila. How did the idea for such choreography come to the film crew? How was the filming, the application, of that idea?

  Abdelkrim Qissi: Contrary to the idea of ​​the white cat, which is an improvisation during the shooting, the idea that Leon takes the upper hand over Attila when everyone (including his trainer) thinks him to be losing is an idea of ​​the scenario. It was not elaborated when the choreography was being designed. Jean-Claude nevertheless participated in the writing of the screenplay; just as the choreographies of Lionheart are all his doing. Both ideas sound good to me—and constitutive of what makes the film’s aura more than thirty years after its release.

  The touching affection that Attila has for his pet, which he shows by taking advantage of Leon being momentarily on the ground to stroke his cat, contrasts with what is, besides, the brutality of the character. A contrast that the film emphasizes in its visual symbolism by making Attila all dressed in black whereas his cat, for his part, is entirely white. The cat in question, which, again, was not intended in the scenario (if I correctly remember), was the one of a member of the film crew. The inner strength that manifests itself in the character of Jean-Claude just after his trainer in person, Joshua, confesses to him that he does not trust him and that he himself has bet on Attila, that rage to defeat himself in order to triumph over his opponent and prove to Joshua that he made a “wrong bet” (a reply which is, besides, at the origin of one of the film’s titles), that desire coming from the depths of his heart which allows Leon to overcome the pain and to defeat Attila even though the latter, in plain view, was largely dominating him until then, offers the film one of its most beautiful scenes.

Attila (played by Abdelkrim Qissi) stroking his cat, in Lionheart

  Grégoire Canlorbe: You play Khan, Mongolian champion with whom the character of JCVD ​​fights at the end of The Quest. JCVD directed that film; but years before he had already served, unofficially, as an editor to Bloodsport. What makes the two films so different despite their partly similar plot? How did you work with JCVD ​​to come up with a final fight that be even more impressive than the one between JCVD ​​and Bolo Yeung [at the end of Bloodsport]?

Abdelkrim Qissi: A major difference between Bloodsport and The Quest is, it seems to me, that Jean-Claude had the opportunity to work with professional fighters in The Quest; while the tournament participants in Bloodsport were played by people who were a bit less pros in the field of martial art. Another major difference is that, in The Quest, Jean-Claude had matured since Bloodsport and was then at the peak of his physical and mental form. The exotic landscapes in The Quest, the richness of the animal cast (including the elephant and the horses), the beauty of the image (including the care given to the colors), all that contributes to what makes Jean-Claude’s film so different from Bloodsport released almost ten years before. However, I would regret that the human relations in The Quest were somewhat put in the background during the filming; I believe, because of a timing problem or a problem arisen in production.

Abdelkrim Qissi as Khan, Mongolian champion, in The Quest

  Jean-Claude is an excellent choreographer and, on Full Contact like on The Quest, trusted himself for the design of the fights; also, on Full Contact like on The Quest, he adapted the choreography for the final fight to my martial style, to what I’m best able to do in an arena. Whether it is the confrontation between Attila and Leon Gaultier in Full Contact or the one between Khan and Christopher Dubois in The Quest, of which the fight at the end of Lionheart was ultimately the prelude, no stand-in nor any special effect nor any stunt carried out by someone else were required. Shooting the choreography was for Jean-Claude and me an easy, joyful, and quick exercise. If I remember correctly, on the set of The Quest, Jean-Claude and I worked only nine hours—three times three hours over three days—developing our choreography from Jean-Claude’s general idea. A German steadicamer on the set of The Quest said of Jean-Claude and I that we were “like the fingers of the hand” given how we knew each other, understood each other, and had blind confidence in each other in the choreography’s execution; given how our moves, with meticulous precision, were easy for us and resembled a ballet; given how our blows espoused each other without ever hurting nor touching each other.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: You traveled to Israel for the filming of The Order, by Sheldon Lettich (who years before had directed and co-written Lionheart). What do you remember from your stay in the holy land?

