THIS MOVIE IS BROKEN directed by Bruce McDonald, written by Don McKellar, with Greg Calderone, Georgina Reilly, Kerr Hewitt and Broken Social Scene. 88 minutes. An Alliance release. Opens Friday (June 25). For venues, trailers and times, see Movies.
If you make a movie about music in Canada, you talk to Bruce McDonald. The man who defined “rock and road movies” with Roadkill and Highway 61, and topped himself with the punk mockumentary Hard Core Logo, is back in his element with This Movie Is Broken, a mashup of concert movie and scripted love story shot around Broken Social Scene’s free show at Harbourfront Centre last year.
The concert happened in July as McDonald’s Pontypool was coming to the end of its theatrical run. Funny story: when I interviewed him about that movie last year, the Broken Social Scene project didn’t come up… because he hadn’t even thought about it yet.
“Yeah, this one came up pretty fast,” he says. “I’ve known those guys for a while, and when they announced the Harbourfront show I thought, ‘Okay, I’ve gotta do something here.’ It came together really fast. Niv Fichman basically helped pay for it, and Don [McKellar] wrote the script, and probably from ‘Let’s do this’ to the first day of shooting it was three or four weeks. In a way, it’s been in our heads for a while, but it was sorta great to have a deadline.”
In fairness, McDonald had been trying to come up with a BSS project for a while, but it took some time to get the band to commit.
“Even though they’re a big, rambling kind of group,” he says, “they’re pretty cagey about who they let in. It’s all about trust. I’ve worked with them enough that I eventually passed the audition I was somebody who wasn’t out to fuck them or take advantage of their status or whatever.
“So we tried to work the film the same way the group works: make it a collaboration, not too hierarchical,” says McDonald. “They were involved in script sessions with Don, and they worked on the casting, having a voice, and in the cutting as well. We must have had at least eight serious screenings where we’d watch stuff on the big screen and discuss everything: the shots, the music, the selection of songs.”
With minimal production time, McDonald and McKellar found themselves working to retrofit their script around the events of the day, folding in the garbage strike and the race car trials going on at Exhibition Place.
“We don’t know exactly why there are race cars in the movie, but it was happening on that day. I guess it was a lack of premeditation, in a way, and the feeling you get that [the city] is alive. It’s the kind of aliveness where not everything has to have a reason to be there it’s just there, right? And then the music is the thing that puts a nice bow on it. You go, ‘What a great day! What a great city this is!'”
There’s definitely a sense that both the movie and its maker are invigorated by the whirlwind pace of production. McDonald figures they spent another three days shooting the fictional material surrounding the concert. Nearly a year later, he’s still buzzed about the experience.
“What was great was that so many people came to the table because they admire the band – not only their music, but what they stand for: community. Kevin [Drew] and Brendan [Canning] are always talking about that idea, of music as community.
“And there’s something great about reminding people when they see the movie: ‘Get out of the house every once in a while! Go see a show!'”
Interview Clips
Bruce McDonald on the origins of the project:
McDonald on the speed of the shoot:
normw@nowtoronto.com
