One of the best films at Sundance this year was Lynn Shelton’s “Humpday” – a marvellous low budget comedy about two best friends who, despite being straight, make a bet to try and have gay sex as a test of their friendship (Click HERE for my review). Sounds absurd and ridiculous, yet Shelton and his actors manage to establish a rock solid foundation of realism that we can’t help put ourselves in that situation and believe wholly in their journey. "Humpday" opens around North America on July 10.

If the press screening didn’t go off really well I knew something special was going happen with this film the day after, when, in a rented room above an art gallery on Main St., the publicist, the director, and the three stars assembled to do press interviews.

I found myself waiting on a staircase with a bunch of other journalists politely waiting their turn to talk to the team. There seemed to be more takers than expected, and so everyone seemed to be rushing around trying fit everyone in. And when it was finally my turn I was only allowed 5mins!

Five minutes was all I needed to figure out that Lynn Shelton had cracked a new filmmaking methodology breaking the traditional mould of cinema’s order of operations. Idea – Outline – Script – Financing – Casting – Filming. In order to achieve a distinct naturalism without visible improvisation Shelton employed a self-developed method of ‘upside down’ filmmaking. It’s not like it hasn't been done before - Mike Leigh has been doing this type of thing for years, and this type of naturalism is a hallmark of the so-called 'Mumblecore' films. But Shelton's film is by far the most accessible of this new American film movement and teaming up with fellow ‘mumblecore’ actor/director Mark Duplass is key for Shelton to elevate her film from festival-darling to a legitimate contender for best comedy of the year.

So, I finally was allowed into the room. The publicists had separated the guys and the girls – actors Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard ambled off to some other room, and luckily I got to sit down with the lovely ladies of the film – director Lynn Shelton and her female lead Alycia Delmore:

DFD: Talk about the genesis of the film, how it started and how you got the actors involved with it.

LYNN: I really built it around the actors. We really started with one actor, Mark Duplass. I had admired his work and he’s a filmmaker, and one half of the Duplass Brothers. I’d seen “The Puffy Chair”, I hadn’t seen “Baghead” yet but and I was also becoming good friends with friends of his and so we had all these mutual acquaintances. And he ended coming up to Seattle where I lived to star in a film called True Adolescence, which was an independent film being shot there. And I got myself on set because I like to be on set but really I was there to meet Mark. That was the key motivation for me, so I volunteered my time as a stills photographer to get myself there. And we really bonded. We were really primed to meet each other because we’d heard of each others’ films and our filmmaking methodologies and it seemed we had something in common. And we sure did. It really seemed like we were of the same ilk. Watching him act too I knew I really wanted to work with him. About a month after he got back to LA I gave him a call and I pitched this idea to him.

DFD: Did you have a script at this point?

LYNN: No, I didn’t. This is my third feature – my first film was made in a very traditional way – script first, then casting and everything else. I then came up with what I’ve been deeming, an ‘upside down’ version of filmmaking, because I found that trying to get a level of naturalism that I approved of was very difficult doing it the traditional way. And so I put a number of things into place, and first and foremost was to start with an actor, then a sort of a theme or premise, and really early on bring them in so we can develop the character, so it’s really customized for them. It’s like a club.

DFD: What was the core idea in Humpday?

LYNN: Basically I called Mark and said, ‘I know it sounds a little crazy but the idea I have is that there are two best friends who are straight and they’ll both have different personalities and then, for whatever reason, they decide to try and have sex together. I didn’t know if it was going to be a film yet or not. The main thing was they were going to have gay sex together. It was really loose at that point, and I had some things in place but not others. And the thing that was cool about it was bringing in the performers early on so you can get to know their characters as you develop them and their relationships as the plot is coming together. Especially with a script like this which is so far out in its premise. Its very crazy, ridiculous and we knew, the only way we could pull this off, was not to make an absurd random crazy farce, but grounded in humanity and believability. And the way to do that I thought was to have these fully fleshed out characters that we believed was real people. And once you know who the characters are and what’s supposed to happen in the scene you really know how these people are going to react in a believable way. So that’s why its 'upside down'.

DFD: Alycia, how were you working in that process?