  Abdelkrim Qissi: I had great times with Sheldon; he’s a very nice guy, just like Peter MacDonald. I believe that Jean-Claude, by offering me a sort of cameo in The Order, intended to make a nice eyewink to my previous performances in the roles of Attila and Khan, two characters united into one in “the Big Arab” whom I briefly interpret in The Order. Regarding Jerusalem, what struck me about that city is the conjunction of holiness and violence that reigns within it, the spectacle of both beauty and injustice that it offers. All the more as our subconscious associates Jerusalem with the battles and bloodshed of which it has been the theatre throughout history.

  The little Palestinian people is a brilliant people who has gone through very hard times over the centuries. Does the Israeli government really have a stake in peace—given that Israel would then no longer be in a position to continue its nibbling on territories? Do Fatah, in power in the West Bank, and Hamas, in power in the Gaza Strip, really have a stake in the war’s ending–given that the financial rent they derive from the military conflict would itself cease on that occasion? For the Palestinian Authority, wouldn’t stopping the attacks, reprisals, and rocket fires be the best weapon against Israel—given that it would deprive Israel of any justification for its settlement policy and force nations in the whole world to take the side of the Palestinians against the Israelis? Being not in the know, I do not want to make any assertion; but only to raise a number of questions that, in my opinion, are worth asking. Let me add that a religious government, as is the case of Hamas, is, in my eyes, a foolish and disastrous thing; since such a government could never represent the entire population, some individuals being firmly religious, others not or even not at all. It is much wiser for a government to refrain from imposing any dogma or rite regarding religion; and to recognize in everyone the freedom to practice or not some spirituality and the freedom to practice it in the way that suits him personally. Such would be one of the pillars of my policy if I were to find myself at the head of the Palestinian Authority; but being not a man of power, I no more aspire to occupy such a position than I would be able to hoist myself into it.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: With regard to the Koran, do you believe that it should be taken literally—or that it contains an allegorical meaning that should be deciphered with the help of ancillary knowledge?

  Abdelkrim Qissi: First of all, please know that I am in no way claiming that what I am telling you is the truth; it is only my conception of the truth. I am submitting it to you in the framework of an exchange, not of a debate. I don’t just deny myself the status of teacher, preacher or preacher; I see it as an incompatibility with well-understood spirituality, which is a personal, intimate affair. What I understand about the Quran is that a huge gulf exists between the word interpreted and taught by men and the WORD drawn directly from the source (the Book itself). Allah, I understand him as the source of all that exists; so that God is both present in His creation and located upstream from it. It is impossible to love God without loving His creation which prolongs it: impossible to love Allah, he who is in the trees, if the wood is cut without moderation; impossible to love him, He who is in the human, if one hurts one’s neighbor. The words of the Koran (which it is customary to recite in singing it) are not only made to rock, cuddle, the ears of the devotee. That is the lowest, most superficial, level of listening there is, the furthest from what is attentive listening to what the Koran seeks to communicate to us and make us understand.

Abdelkrim Qissi (on the right) as The Big Arab and Jean-Claude Van Damme (on the left) as Rudy Cafmeyer in The Order

  I didn’t learn Arabic at school; I learned it late, when I applied myself to reading a comparative edition of the Koran including the original text in Arabic and a French translation. The main words of the Book, what I call the catchwords, resonate differently from anything I have been taught. Often they are not even translated. Here are some examples of those words: Allah, Islam, Muslim, Koran, Jihad. Those words have very precise and deep meanings, characteristics and specificities. I’m not going to teach you what they mean, because that is research unique to each of us. What I can say and repeat is that there is a huge gulf between what you have been taught and what the Quran can teach you. Many counterfeiters have seized the content to use it for their own ends. Such is what created the innumerable religions, themselves divided into different sects, schools and currents of thought. To conclude my answer: from my reading, I do not see any contradiction in the Book, I do not see any violence. I perceive only love for God in it and that goes without saying, for His creation as well.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Tell us about your meetings with Roger Moore (on the set of The Quest) and Charlton Heston (on the set of The Order). What is your favorite James Bond?

