Roadkill

Growing up in Canada I never fully appreciated Canadian cinema. Oh sure, I liked the films of David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan and Strange Brew (1983). They were able to break out of the ghetto that is Canadian cinema and actually make an impact in the United States and the rest of the world. It took being in another country to finally appreciate what I took for granted so many years ago. Whenever I got homesick I put on a film like Roadkill (1989), which is fiercely proud of its Canadian culture, and it reminded me of home. Roadkill is the first part of a loosely connected rock ‘n’ roll/road movie trilogy by Canadian filmmaker Bruce McDonald. The film was something of a breath of fresh air when it debuted because Canadian film had, up until then, been traditionally known as notoriously boring or, worse, derivative of American cinema. McDonald managed to fuse the low budget aesthetics of the emerging U.S. indie film movement with a distinctively Canadian take on the road movie genre.

Ramona (Valerie Buhagiar) is a naïve assistant who works for a slimy rock promoter named Roy Seth (Gerry Quigley). He orders her to travel through Northern Ontario and find delinquent rock ‘n’ roll band The Children of Paradise and their enigmatic lead singer, Mathew (Shaun Bowring). The band has gone AWOL and missed their last four gigs. Seth tells Ramona to terminate their contract once she finds them. If this premise sounds familiar, it should, because it more than resembles the structure of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) albeit as a comedy. Ramona, like Captain Willard, is a lone protagonist assigned a job she doesn’t want but can’t refuse. She has to navigate dangerous terrain and encounter all sorts of odd characters. Along the way she even writes her thoughts down in a diary that is conveyed to the audience in the form of a voiceover just like Willard does in Coppola’s movie.

Roadkill has the grainy, black and white film stock look of a low-budget independent films, like Stranger than Paradise (1983) and She’s Gotta Have It (1986), to name just a couple of examples. The road movie format is a familiar genre and one that lends itself to the no-frills attitude of independent film because everything can be shot on location with very little money having to be spent on constructing sets. This format also gives McDonald and screenwriter Don McKellar an excuse to introduce all sorts of colorful characters. For example, Ramona meets a documentary crew led by none other than Roadkill’s actual director (he would do this again in Hard Core Logo) who is supposed to be making a music video on the band but ends up coming across more like a riff on Dennis Hopper’s crazed photographer in Apocalypse Now.

This type of film also allows McDonald to show off the Canadian landscape and play up the stereotype of a harsh, desolate environment that is comprised mostly of wilderness. Like he would later do in Hard Core Logo (1996), the director establishes a sense of place and seems to be gently making fun of it while simultaneously romanticizing the trademarks of the Canadian climate. This romanticism also translates to his view of the characters, in particular Ramona played with loads of charm by Valerie Buhagiar (whom McDonald was courting at the time of filming). For all of the gonzo humor of the film, McDonald cares about the character of Ramona, and this comes through in a wonderful scene where she hangs out with a young man (Mark Tarantino) and his friends in an abandoned drive-in. They dance to the sad, soulful music of the Cowboy Junkies with only the headlights of their cars as the source of illumination. The scene is a touching respite from the random weirdness of the movie.

McKellar’s screenplay also contains some very funny dialogue that occasionally plays on the stereotypical image of Canada forever living in the shadow of the United States. McKellar plays Russel the Serial Killer (although, he hasn’t killed anyone yet) and delivers a monologue partway through the film that acts as a funny riff on the cultural war between Canada and the U.S. “I’m a serial killer … It’s more of an American thing, traditionally, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s like everything else, there’s this colonial attitude about it. That if you want to make it you’ve got to go down to California or something. But I’m going to change all that.” Russel figures that the only options he has to get out a small-town are either becoming a serial killer or a hockey player (but he’s got “weak ankles”). It’s an inspired character with little details — like his business cards and a beeper where he can be reached — that makes him so memorable.

In late 1988, McDonald was a film editor working on films for Atom Egoyan (Family Viewing and Speaking Parts) and Ron Mann (Comic Book Confidential) and trying to come up with an idea for his first film. He was a big music fan and decided to make a documentary about an underground Toronto-based rock band called A Neon Rome. According to McDonald, the lead singer had, “this kind of Iggy Pop thing going, the Iggy moves and [Jim] Morrison kind of tone, I guess, in terms of their songs.” McDonald raised the money for the documentary and then, approximately six weeks before he was supposed to go on the road with the band, the lead singer shaved his head and took a vow of silence. He would sing on stage but would not do interviews. The band broke up and McDonald called screenwriter Don McKellar and told him he had money to make a film. They thought up a story about a woman looking for a band.

McDonald proudly populates Roadkill with all kinds of Canadian music. Children of Paradise, the fictitious band in the film, were played by local band Teknakullar Raincoats while neo-folk band the Leslie Spit Treeo and New Wave electronic musician Nash the Slash have cameos as themselves. The latter musician also composed the film’s score and said at the time: “I’m not interested in competing with the whole video and single business, so in scoring this, I got to do some of my most satisfying instrumental work.” According to Peter McFadzean, the film’s music coordinator, the idea was to use the music to enhance the film, and “use the film to enhance the music.”