ALYCIA: There was definitely a learning curve. I come from a theatre background and don’t have a lot of experience on film. I actually thought my theatre background was helpful rather than coming from a traditional film world. My only film experience involved being in one of Lynn’s other movies. We knew everything that was going to happen, the arc of the scene, but only where each character would start in the scene and hopefully end up, all of the in-between was up to us. We’d improvise through the scene and then we’d stop and talk about what worked and what didn’t work.

LYNN: And since they embodied their characters if they weren’t feeling it, they’d say, ‘Ben would not say this’. And so if we had an idea, ‘well this is how its gonna play out’ we had the freedom to go with it. I remember this one scene in particular, we just had to change it, because it just wasn’t working. We just couldn’t get from A to B. We said ‘nobody’s going to buy that he would do this’. And so we were always checking back, that scepticism was always pulling us back to ask again and again, from the audience’s point of view, would you believe this? And by just remaining true to the characters it was knowing who they were.

ALYCIA: In some ways having all the responsibility of the actual dialogue on your shoulders kept us honest because you get to a point of when you’re saying things like ‘this doesn’t sound like me. I’m just talking for the sake of talking, to get somewhere.’ So we really managed to keep ourselves honest that way. At least I hope we did.

DFD: I thought it was terrific. When Ben was talking, his dialogue sounded like me talking. Seriously, his words, manner of speech. It was uncanny.

LYNN: I can’t write that way – natural dialogue. Some people can. As long as you cast the right people, it really depends on that. There are actors who really aren’t comfortable with that. Coming up with their own words. If you can find someone who is comfortable with just coming out with what that they would actually say, all they need is the acting ‘objective’, those basic means. What’s going on in the scene, what does my character want, all the acting school things, and when they’re comfortable they're are just always gonna sound more like how speech comes out of somebody’s real mouth. Which is a really tall order. I found to write something down a piece of paper and say ‘ok make this sound like something you’d actually say’ is hard. And that is something I’m always on a quest for. I wanted it to feel like a documentary.

Scott Crocker’s marvellous film “Ghost Bird” got its World Premiere this week at the Hot Docs film festival in Toronto. The story of the rediscovery of the ‘holy grail’ for birdwatchers, the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker and the effect of the rediscovery on the dying town of Brinkley, Arkansas. Crocker makes parallels of our development of the natural habitat which caused the bird’s extinction and the sad irony of the downfall of these once developing towns. With it’s mix of humour and dramatic poignancy, the film is one of the better docs I’ve seen this festival.

I had a chance to talk to Scott about his film:

DFD: How you first came to the subject matter of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker?

Scott: This is the story which crossed over from the birding population into the wider media because it was such an amazing and astounding discovery. It was presumed extinct for 60 years or so and while people had made claims of sightings, none had been confirmed. And so when they finally confirmed in 2005 at a press conference in Washington DC every one just sat up and were amazed. And so the story went from the science section to the front page of the newspapers. That’s when I saw it. Since I’m a fiction and documentary filmmaker I just found the ingredients of it kind of amazing and interesting - almost in an absurdist way. All these people trouncing through swamps to find this giant woodpecker. It had the ingredients of a Samuel Beckett play as well.

DFD: I had never heard of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. Had you heard of the bird? Do you have a background in birding?

Scott: My background is in anthropology. I come to my subjects more through a cultural lens rather than, in this case, from a birding background. What appealed to me was the multidimensional nature of the story. Not only the Woodpecker and its rediscovery but the town, the scientists, their work, the birding population and how they were just elated in the rediscovery in this species. Many of these birders had read about it as kids and lived their whole lives thinking they’d never see it, and then to wake up one day to read in the paper that it was alive and well in eastern Arkansas. They couldn’t have been happier. All those things just kind of rung true and appealed to me. And having made a previous documentary in the south, I had an affection for the people and the culture.

DFD: I often find good documentaries are about people obsessed with the minutiae of things. And me, not knowing anything about the Woodpecker, this is how I saw it at the beginning. Gradually as I learned more about the species and more and the history of the town .The world got larger for me. Is that how you saw it?