  Abdelkrim Qissi: The shootings of The Quest and The Order were effectively the occasion of magnificent encounters: Pjetër Malota (who played the Spanish fighter in The Quest), Takis Triggelis (who played the French fighter), Cesar Carneiro (who played the Brazilian fighter), Stefanos Miltsanakis (who played the Greek fighter—and who passed away two years ago, God rest his soul!), Janet Gunn (who played the journalist), Roger Moore (God rest his soul!), and many others. The four and a half months that The Quest team spent in Thailand allowed me to closely interact with Roger Moore to the point where he became a friend; as well as his wife, with whom I have had long discussions around spirituality, being myself sick of spirituality as you must have noticed. Moore was an extraordinary man; of unparalleled kindness, simplicity, and humanism, he warmly encouraged me, as well as the youth in general. Unlike Roger Moore on the set of The Quest, Charlton Heston remained somewhat aloof, withdrawn, on the set of The Order; and had a very small role, so he didn’t stay long on the spot. Being then of a very advanced age already, I think he was a little tired. He nevertheless gave me the impression of a respectful and respectable gentleman, of great kindness.

Mongolian champion (played by Abdelkrim Qissi) having just defeated, killed, Siamese champion (played by Jen Sung), in the Quest

  As for my opinion on the evolution of the James Bond, it seems to me futile to want to compare them given how the historical contexts, perceptions of the character, filmic means, are each time different. It would be like pretending to compare Mohamed Ali, Mike Tyson, and Joe Louis! Roger Moore in James Bond evoked Simon Templar, alias “the Saint,” and Lord Brett Sinclair, the sidekick of Tony Curtis’ Daniel Wilde in The Pretenders. Moore played a gallant, charming, light Bond, devoid of the slightest hint of violence, not less than strong and talented. Sean Connery and Roger Moore are the only James Bond that we can almost classify in the same category: by the finesse, the tact, which they have in common and that is ultimately lacking in the others (all the more as the more recent episodes put the action forward). Some say Daniel Craig is the best James Bond, I don’t agree. Pierce Brosnan, for example, was not bad at all, as well as a Timothy Dalton already in a more violent register as would be, nearly twenty years later, Daniel Craig.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Who from Tong Po or Chong Li [antagonist in Bloodsport] would win if they fought with each other? Same question for Attila and Khan

  Abdelkrim Qissi: Regarding Tong Po versus Chong Li: if we talk about the actors, I think that my brother, a professional boxer, would win against Bolo Yeung, who, to my knowledge, is an accomplished actor without really being an experienced martial artist or boxer. Now, if we talk about the characters, it seems to me that, by comparing the performances of Tong Po and Chong Li in their respective films, the former is clearly more dangerous, more gifted, more powerful, in Kickboxer than the latter is in Bloodsport; so that, if they were to come face to face, Tong Po would win hands-down over Chong Li. Regarding Khan versus Attila, it seems to me that the former’s power (including mental) in The Quest is without comparison with that of the latter in Full Contact; and that the Mongol would be the big winner in a hypothetical confrontation with Attila.

Abdelkrim Qissi as Attila, Khan, and The Big Arab

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Thank you for your time. Would you like to add something?

  Abdelkrim Qissi: We talked about thriller and action movie; but I must confess that my personal preference as a spectator goes to contemplative, spiritual films. So I haven’t seen most of Jean-Claude’s films (including Legionnaire, of which one spoke highly to me of the introductory boxing sequence). There are certainly thrillers and action films with a contemplative, spiritual dimension, and that I particularly appreciate for that. Among other examples, Gladiator, by Ridley Scott; or Heat, by Michael Mann.

That conversation was originally published in The Postil Magazine’s December 2021 issue

A conversation with Anne Marie Waters, for Gatestone Institute

A conversation with Anne Marie Waters, for Gatestone Institute

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Anne Marie Dorothy Waters is a politician and activist in the United Kingdom. She founded and leads the party For Britain. [The views here expressed are not to be confused with those of the Gatestone Institute nor with those of Canlorbe.]

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Please tell us about the political party you founded and are currently leading, For Britain. What are its ambitions—and its strategy?

  Anne Marie Waters: Our ambitions are large (always think big!) We want to build a mass movement of the millions who have been sidelined and excluded from public life in the UK.  This is a movement for those who are not far right or racist but want to end this mass immigration that threatens our culture and identity, those who know and understand that Black Lives Matter are a neo-communist group intent on violently dismantling our society, those who can see that Islam is not peaceful and has brought horrors (including the gang rape of young girls and terror attacks) to our shores, and those who know that our government lies to us time and again. We live in a UK where free speech is a thing of the past, our media is merely a mouthpiece of government dictats, and where decent people are demonized and smeared for holding informed opinions. We are in a Britain that resembles the communist Soviet Union; fear, censorship, excessive government control.

  There are millions of British people who know this, even if they don’t yet verbalise it.  Those people are entirely unrepresented; For Britain will give them that representation.

  I believe we are on the precipice of great change. I intend to be at the forefront of bringing about that great change. We don’t want to ‘Build Back Better’ as the globalists keep demanding, we want to Bring Back Britain.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: How do you judge the British establishment’s attitude towards the alleged demographic, cultural Islamization?

  Anne Marie Waters: The British establishment is very enthusiastic about our Islamisation!  There are different reasons, depending on the person. For example, our Members of Parliament are either entirely ignorant of Islam and genuinely believe to object to its teachings is “racist” (such people are simply too unintelligent to understand). Others know what the truth is but are too focused on not rocking the boat, or risking attack by the media, that they stay silent. Others hate our society so much that they see Islam as a better option. None of these people should be serving in the British Parliament.

  The issue of course is mass migration. The political and media elite are entirely wedded to the global project of bringing down nation-states. This cannot be done without mass migration. If the British public was informed about the horrors of Islam, they may object to mass migration (almost all of which is Muslim) and that would be a fly in the ointment for the globalists. So the truth of Islam is hidden and those who speak it absolutely vilified in public. People therefore stay silent and the quiet death of Western civilization continues apace.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Could you expand on your point that Islam is incompatible with democracy? Do you think the same of Christianity?

  Anne Marie Waters: The incompatibility is easily observable. Europe has a long history of defying authority and demanding rights for citizens. The Reformation, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and beyond; all part of Europe’s story, and a history we are built upon as a continent.  Now we have opened our borders to medieval beliefs and behaviours.  “Death for blasphemy”, “death to apostates”, stonings, beheadings… In the Muslim world, the last 500 years of European history hasn’t happened.

  We are a society of science, and reason, and evidence, and just as we achieve that, we open to the door to medievalism and are catapulted back in time. Secularism and free speech, equal rights between the sexes, the protection of children, all of this is being sacrificed for Islam.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Do you recognize yourself in Enoch Powell’s so-called “Rivers of Blood” speech, in which he predicted (in 1968) that mass immigration would be like “watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre”?

  Anne Marie Waters: Absolutely. In his worst nightmares, Powell could not have predicted what was to come. He was speaking about 10,000s of migrants, what we have now is 100,000s per year. Most of these people are coming here illegally and this is simply allowed to take place while we watch. What is even harder to take is how these illegal immigrants are elevated above the native population. There are 1,000s of homeless British people in the UK, and yet illegal immigrants are housed in hotels until permanent accommodation is provided to them. No such relief or help is available to homeless Britons. Now that we are about to receive a massive influx of Afghans (who already responsible for grotesque crimes all over Europe), there are plans in place to give them homes, medical care, training and employment, and even free university attendance. Britons must pay £1,000s per year to attend university. It is a profound injustice.

  White Britons are legally excluded from applying for certain jobs, while white children are actively taught that they are racists and colonisers and oppressors. We hear endless propaganda about racial discrimination and disadvantage faced by non-white people in Britain, when the truth is that the only people who face this discrimination are white people.

  Powell was right, but he vastly underestimated the pace and scale of the destruction of our country.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Thank you for your time. It has been twenty years since the 11 September attacks happened. What do you think should be done to prevail once and for all in the war declared against the West?

  Anne Marie Waters: We must stop the immigration first and foremost. We cannot deal with these problems while the borders are still open. Then we must begin the process of deporting those who came here illegally. We must scrap the Human Rights Act in order to prevent non-Britons taking precedence over Britons. The rights of terrorists and rapists are considered more important than the safety of the British public. This needs new laws to prevent activist judges allowing criminals to stay in our country.

  We must scrap all ‘hate speech’ laws and allow our citizens to speak freely. We must enact laws that prevent the press smearing political candidates as ‘fascists’ for daring to tell the truth.

  We must close all sharia councils, ban the burka, prosecute and deport those who engage in honour violence, FGM, or child marriage. We must ban halal. It is also absolutely essential that all of those who express support for jihad, who support terrorists, or who want sharia law, and who are not British citizens, are deported from our country. We owe them nothing.

  These steps are just the beginning but if we were to take them, we would be in a completely different place. The world would no longer see Britain as a soft touch or a hub of jihad.

  The truth is however that we will only take these steps if we change those who govern us. That is the first and most important thing we must do. Our current politicians will never do what is needed, therefore we must replace those politicians with people who will.

For Britain will.

That conversation was initially published on Gatestone Institute, in November 2021

A conversation with Mohamed Qissi, for The Postil Magazine

A conversation with Mohamed Qissi, for The Postil Magazine

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Mohamed Qissi, known as Michel Qissi, is a Belgian-Moroccan actor, director, screenwriter, stuntman, and martial choreographer. He is notably known for having played alongside Jean-Claude Van Damme in Bloodsport, Kickboxer, and Lionheart; and choreographed the fights in Kickboxer, where he plays cult villain Tong Po.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: From Mohamed, your first name was changed into Michel; then became Mohamed again. How come?

  Mohamed Qissi: When I was little, and I helped Jean-Claude in his mother’s flower shop in Brussels, Avenue Buyl, his mother, whom I called mamie, and his father whom I called papi, both called me Michel. Jean-Claude, with whom we got to know each other when we were young, also called me that way; and when we both went to America in 1982, he continued to call me Michel. Today, it’s been twenty years since I returned to Morocco and took the first name of my origins, the one my parents gave me and that everyone continues to attribute to me here.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: You were a choreographer on Kickboxer. Please tell us about that experience. What does distinguish dance choreography from fight choreography?

  Mohamed Qissi: I indeed took care of the choreography and of the casting of the fighters in Kickboxer, what was an extraordinary experience. The fact that Jean-Claude and I had trained together for years and years, since we were little, was of a huge help to us in our fight at the end of the film. There is dance in this fight, a visual beauty of the moves, which is why it looks so good on screen.

  Dance and fight choreographies are nonetheless completely different things. I wouldn’t be able to choreograph a dance scene; but a fight choreography where the movements are of impeccable fluidity, elegance, where a kind of dance is played, a warlike-style dance, is something that is possible for me. The risk of injury is much greater in combat choreography than it is in dance choreography. The actors recruited for fight scenes don’t just have to know how to act; they have to know how to fight, what is not something you learn in six months. They must be experienced fighters, who know how to control themselves, control their strength, and resist fatigue.

Kickboxer fanart by Stevan Aleksić ART

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Is Tong Po an entirely bad character? Or does he keep a part of light in him like Darth Vader?

  Mohamed Qissi: The utter nastiness of Tong Po is plainly evident in the film. It impressed the spectators. As for Tong Po’s past and why he has become such an evil being, devoid of any light, the film remains a mystery. While it is true that some are born with a mental disorder, we are never born wicked. We are all angels when we come to the world. An unhappy childhood, marked by mistreatment and sexual abuse, is one of the things that can explain why some take a fatal path while growing up. At the moment, I am being offered the launching of an opus that would explore Tong Po’s youth, the education he received, the life’s challenges that he encountered and which rendered him the brutal and cruel being that the Sloane brothers have to face in Kickboxer…

Mohamed Qissi as Tong Po in Kickboxer and Kickboxer 2: The Road Back

  Grégoire Canlorbe: What do you think of Dave Bautista as Tong Po in Kickboxer: Vengeance, remake of the original Kickboxer movie?