At that year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Roadkill won the Toronto-City Award for Excellence in Canadian Production and $25,000. McDonald delivered the now legendary acceptance speech: “I hope with the $25,000 I can buy a cure for my hangover. Twenty-five thousand bucks is going to buy me a big chunk of hash. So tell those guys waiting in the back alley with the pipes that everything’s going to be OK.” The Canadian press generally warmly received the film. The Globe and Mail’s Jay Scott wrote, “Roadkill is a woman’s Easy Rider, also a doper’s remake of Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing, also a nod to Goin’ Down the Road.” Conversely, in his review for the Toronto Star, Peter Goddard wrote, “It’s a hustler’s move, a movie that has you thinking, ‘Hey, what a big dumb hunk of nothing this is,’ only to suddenly snap you awake with something so neat and clever you start to realize you’re being had.”

Roadkill is an excellent example of Canadian cinema. While it adopts a distinctly American genre like the road movie, it remains uniquely Canadian in content (except for a cameo by Joey Ramone) and attitude. Bruce McDonald remains one of the unsung heroes of the Canadian film scene, often overshadowed by its better-known figures, David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan and Denys Arcand. McDonald has remained fiercely independent over the years, supplementing his film career with a prolific one in Canadian television. Roadkill is an excellent example of his early work and an engaging, entertaining film in its own right.

Hard Core Logo

“People don’t want your sounds, they just want to use you.” – Bucky Haight

This Is Spinal Tap (1984) is generally regarded as the quintessential rock 'n' roll mockumentary — a hilarious look at the inept trials and tribulations of a heavy metal band. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Hard Core Logo (1996), a no frills, balls-to-the-wall adaptation Vancouver writer Michael Turner’s book about a fictitious Canadian punk rock band. Where Tap is a funny satire, Logo has a much darker undercurrent that gives it an unpredictable edge.

Retired for some years, legendary Canadian punk rock band, Hard Core Logo reunites for a one-off benefit concert in honor their mentor, Bucky Haight (Julian Richings), who supposedly had both legs amputated after being shot by a crazy fan. The gig goes so well that the band's charismatic lead singer, Joe Dick (Hugh Dillon), convinces everyone to go on a mini-tour across Western Canada with a documentary crew tagging along for the ride. They all pile into a beat-up van and travel across 4,000 kilometers on a bar tour of Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg, and Edmonton. It takes no time at all for all the old gripes and grudges to resurface, most significantly, the fact that lead guitarist, Billy Tallent (Callum Keith Rennie), is close to signing on with Jenifur, an MTV-friendly band that has made it to the cover of Spin magazine. This does not sit too well with Joe who comes from the old school of punk rock that refuses to sell-out to major labels or appear in glossy corporate magazines. As the tour progresses, the friction between the band members becomes more palpable until it reaches a critical mass.

Hard Core Logo is the third film in Bruce McDonald's informal rock 'n' roll road movie trilogy that started with Roadkill (1989) and Highway 61 (1991). The filmmaker grew up in the Vancouver punk rock scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s and so he was drawn to Turner’s book about aging musicians. In 1994, a friend gave McDonald a copy of the book which consisted of a collage of song lyrics, diary entries and contract riders. As McDonald commented in an interview, “what I thought was really interesting is where it is 15 years later, and what are these guys doing now.” The director wanted to be true to the “sense of being 35 and having to decide whether to keep going or quit and get a day job.”

McDonald had just come off the critically acclaimed Dance Me Outside (1995) and his friends warned him not to repeat himself with another road movie. However, McDonald did not see Logo as a repeat of previous films. “On the other films, they (the anti-heroes of Roadkill and Highway 61) go down the road and meet a nutty person and things happened. Here you’re with the same people throughout — and they are the nutty people!” Initially, McDonald and novice screenwriter Noel Baker were not sure how to adapt the book and finally settled on making a mockumentary.

What McDonald was not interested in making was a Canadian version of Spinal Tap. He even jokingly referred to his film as “Spinal Tap’s mean little brother.” Furthermore, he said, “We were not setting out to make a parody or satire. This is more of a true documentary voice — these are real people.” There is a certain raw vibe that permeates Logo and this is perfect for its rough around the edges subject matter.

The unrefined attitude is due in large part to the presence of Hugh Dillon as Joe Dick. McDonald had a tough time casting the role and had to persuade Dillon to do the film. “He was going ‘Wow, what if the movie is shit, then I’d lose all my fans from the band, I’d lose all my credibility!’” The director auditioned 200 actors for the role but “couldn’t find anyone who wasn’t posing or doing some fake-o rock-guy shtick.” He had used musicians in his before and Dillon had a small role in Dance Me Outside. However, McDonald wasn’t sure how Dillon would work with actors and so he consulted with Callum Keith Rennie. The actor and the musician got along famously. Not a professional actor but rather lead singer of the Canadian blues punk bank, the Headstones, Dillon's lack of formal training gives his performance a certain unpredictability that is perfect for his character. Dillon remembers, “as soon as he gave me freedom to make the screenplay more believable, I became interested. Bruce allowed me creative input and that’s what made it a special piece for me.” Dillon obviously drew a lot on his own real life experiences of being in a band and this makes everything he says and does that much more believable.