Scott: Yeah, when I started working on the story it was in Dec 2005, so it was before the real scepticism about whether the bird had been found or not had been made public. It was being felt in the hearts and minds of some scientists but no one had published anything yet. The public had yet to confront that angle of the story, so my principal interest partly had to do with the obsessed nature of the birders. They cultivate this uncanny ability to recognize species with the smallest amount of information. That’s kind of the sign of a great birder is their ability literally identify something from the corner of their eye, because they know how it flies, the habitat it lives in and other identifying features. And as soon as you snap your fingers they’ve identified it. So that level of intense focus and obsession was one of things that appealed to me.

DFD: It seems ironically that that was what caused the trouble, because there’s another bird exactly like the Ivory-Billed. Do you think obsessiveness of the birders caused all this controversy?

Scott: It was the monkey wrench in the hole. The Piliated Woodpecker (which looks very similar to the Ivory-Billed) persists in the same area. In fact you could find them in Tacoma Washington to Arkansas to the east coast. It’s a bird with much wider spread population than the Ivory-Billed ever had. Piliated was sort of the centrepiece around which the controversy started once people started questioning what were they seeing. And going back to idea of the snapshot of something in their minds eye and calling it a species, this is called GISS, which in the birding world stands for General Impression Size and Shape – and the quicker you can do that the better the birder you are as long as you can confirm it. What became an issue here is any of these sightings were birds in flight and glimpsed at various distances. I believe it was Tim Gallagher recounting his sighting of the bird, the distance kept getting a bit closer each time he told the story, if you see a bird and you’re not sure if its 60 feet or 40 feet, that’s the difference in size between the Piliated and the Ivory-Billed. You think its 40 feet and its really 60, if there was an Ivory-Billed there you could misidentify it for a piliated and the reverse is true. So that can trigger too, at least for the sceptics, the toolbox of issues it brought up.

DFD: Talk about the parallel of the dying town with the extinction of the bird. I think those two go hand in hand and makes a great throughline for the film.

Scott: I’m really glad you picked up on that. It was a parallel that I felt and wanted to articulate and bring across in a meaningful way, because in the town’s hope of this bird being out there also hope of their own resurrection. So there was a second coming of the bird and the town. Because Brinkley had once been a somewhat majestic town. I believe it was the Rhode Island Line Railroad that ran through there before it went bankrupt and the Union Pacific perhaps. They crossed paths right there in Brinkley. It was a major train switching area and it brought a lot of commerce to the region. And the main highway also ran through Brinkley. But when the Interstate came though people stopped driving through Brinkley proper and when the one railroad went bust the town started to see its fortunes diminish further. And it’s been kind of the same story for a lot of small rural towns in America. The role of interstate and big box stores like Walmart, Target and this development has really diminished the futures of these small cities. It’s been really kind of tragic. So there is this diminishing of local culture along with a sort of natural world that surrounds it. And the two paths are really interconnected. It asks questions about sustainability. Where there was once a thriving downtown, at what point do you sit up and go, ‘we need to stop the development that’s really gutting our small towns of viable businesses because these franchises are coming in and replacing them.’

DFD: How is Brinkley doing right now?

Scott: As you would predict in seeing the movie things have continued to deteriorate to the extent that the world’s only Ivory-Billed gift shop has closed and tourism has fallen off. The promise that people are going to flood in has not been fulfilled. The search itself has really been scaled back. There was less than 10 people searching this winter, which is my understanding. Actually more people from the same search party have relocated to southern Florida. So in many respects the same scientists who put Brinkley on the map have now decamped to another state. They’ve taken the funding and run.

One of the collaboration consistencies in Ron Howard’s career has always been his producer Brian Grazer. Look closely though in the credits and you’ll see Todd Hallowell’s name on every film since Parenthood (1989). First as production designer, then as Executive Producer/Second Unit Director. 

I had a chance to talk with Todd about Frost/Nixon, the magnificent film version of the 1977 David Frost-Richard Nixon TV interviews, now on DVD and Blu-Ray, and his close collaborative relationship with Ron Howard.

DFD: It seems like every 10 years or so there seems to be a great movie about Richard Nixon. What makes Nixon such a good character for film?