  Mohamed Qissi: It is an honor for me that Dave Bautista, someone who enormously matters in the cinema world, whom we have seen playing in important films like Blade Runner 2049, took over the character of Tong Po whom I was the first to bring to life. An honor and a pleasure.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Would you say that the “American dream” that you lived is still possible for a young person in Morocco today?

  Mohamed Qissi: Everything is possible in life, whether you are a Moroccan or someone from another country. Everything is possible provided that you are passionate, patient, and persevering; and that you work hard, get up early every morning, and enter those places where your passion brings you. If you are passionate about cinema, go where the cinema is. Whatever is the environment in which your passion finds itself, you will meet good and bad people there; go to the right people, those who will help you. With advances in communication, contacting the right person is easier today than it was in the 1980s.

Grégoire Canlorbe (in the middle) with the Qissi brothers

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Thank you for your time. In the end, what message do you want to convey?

Mohamed Qissi: My message to everyone, especially young people, is the following. On the one hand, respect your body, stay away from all bad drugs. The good drug is sport; the bad one is stuff like cigarettes, alcohol, or cocaine. On the other hand, respect your parents whoever they are; listen to and respect their advice—especially when it comes from wise people.

That conversation was initially published in The Postil Magazine’s October 2021 issue

A conversation with Helmuth Nyborg, for The Postil Magazine

A conversation with Helmuth Nyborg, for The Postil Magazine

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Helmuth Sørensen Nyborg is a Danish psychologist and author. A former professor of developmental psychology at Aarhus University, Denmark and Olympic canoeist, his main research topics include the connection between hormones and intelligence, the inheritance of intelligence, and the relationship between sex and intelligence.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: How did you move from Olympic canyoning to academic career? Which of those two activities was the most physically, mentally demanding?

  Helmuth Nyborg: The change was easy. Preparation for the 1960-Olympiad in Rome took five years in advance with three hours training from 6-9 am. and again from 6-9 pm.– before dinner was an option – year-round. Such a program taxes social, family, and metabolic, and intellectual life considerably. So, as I shared a room in the Olympic village with gold medalist Erik Hansen, with whom and two others I won the bronze medal, I simply told him that my career in kayak ended at 3:08 pm. when we passed the goal line. He found it hard to believe, but I kept my promise and entered the academic halls instead.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: You are currently working on a thermodynamic approach to the biocultural evolution of intelligence. How do you sum up your theory as it stands?

  Helmuth Nyborg: Actually, already back in 1994 I wrote a book on Hormones, Sex, and Society: The Science of Physicology, where I argued that science would advance by skipping much abstract philosophical thinking about Man’s nature and instead turn to the study of Molecular Man in a Molecular World. The jump from there to thermodynamics is short. Currently I am trying to quantify 275.000 years of prehistoric competition between individuals in the struggle for capturing and transducing available energy (Wm-2), survival, and procreation, in a retrospective, pseudo experimental design, that is, to redefine classic Darwinian thinking along the lines suggested back in the 18th century by the two famous physicists Ludwig Boltzmann and Alfred Lotka.

Helmuth Nyborg (on the right) and Grégoire Canlorbe

  Grégoire Canlorbe: When it comes to intelligence, what does imply the second law of thermodynamics? (Namely, that the entropy of an isolated system like is allegedly the universe is necessarily increasing) Do you believe the universe’s average intelligence is necessarily decreasing?

