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>>> Young at Heart

The Bernard Shakey Film Retrospective: Neil Young On Screen Thursday to Sunday (July 23-26) at the Royal (608 College). $8-$10, $45 pass. Rating: NNNN


Neil Young may be headlining the WayHome Festival up in Orillia this weekend, but here in Toronto his alter ego, Bernard Shakey, is taking over the Royal. And Bernard Shakey is a really weird guy.

Assembled by Films We Like and premiered in New York City earlier this spring, The Bernard Shakey Film Retrospective: Neil Young On Screen pulls together four decades’ worth of Young’s cinematic output, including concert films, dramatic projects and unclassifiable experiments. 

Not everything is here – Jim Jarmusch’s lo-fi concert movie Year Of The Horse and Jonathan Demme’s sumptuous Heart Of Gold didn’t make the cut – but the result is a focus on oddities that wouldn’t be back on the big screen without the excuse of a touring film festival.

The retrospective opens Thursday (July 23, 7 pm) with the director’s cut of Human Highway, a bizarre pop fantasy Young made with Dean Stockwell in 1982. Featuring turns by Dennis Hopper and Sally Kirkland, among others, it’s a mildly demented musical starring Young as an auto mechanic blissfully unconcerned about the misbehaving nuclear power plant down the road. 

It predates The Simpsons by eight years, and Young sings Hey Hey, My My with the members of Devo. It’s kind of awesome.

You’ll also find rarities like Young’s 1974 documentary Journey Through The Past (Friday, July 24, 7 pm), which turns footage shot over six years of touring with Buffalo Springfield and CSNY into an absurdist life-on-the-road study, and 1987’s grimy Crazy Horse concert movie Muddy Track (Saturday, July 25, 7 pm), which was never properly released.

My personal discovery was Solo Trans, screening with the 2012 Shakey silent A Day At The Gallery (Sunday, July 26, 7 pm). An hour-long studio concert thing directed by Hal Ashby in 1984 for Trans TV, it’s a three-part concert that opens with Young unplugged, moves into his experimental period and ends with a set by his doo-wop/rockabilly act, the Shocking Pinks.

It’s so utterly of its time that it feels like a goof on 80s music video culture. Don’t miss it.     

normw@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner

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