Todd: I think it because he’s so unexpectedly complex. Everyone assumes they know something about him and research continues to reveal so many different aspects to him. When I was in high school, I was so completely willing to vilify him in the most extreme terms possible. Especially as the chance of my draft number being called increased. He was Satan, pure and simple. Luckily the number never came up. But when you really begin to do some reading, research and spend some time in the Nixon library, and begin to meet people involved with events during his time in office, there’s so many conflicting versions of who he really was. From a filmmaking standpoint, it makes him a fascinating character because there so many different ways to look at the guy.

DFD: And he comes from a more humble, different background than other Presidents. It seemed he had to work harder than others.

Todd: Yeah. He viewed himself as a real second-class citizen, a real underdog. Which is part of a sense of ‘persecution’ he had. But also one of the points the movie makes, one of the ironies the film underlines, is the similarity in that respect between Frost and Nixon, both of them having come from relatively lower/middle class or working-class conditions. And that both of them in their ascension felt they had been made to feel second class, that it was part of what was motivating both of them.

DFD: Going back to the genesis of the film. Obviously it started with Peter Morgan’s play. Talk about the transition from the stage play to the script and ultimately the screen. What kind of direction or inspiration did you guys give Peter Morgan in adapting it for the screen?

Todd: He had pretty much adapted the play into a screenplay, or at least begun the process by the time Ron saw the play in London. As I understand it, this was Peter’s first foray into actual theatrical production. He had written several screenplays and also done quite a bit for television. He was much more experienced in the film world than he really was in the world of the theatre. Not to speak for Peter, but I don’t think he faced it as the kind of challenge as a lot of people might, who perhaps were coming strictly from the world of theatre and then trying to open up the piece cinematically and turn it into something that wasn’t just talking heads, for the big screen.

DFD: When you guys came on board, was there a fully complete script? How ready was it to go? Were there your own additions to make?

Todd: There were the beginnings of a full fledged screenplay, but Ron worked with Peter quite a bit, and Brian Grazer too, to open that up and to create a stronger sense of time and place. And things you can do cinematically that you just can’t do on stage – although I thought the stage production was phenomenal.

DFD: When you guys were shooting, for Ron Howard and his creative team, was there a visual philosophy that they came up with?

Todd: The visual philosophy… it’s a good phrase…was to try and really create an accurate portrayal of the period without resorting to what had become the threadbare clichés of the period - the cheap or easy visual clichés. What Ron wanted I think was, kind of the tasteful version of the 70’s, that was accurate but is often overlooked. So I think the production designer Michael Corenblith and the costume designer Daniel Orlandi did a phenomenal job of keeping it true, but the version we prefer to remember of that period.

DFD: I assume Michael Sheen and Frank Langella were automatically first choices for Frost and Nixon?

Todd: They were and both of them have worked extensively in film. So that was a big help to Ron in terms of having actors who know how to play to a camera, instead of a great big audience. They both understand the difference. So, because they’re both accomplished film actors, it helped a great deal in the adaptation.

DFD: How did he work with those guys – obviously they knew the material inside and out (at least the stage version). How did Ron work with them to make it different? What kind of changes to their performance did they do to make it more cinematic?

Todd: Extensive rehearsals to really allow them, organically, to begin within their performance open it up, to understand that you’re not limited to four chairs on a black stage. We told them we really going to go to Casa Pacifica, the Western White House. We’re really going to go to a lot of the places where these events actually occurred. And the opportunity to move around and be more literal was available to them. That was something they responded to. Another part of it, from Ron’s standpoint, and I’ve been with him now for 15 movies, is that he really loves working with an ensemble cast. When he’s got a group of actors that he really feels are hitting on all cylinders it’s just about the happiest I’ve seen him. He’s in his element.

DFD: The casting was great. Just having Oliver Platt and Sam Rockwell bantering with each other on screen is pretty awesome.

Todd: Yeah. They took such delight having the time to do the research, meeting a lot of times their real life counterparts. Getting in there working with one another, they were positively gleeful in getting to come into work. It was really terrific. I think the leads also feel that they’re being supported in such a strong way it allows them to really begin to feel comfortable as well. Because they know they’re so completely supported by capable people.

DFD: I was looking on the IMDB going the evolution of your career, and it’s interesting. You came up through the art department, became a production designer and then executive producer. Can you talk about that transition?

Todd: Sure. It’s a bit odd. It’s worked out for me in terms of satisfying the left half and the right half of the brain. I started out in the art department, I became a production designer on a handful of films. Started working with Ron on a picture called Parenthood with Steve Martin and Mary Steenburgen and it was a enjoyable experience. He asked me if I would come back and do Backdraft. He said, ‘I don’t want you to be the production designer though,’ And all I could think of was, ‘oh god, I’m being demoted, this is depressing.” He said, ‘there’s gonna be a huge second unit, I want you to come over and handle that and kinda keep an eye on the production side, and we’ll get you some kind of producing credit. Is that something you’re interested in?’ I didn’t have to think about that too long. So started working for him on that and we’ve done 14 or 15 pictures together. It’s become a very close working relationship between Ron and Brian Grazer and I. They’re very trusting and very supportive. Good news for me is that Ron continues to reshuffle the deck and constantly wants to do different types of films. So there’s an ongoing challenge, which is the best part for me. He doesn’t seem at all interested in repeating himself. Each film has it’s own unique set of challenges. That keeps me interested. Keeps me on my toes.

DFD: What kind of second unit work did you do on Frost/Nixon?

Todd: Frost/Nixon was really a lot of pickups, inserts and cleanup when first unit had finished. To go in and figure out all the stuff that was still owed, the minutiae, the little tight stuff. And then there was some driving work, some roadwork, an establishing shot in London, some work in Washington. Not heavy duty, by no means, not anything compared to Angels and Demons where we shoot 46 days of second unit. This was far more contained.

DFD: Must be busy for you guys right now, with that film coming up too?

Todd: Yeah, it really is. We’re really looking forward to getting it out there. It’s really been an interesting experience.

DFD: You guys must have done that literally back to back.

Todd; We actually did the early pre-visualizations for visual effects on Angels and Demons and basically put that in a box and switched our attention to Frost/Nixon, went through the whole process on that then swung back to Angels and Demons. It was a pretty interesting way to approach two movies that couldn’t be anymore different. But it made for a really interesting two-year process.

DFD: To close off, are there any filmmakers or films that get you excited as a filmgoer? Anything you’ve seen recently that turns your crank?

Todd: Yeah sure. I really liked Observe and Report. I thought it was terrific. Travis Bickle as the mall cop. I really enjoyed that….. You know we got into the race for the Academy. We didn’t win, but we lost to a film I had incredible respect. I just loved Slumdog. All the films that were up for contention I was blown away by. I though The Wrestler was phenomenal. I thought last year was a great year for films – of every type. Ron has an interesting philosophy, or viewpoint; he told me once that a good film is a film that delivers on it’s own promise. Whatever genre, whatever it is, if it delivers on what it promised you, it’s a good film. It might not be a great film, but at least it delivered on what it said it would do. There’s sort of an implied honesty to that point of view, and it’s not snobbery, by any means, it’s the opposite - just deliver on what you say you’re gonna do. I thought a lot of films last year really did that.


"Frost/Nixon" is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from Universal Studios Home Entertainment

One of the more fascinating documentaries about success and the dedication of artists to their work is Sacha Gervasi’s “Anvil!! The Story of Anvil”, a Sundance hit from 2008 which get its Canadian theatrical release this weekend. (Read my review HERE) Anvil was one of the most promising heavy metal bands of the early 80’s, who, not for lack of dedication, never made it big. And now, 30 years later, in a surprisingly profound and emotional documentary we get see Anvil, now in their 50’s, still grinding it out looking to make it big.

I got a chance to talk to Steve “Lips” Kudlow, the driving force of the band who waxes with honesty and frankness.

DFD: I loved the film both as a fan of documentaries and heavy metal. How did the director Sacha Gervasi contact you about the doc? I heard he was a roadie with you back in the day and then he went off and became a successful Hollywood screenwriter? (NOTE: Gervasi went on to write screenplays for 'The Terminal' and 'The Big Tease')

Lips: Even before Sacha did actually contact me we were at a festival in Italy and we met up with a couple of guys in a band, Candlemass. And they reminded us about meeting me on Carnaby Street in England. And at that moment I started thinking about Sacha yet again because we were with Sacha in 1982 walking on Carnaby Street buying leather jackets. We had become quite good friends back then. And then he went off to do other things in his life, finish school, do all the things that everybody does. He’s a very unique individual, very outgoing, very generous type of person, really good guy. He went off to do his stuff and we didn’t hear from him for 20 years. When I got back from the festival, after talking about him there in Italy, interestingly he emails me. I’m like, ‘what’? I looked at the email and I’m going ‘I don’t believe it, it’s Sacha!’ So I wrote him back, ‘ I thought you either died, or became a lawyer.’ He laughed because in his life, yeah, he went to law school and he almost died of an overdose. He always makes fun of that. Then he invites me down to L.A. and I show him that I’ve continued on for a good 20 years that I’ve recorded all these CDs and kept alive in the music business and continued to believe in my eventual success, or living my success or my dream. I think that’s what he most admired.

DFD: Did he contact you to reconnect, or did he have an idea for a film?

Lips: No, it’s just ‘I wanna see my friend’. At the festival in Italy those other bands were commending us for the length of time we were doing it, and how much work we’ve done, how many records we’ve put out, talking to us in an admirable way. Then, Sacha started saying ‘yeah, look at the history, man. You guys are a legend and you don’t even realize it.’ And we were going, ‘huh?’ We were just doing what we were doing - doing it our entire lives. Making music, getting it out there to our fans didn’t feel like quite success after all these years in a certain sense. But the guy’s going, ‘I’m gonna make a movie about you’. And I’m going, ‘what? Okay.’ I flipped out, man. Started realizing, ‘wow, so the 30 years that I’ve just spent doing this is gonna get known on a really big massive level. I’m gonna be very famous. It’s gonna be my big big opportunity. My ship has finally come in.’

DFD: That’s amazing. So it’s been 30 years. Was there ever a time when you guys actually quit?

Lips: No. And there was never any reason to, you know. You learn to love it so much. You live to go out and play. It never comes to mind, you could never live without it. It’s sort of like, a mental addiction.

DFD: Arguably heavy metal has the most loyal fans in the music business. What do you think makes the fans so passionate about the music?

Lips: Because it’s a release. Because it’s escapism. Because it’s something to believe in. It s a philosophy. It’s a form of religion. But then music and religion... it’s hard to separate. Like a universal language. Music usually appears from the subconconscious. Musicians don’t even know where it comes from. If God was gonna communicate with mankind, it would be on that level.

DFD: What drew you guys to metal, when you started getting into music and learning to play?

Lips: At a very young age, my father brought a guitar home. I was immediately intrigued with it. I had already been listening to the Beatles for a couple of years. By the time I was ten, he brought the guitar home and the first thing I learned how to play was ‘Satisfaction’ by the Rolling Stones, 'Secret Agent Man' by Johnny Rivers, the Batman theme, things like that. Basically the birth of the electric guitar and the renaissance of that I was fortunate to have been born at that time during. Being born in the 50s, by the time I was four I had already been aware of Elvis Presley. So I have somewhat of an understanding of the pre-Beatle era. But to actually have been part of the era and bought records as they came out, as opposed to finding out about it 30 years later, I think,  gives me a special ability than someone who hasn’t.

DFD: How did you discover metal, or your sound, your style?

Lips: Everything came from the same place. By 1967/68 Jimi Hendrix came out and we started learning about distortion of the guitar. These are the first inklings of what it was all about. So ever since that time, I was looking for those sounds. I was immediately gravitating to Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Grand Funk, Cactus, Foghat, Humble Pie. It's interesting how people find it so fascinating to watch a rock band or a metal band or whatever and think about what they go through to make the music and what it takes to get their music known, it’s a real phenomenon.

DFD: When you first saw the Documentary and saw all the praise you were getting from Slash, Lemmy, Lars Ulrich. How did that make you feel?

Lips: I felt very proud, of course. But understand that these people had made themselves known to us many years ago. They were fans many years ago and in fact, the full circle is very beautiful, because, in fact I’m fans of there’s. But that’s the way it generally works, as it did with me and like it did with my predecessors, and those before me and those who will ever come after me. I sat in a hotel room in Birmingham England in 1983 on a Motörhead tour with Lemmy. And I was flipping out because I couldn’t believe that I was 24 years old and I was sitting in a room with a 34 year old rock star that everybody in the whole world knows. I was freaking out, I couldn’t believe it. I was telling him how much I admired him, and he turned to me and said <Lips doing a great impression of Lemmy here>, “one day some other bloke will be saying the same thing to you” There was something very profound about that, because you know as it turns out, yes, that did happen a number of times.

