Nicolas & Bruno

Nicolas and Bruno are a duo of French film directors, screenwriters, dialogues and actors, composed of Nicolas Charlet and Bruno Lavaine. They owe their fame to both their comedies, including Message à caractère informatif and In Search Of The Ultra-Sex, and feature films Me Two and The Big Bad Wolf, as well as their screenplay of Frédéric Beigbeder's novel 99 francs starring Jean Dujardin. They wrote and directed the French version of Ricky Gervais' The Office and an original French version of Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement's What We Do in the Shadows.

Career
Nicolas and Bruno began writing and directing music videos and commercials in the 1990s, including an award-winning commercial for chocolate bar "Daim" written with Frédéric Beigbeder for Young & Rubicam. They then worked with French TV producer Thierry Ardisson who elaborated on the concept and created the design of the TV channel Free One.

In 1997, they created Amour, gloire et débats d'idées, a series of sketches broadcast on Le Vrai Journal' of Canal+, in which they overdub the characters of a Venezuelan telenovela tearing each other to pieces about French current political events.

In September 1998, the first Message à caractère informatif was broadcast on the famous TV show Nulle part ailleurs of Canal+: a series of 318 sketches that became cult, where the two authors-directors overdubbed 1970s executives from real corporate films. It featured Jean-Christian Ranu, Didier Leguélec and other Berthiers, fictional characters of a gray and bureaucratic world, symbolized by their fetish company, the COGIP.

They signed the film adaptation (screenplay and dialogue) of Frédéric Beigbeder's novel 99 francs and directed Le Bureau for Canal+, adapted from the British TV series The Office, starring François Berléand.

In 2007, they wrote and directed their first feature film, Me Two, a comedy starring Daniel Auteuil, Alain Chabat and Marina Foïs, produced by Alain Chabat (Chez Wam, released on June 18, 2008).

In October 2008, they wrote and directed the music-video, Figures Imposed, for Julien Doré. Figures Imposées was described as a 'super kitsch' leap somewhere between Fame and Dirty Dancing, with Catherine Deneuve, Eglantine Rembauville, Clément Sibony and Christian Morin.

In May 2009, they directed a non for-profit humanitarian music-video in favor of the traders in difficulty: Save The Traders, shot with thirty real traders from international market places.

On July 7. 2009, Canal+ gave them carte blanche for an all-night show, The Night of COGIP, on the occasion of the first broadcast of their feature film, Me Two. The Night of COGIP turned out to be a six-hour program live from the headquarters of COGIP, including Messages (purportedly) à caractère informatif, office musicals, economic telenovelas, a making of the Messages à caractère informatif, exclusive lives, office dance classes, an American series, and an interview with psychiatrist Christophe Dejours.

On July 10, 2013, they released their second feature film for the cinema as writers and directors: The Big Bad Wolf is a very personal reading of the famous traditional tale The Three Little Pigs starring Benoît Poelvoorde, Fred Testot, Kad Merad, Charlotte Le Bon, Valérie Donzelli, Zabou Breitman and Léa Drucker, produced by Eric Altmayer and Nicolas Altmayer (Mandarin Cinema).

On November 4, 2014, as part of its 30th anniversary, Canal+ placed orders of original programs to some of its historical key figures. The channel offered that Nicolas & Bruno made a feature film about Porn, one of the cornerstones of the famous encrypted channel's heyday. In response, the business partners created In Search of The Ultra-Sex a 62-minute overdubbed match-up movie based on the same principle as Message à caractère informatif. A hilarious comedy where the two directors perform all voices, providing editing, sound effects, is produced by Arno Moria and David Frenkel (Synecdoche Films, Paris). But the fate of the film went far beyond a special TV broadcast and met an unexpected success in France.

On November 6 and 10, 2014, Nicolas & Bruno were invited by the Parisian Modern Art Museum Palais de Tokyo for 2 evenings dedicated to their works. Two screenings of In Search of The Ultra-Sex took place, followed by a master class in front of an audience of 450 people.

On December 11, 2014, the ARP (Actors, Directors, and Producers Corporation) headed by Michel Hazanavicius organized a special double screening of Michel Hazanavicius's La Classe américaine and a new version of Ultra-Sex for the stage.

In March 2015, the Festival International du Film de Fribourg featured the film in their midnight screenings. Nicolas & Bruno provided additional experiences for the attendees, with the choreography of Daft-Peonk Robot (a character of the film) and a workshop allowing the public to give a try at dubbing extracts of the Ultra-Sex. This was the launch of a great tour: the Ultra-Sex-Tour. It was also featured in several other French theatres, such as Lyon (outdoors at Transborder), Amiens, Poitiers, Marseilles, Metz, Montpellier, Villeneuve d'Ascq, Gueret, Lausanne, Avignon, Dunkerque, Toulouse, and the Luminor.