The interplay between the rest of the band is also very well done. Callum Keith Rennie plays the gifted, low key guitarist who has clearly surpassed his bandmates, Bernie Coulson is the crazy drummer who seems clueless but knows what to do when it counts, and finally John Pyper-Ferguson is the terminally burnt out bass player whose road diary provides the film's voice-over narration. The way these guys joke and argue with each other — like adults who refuse to grow-up — is so good that it feels like they have really been in a band together for many years. This was important for McDonald who wanted to realistically portray the dynamics of being in a band. “It’s a grueling career, struggling to keep a band together. A band’s a bit like a family — you can treat each other very badly and get away it. And because of those magical moments on stage, the band goes on and on.”

Armed with a $1.1 million budget, McDonald shot the bulk of the film in Vancouver over three weeks in November 1995 with additional footage shot in southern Alberta. As McDonald was about to start principal photography, the Ontario Film Development Corp. froze funding as part of the government’s restraint program. The producers quickly looked for new investors and, at one point, discussed rewriting the film to make it about a Toronto band heading east to the Maritimes. McDonald quickly nixed the idea. Fortunately, British Columbia Film agreed to provide financing on the condition that he hire a local producer and crew. The landscape of western Canada also played an important role and McDonald realized “what a nightmare it is for any Canadian band that tries to tour the West and tries to deal with the huge distances between places.” Post-production was finished the weekend before its first screening.

McDonald keeps the film together with his solid direction. He has an excellent sense of pacing — the film never gets boring — and he instinctively knows that the essence of any good rock 'n' roll movie is, as he puts it, "extremely loud music and cool shots." Cinematographer Danny Nowak uses the shaky, hand-held camerawork that documentaries are known for and he also shoots the band in cool slow motion shots that emphasizes their iconic status.

Hard Core Logo had its world premiere at the 49th Cannes Film Festival with three screenings. McDonald remembers, “Cannes was very humbling. You’re in the same arena as Bernardo Bertolucci and Czechoslovakian pornographers. It’s such a bizarre spectrum.” After screening at the Venice Film Festival, the film had its Canadian premiere on September 20, 1996 at Sudbury’s Cinefest and was then shown at the Vancouver International Film Festival on October 10 before being released across Canada eight days later. It was offered the opening spot in the Perspective Canada series at the Toronto International Festival with two screenings. The film’s distributors felt that the slot might “ghetto-ize” it and that McDonald had outgrown the Perspective Canada spot. They wanted only one screening in a 300-theater with a “special attraction” billing but the Festival organizers did not agree and the film was not shown there.

Hard Core Logo was well-received by Canadian film critics. In his review for the Montreal Gazette, John Griffin praised the film as a “masterful exercise in edgy virtuoso film craft, subversive propaganda and exhilarating entertainment.” The Toronto Sun’s Bruce Kirkland praised the cast: “They’re all so convincing it is impossible to believe they’re not all the real thing.” In his review for the Toronto Star, Bruce Kirkland wrote, “Screenwriter Noel S. Baker has provided some of the funniest and deftest writing Canadian moviemaking has heard in years. But it can’t hide the bitter-sweetness just below the surface.” The Globe and Mail’s Liam Lacey gave the film a mixed review: “Though the jumpy, parodic, disruptive style suits rock music, the same techniques prevent viewers from investing deeply in the characters and the story. The ride is fun, but it doesn’t quite reach a destination.”

At the Vancouver International Film Festival, Hard Core Logo received the $40,000 CITY-TV award for Best Canadian Film and Noel Baker won the Rogers prize for Best Canadian Screenplay. The film went on to be nominated for six Genie Awards (the Canadian version of the Academy Awards), including Best Picture and Director but only won for Best Original Song for “Who the Hell You Think You Are?” While something of a minor sensation in Canada, McDonald's films have been largely ignored in the United States, due mostly to lack of proper distribution. This changed somewhat with Logo when Quentin Tarantino saw it a film festival and liked it so much that he bought the U.S. distribution rights under his Rolling Thunder vanity label and even toyed with casting Dillon in Jackie Brown (1997).

Along with the aforementioned Spinal Tap and Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous (2000), Hard Core Logo is one of the best fictitious rock 'n' roll movies ever made. It has a genuine appreciation for music and an acute knowledge of the conventions and clichés of the genre. Like Spinal Tap, McDonald's film is not afraid to make fun of these conventions and like Almost Famous, there is an authenticity to how the band is portrayed and the music they make.

If you decide to get this film on DVD, avoid the crappy, bare bones edition on Amazon.com and instead get the Special Edition here or go to Amazon.ca. Trust me, it's worth it. The SE has a great audio commentary with McDonald, Dillon and Baker along with music vids.

Here is a trailer for the film:

Here is an interview with Hugh Dillon around the time the film came out:

An excerpt from a Making of doc. on the film: