Cornald Maas has been pretty pissed off on the radio. He made a TV portrait about Joop van den Ende and according to Catherine Keyl and Wilfred Genee that has become an enormous slime document.
Joop van den Ende will turn eighty next week and that is why an extra long episode of the Volle Zalen program will be broadcast next Tuesday evening. It shows how presenter Cornald Maas speaks extensively with Joop, his wife Janine and their children Iris and Vincent. They even film at their home.
double cap
When Cornald is interviewed by phone in Wilfred Genee’s radio program The Friday Move, he is jubilant about the end result. But host Wilfred and his co-host Catherine Keyl immediately put an end to that. They were allowed to watch the episode and find it one uncritical slime program.
Catherine thinks Cornald’s double cap plays a role. “What struck me – and luckily you said it very honestly at the beginning of the documentary – is that you are on the board of the Van den Ende Foundation. Do you actually think you can make an objective film if you mix two of these features?”
Ivo Niehe 2.0
Cornald himself thinks so. “Yes, I think so. (…) For a long time I thought: should I do it, because I’m on the board? But what I do on that board is, from my critical point of view, judging grants awarded to young cultural talent. From autonomy. That’s what I do here too. I have felt completely free.”
Wilfred: “If you’re just as critical as with those grants… That’s what Catherine and I both have: it’s really sweet when you’re watching. It’s Ivo Niehe 2.0.”
‘Gosh say’
Catherine thinks Cornald should take an example from the AD, which this weekend has a big interview published with Joop. “For fun, you should read the appendix in the AD, which contains an interview with Joop. There are all kinds of things in there that I think I’ve never heard of. I honestly didn’t feel that way with your film.”
It’s just disappointing, Catherine sneezes. “I thought: gosh, I would have liked to know a little more about his way of doing business, how he dealt with staff. We all know it wasn’t always easy. Those kind of things. I have not heard that at all.”
Cornald: “Yes, that was not my interest at all. I wanted to make a very different kind of story.”
“Disagree with you!”
Catherine thinks that Cornald should have zoomed in a bit more on Joop’s former inferiority complex. “I have heard far too little about that.”
Cornald: “Isn’t that what it’s all about? (…) Well, I don’t agree with you at all, to be honest.”
Catherine: “Oh, well.” Wilfred: “That is not necessary.” Catherine: “No, we may very well disagree.”
‘Yes, later!’
When the conversation comes to an end, the discomfort drips from all sides. Wilfred: “Now it seems a bit as if we are pestering you from a distance, that is not the intention of course. It’s about being able to say everything about it. You can disagree about it, right? That should just be possible.”
Cornald: “I think so. Besides, I like it. So no problem. Okiedo, yes, later!”