DFD: Were you surprised how you looked or sounded, or acted on camera?

Lips: Those are moments in my life. How did I act? I acted as I always do, myself. So it doesn’t bother me. No. It’s all good man.

DFD: And sounds like your family really have supported you over your entire career. One of the most powerful moments in the film is when you get the money from your sister to record your album. How important was that to you?

Lipps: That was very very explosive. Actually fantastic. It’s wonderful to have a sister like that. It’s awesome. She really comes to bat for me. She always has you know. Everyone else in the family thinks we’re both nuts, but whatever. We’re the middle kids, you know what I mean?

DFD: Going back to what Lemmy said at the very beginning. He said, “you guys probably weren’t at the right place at the right time.”

Lipps: That is the truth. Randomness, fame and to attain it is random. It’s like going into Las Vegas and betting. Quite frankly you’d have a better chance of winning in Las Vegas than actually making it big, And the facts speak louder than words in the way that only about .001% of bands that exist ever make it anywhere. I mean that’s the real truth. There’s literally thousands of bands, never mind the millions of guys in those bands, that never get anywhere. So what this movie depicts speaks for the vast majority. This is what it takes man. If you’re gonna buy someone’s independent record, this is the kinda shit they gotta go through for you to have that record.

DFD: Now the documentary’s out, what are you guys up to? How has this become springboard for you?

Lipps: In every possible way. This is the biggest promotional campaign ever to exist for a rock and roll band. A movie that is so enthralling and emotionally charged, there’s so many different levels. It makes non-actors into actors. Some people don’t think that there’s such a thing as a real Anvil, and that I’m an actor. Everybody involved did it for the same reason that the band did, for the cause. Everybody took a chance, particularly the director, Sacha, and the photographer, Chris Soos. These guys really took the big risks. You know, it’s not sold to a big conglomerate, it’s not put out into theatres by Paramount Pictures or whatever. It’s an independent film that built it’s own momentum on it’s own story. It’s about a story that took 30 years to put to a screen. For that to happen, it’s really quite fascinating when you stop and think about the miracle of what was created here. The odds are with you the longer you progress and the longer you continue, the better chance the opportunities will hit you. If you quit, it will certainly never ever happen. The longer you stay with it, the greater the chance a screenwriter will come along and make a movie about you. Or the kid you met when he was 15 grows up to be a screenwriter. It doesn’t matter what your destiny is as long as you know where you wanna go. So my destiny was not to make it when I was 25, mine was to make it when I turned 53. Beautiful. That’s fine, I can live with it. I’m not bitter. I wouldn’t change a thing.

Check out the exclusive content on Canadian Film Dose - my interview with Amal co-writer/director Richie Mehta. Click HERE. AMAL is opening today in Canada. Check out my review HERE

The following is a chat I had with Bruce McDonald, director of "Hard Core Logo", and now his new film, "The Tracey Fragments" – a unique take on teenage angst, starring Ellen Page. Click HERE for the review. The film uses an experimental visual technique of fragmenting the traditional frame into an ever changing kaleidoscope of split screen and multiple image effects. Bruce’s talented editor Jeremiah Munce joins in later to discuss the editing of the film:

DFD: How did the project first come to you?

Bruce: A good friend of mine, John L’Ecuyer, he’s a filmmaker, he’s directed a lot of episodes of Regenesis. He gave me a copy of the book to read. I try to read things that people give me, because they usually give it you for a reason, cause they think you’ll like it. I loved it and I thought, wow, I love this girl’s voice, the attitude, the kind of darkness that’s in there. And I thought that would be a great character for somebody to play - a fresher take on the teenage years. An opposition to the fabulous John Hughes, “Pretty in Pink” and all those movies.

DFD: This is Maureen Medved’s first novel and first screenplay?

Bruce: She’s a big movie fan, so she was quite excited that I offered her first crack at the screenplay. And she did a really good job. It’s sometimes hard when you’ve just finished a novel, you want to keep everything in and she did a smart thing and picked just a slice of the novel to tell. There were some big chunks of the story that obviously couldn’t fit into 90 mins, but she did a great job and enjoyed herself.