On June 5, 2015, an event was organized around the film at the Max Linder Panorama cinema, with animation provided by the two directors, projection of the Message à caractère informatif fake making-of, and dubbing demonstration live by the famous French porn star Tabatha Cash and dubbing French actors Patrick Poivey (Bruce Willis) Lionel Henry (Eddie Murphy) Eric Missoffe (Scooby-Doo) and Gilbert Levy (Moe  The Simpsons ), in front of 650 people. It was a sold-out event.

In Search Of The Ultra-Sex (subtitled version of A Research of Ultra-Sex) was projected on September 30, 2015 at the Fantastic Fest in Austin (TX) in the United States, where it has been selected   and on October 3 at the American Cinematheque, in the famous Hollywood Grauman's Egyptian Theatre, during the Beyond Fest. The film was also selected by the Ithaca International Film Festival of New York, the Grolandais International Film Festival of Toulouse, the Buttocks Film Festival of Paris (as closing film), the Bordeaux Independent International Film Festival, the Französische Filmtage Tübingen of Stuttgart and the Zinema Zombie Fest of Bogota, for exceptional midnight screenings out of competition with the intervention of the directors.

In October 2015, the mythical Parisian theater Studio Galande featured In Search of the Ultra-Sex.

On October 30, 2015, Vampires in Privacy, the French version of Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement's mockumentary What We Do In The Shadows, was released digitally. Wild Bunch gave Nicolas & Bruno carte blanche for the adaptation: a completely rewritten "French Version Originale", both faithful and nuts, for which French actors Alexandre Astier, Fred Testot, Bruno Salomone, Julie Ferrier, Zabou Breitman, and Jeremie Elkaïm join the two dubbers-authors' voices.

Cinema

 * 2008: Me Two (with Daniel Auteuil, Alain Chabat, Marina Fois)
 * 2013: The Big Bad Wolf (with Benoît Poelvoorde, Fred Testot, Kad Merad and Charlotte Le Bon)
 * 2015: Vampires in privacy (screenplay and directing of the What We Do In The Shadows French Version, with the voices of Alexandre Astier, Fred Testot, Bruno Salomone, Julie Ferrier, Zabou Breitman, Jeremie Elkaïm and Nicolas & Bruno)
 * 2015: In Search of The Ultra-Sex (with the voices of Nicolas & Bruno)

Television

 * 1997- 1998: Amour, gloire et débats d'idées 
 * 1998 - 2000: Message a Caractère Informatif 
 * 2002: Restauratec (with Alain Chabat, Gérard Jugnot, Marina Fois, Helena Noguerra)
 * 2004: Behind the scenes of Message a Caractère Informatif
 * 2006: Le Bureau (French version of Ricky Gervais's The Office)
 * 2009: The Night of COGIP 
 * 2009: The Labor nowadays: assessment and prospects  (documentary with Christophe Dejours)
 * 2009: Save the Traders (advertising)
 * 2014: Message of Pornographic Nature : In Search of ultra-sex

Music videos

 * 2008: Figures Imposées (with Julien Doré, Catherine Deneuve, Eglantine Rembauville, Clément Sibony and Christian Morin)
 * 2009 Save The Traders

Cinema scriptwriters

 * 2007: 99 francs 
 * 2008: Me Two 
 * 2013: The Big Bad Wolf
 * 2014: 99 Rubles The ideal
 * 2015: In Search of the Ultra-Sex
 * 2015: Vampires in privacy (writing and dialogues of the French version)

Voices

 * 1997- 1998: Amour, gloire et débats d'idées: all characters
 * 1998 - 2000: Message a Caractère Informatif: all characters
 * 2002: Restauratec : all characters
 * 2003: COGIP 2000  (with Gilles Gaston-Dreyfus): all the characters
 * 2004: Behind the scenes of Message a Caractère Informatif: all the characters
 * 2006: Le Bureau (The Office): Journalists
 * 2008: Me Two : Jean-Jacques Style, journalist and women's choirs
 * 2009: The Night of COGIP 
 * 2009: The Labor nowadays: assessment and prospects (documentary with Christophe Dejours): Journalist
 * 2015: Vampires in privacy: Aymeric, Gilles, different voices.
 * 2015: In Search of the Ultra-Sex: all characters