  Helmuth Nyborg: The second law of thermodynamic is about isolated systems and is therefore not of great use for understanding the way humans work, because they are open systems. We therefore need to call upon a fourth thermodynamic model for open non-equilibrium systems. It is easy to understand why global intelligence has been declining steadily since 1850: Low IQ people become more numerous and have more surviving children than high IQ people.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: A line of criticism occasionally heard against the coevolution idea (i.e., the idea that gene and culture are influencing each other in their mutual evolution) is that cultural patterns in a population are indeed influencing genes in said population—but that genes do not have the slightest influence on cultural patterns in turn. Thus any population subject to the influence of a certain culture is allegedly led to becoming biologically adapted to said culture at the end of a few generations: that is how, for instance, the Berber, Afghan ethnicities, and various populations who were conquered by the Islamic Arabs allegedly ended up becoming culturally Arabized—and biologically adapted to the Arabic culture. What is your take on such claims?

  Helmuth Nyborg: The whole idea of biocultural coevolution assumes that cultural aspects can be measured and quantified as accurate as the biological aspects. This is not the case, and this makes, in my opinion, the whole idea of biocultural coevolution untenable, as previously argued in Nyborg (1994).

  As said above, we better entirely circumvent stubborn problems based on how more or less abstract culture works, for example by trying to retrospectively define and quantify the prehistoric circumstance under which different peoples around the world have evolved, which polygene adaptation they were forced to make in order to survive and prosper and which left surprisingly lasting polygene traces reflected in existing global differences in traditional behavior, which even the naked eye can see so readily today. The recent failing attempts to make Afghanistan democratic illustrate the point well in blood, violence, tradition, and despair.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: An early investigator of the evolution of intelligence, Hippolyte Taine expressed himself as follows in 1867. ““The man-plant,” says Alfieri, “is in no country born more vigorous than in Italy”; and never, in Italy, was it so vigorous as from 1300 to 1500, from the contemporaries of Dante down to those of Michael Angelo, Cæsar Borgia, Julius II., and Macchiavelli. The first distinguishing mark of a man of those times is the integrity of his mental instrument. Nowadays, after three hundred years of service, ours has lost somewhat of its temper, sharpness, and suppleness (…) It is just the opposite with those impulsive spirits of new blood and of a new race [that were the Italians of the Late Middle Ages and of the Renaissance].” Do you sense that analysis is grounded at a thermodynamical level?

  Helmuth Nyborg: The mathematician and physicist, Lord Kelvin (1824-1907) said in 1883 something to the effect that: If you cannot measure a phenomenon and express it in numbers, you don’t know what you are talking about. You may be at the beginning of knowledge but have certainly not advanced to the state of science, whatever the matter may be.

  This problem is not only Taine’s but has been with us since dawn. People think of a phenomenon, say “impulsive spirit” or “motivation”, then they reify it and ascribe it causal value. Suddenly they have an explanation. Why did I do it? Well, I was motivated. They don’t see that this is a circular explanation: How do you know you were motivated? Well, I did it.

  This kind of muddled thinking was common in the past and is still widespread today. One current widespread form is Social Constructivism, exemplified by, say, unsubstantiable theories of “systemic racism” or, “glass ceiling” in “Gender research” (where Gender is loosely what you feel; a lived cultural proxy for real, measurable, biological sex differences).

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Thank you for your time. Please feel free to add anything else.

  Helmuth Nyborg: It worries me to think that the political scientist Charles Murray (2003) has a valid point, when he concluded that Western thinking has been decaying since 1850. This most likely has to do with declining global and local average IQ.

  In that connection it hurts to watch the numerally quantifiable left-oriented political activist overtake of many modern universities and media, with their associated unprofessional “Cancel Culture”, “Critical Race Studies” and politically motived data-poor gender and LGBTQ+++ activist reports.

  It is terrifying to realize that so many weak academic administrators today carelessly allow left-oriented student hooligans to attack and have sacked serious researchers they have a political distaste for, instead of furiously defending free speech and independent research in the Academy.

  It is saddening to see that so many modern universities seem to have completely forgotten the Humboldtian ideals of a free University, and instead have allowed their organization to degrade into mindless mass-producing institutions, where political correctness all too easily overturns rational science and IQ research(ers) are tabooed.

  All this bode well neither for the future of European democracy nor the sustainability of enlightened societies.

O Tempera. O Mores.

That conversation was initially published in The Postil Magazine‘s October 2021 issue