DFD: Did the screenplay look anything like the structure of the finished film?

Bruce: Well there was always a little bit of play in the novel and in the screenplay, jumping around in time a little bit. But there was nothing that really approximated the fragmenting visual of the movie. I think we kind of took the lead off the narrative time jumping and thought, let’s take that one step further and really play with time and space.

DFD: I saw that you had 2 editors Jeremiah Munce and Gareth Scales. Who is Jeremiah Munce? He’s credited as the conceptual designer. I had never heard of him before, yet his work was quite brilliant. Was he integral to the concept and design?

Bruce: Well, Jeremiah Munce was kind of the brains behind the operation and we had worked together on a couple of things. We did this documentary on Robbie Robertson where we kind of previewed that style. Jeremiah was game for doing that with this whole movie. The material lent itself well to the technology and the stylized idea of a fractured portrait of somebody. But it was still going into uncharted territory. We didn’t really have a map. We had a few references like comic books and some 60’s pop art movies and that sort of thing. But he designed it and pioneered it. We then brought on a couple of these other guys. Gareth (Scales) came on as a kind of an apprentice co-editor and Matt Hannam came on as well as a third editor. It was so time intensive and so dense in terms of trying to achieve these things.

DFD: How long was the editing process?

Bruce: It was about 6 months, which is longish for a little independent feature and then after that was the sound design and sound mixing. So, you know, three guys for six months, carving out how this is gonna go, it’s pretty intense. Actually Jeremy is actually sitting right beside me here.

DFD: Hey Jeremiah. Your work was amazing. What was in your brain when you first thought of portraying this story this way?

Jeremiah: The idea was put to me and I sort of rolled with it - going with the idea of a fracturedness and capturing that fractured psychology of this young gal and representing that viscerally.

DFD: Going into the story and narrative structure, I saw two different Traceys. The Tracey in the bus and the one looking for her brother. The narrative ending of the film, is it on the bus?

Jeremiah: When you’re on the bus we’re with her throughout. That’s the present tense. Everything else is playing out in her memory. Eventually everything culminates to ground itself in real time. And the fracturedness achieves a kind of wholeness in the end as well.

DFD: If the film were to linger on past the point where the credits rolls, where would Tracey be later in life?

Jeremiah: I feel it’s such a coming of age tale. She survives so many hardships and she’s sort of experienced glimpses of intimacy and she came to realize how dysfunctional her parents are. There’s the tough self-possessed quality in that final walk that is inspiring. She’s a very tough young gal growing up. She’s returning back to this very messed up reality.

DFD: Ellen Page was pretty awesome. Can you me how she got involved and what it was like working with her?

Jeremiah: Working with her footage, she’s incredible. Every take was authentic, She was ON all the time. She becomes the character, she puts herself into it.

DFD: The Broken Social Scene music helped set the tone. Tell me about their involvement?

Jeremiah: We were working with temps tracks which had a different feel for sure. Dark, a little bit too dark actually. The subject and treatment of the material had a darkness to it. When Brendan Canning and Charles Spearin started providing the new tracks, the new score elements actually brought a counteractive ethereal lightness that just worked well and balanced things out.

DFD: Bruce is working on a documentary on Brendan Canning. Did that evolve from this film?

Jeremiah: No, that’s completed now. I think Brendan agreed to be involved knowing that Bruce was involved and he felt comfortable working with him. They go back before Tracey and have collaborated before.

DFD: Talk about the ‘Re-Fragmented Process’, where you posted raw footage online and allowed other filmmakers to reedit the film, into a trailer and other sequences.

Jeremiah: I thought it was fascinating. People put their energies into it and had fun with it. There were a few that did a whole re-edit, straight cut, of the film. But I think it was brilliant and an innovative marketing tool. It also mirrored the formal technical innovation that is present in the film.

DFD: Is one of them going to be on the DVD?

Jeremiah: Yeah, I think that’s happening.

DFD: That’s about it. Thanks for talking to me today. And good luck with them film, I hope it has legs and people get to experience it. It’s a great film.

Other related postings:
The Tracey Fragments
Hard Core Logo