Bruce talks Trigger and other stuff
Bruce McDonald rocks out
BY Jason Anderson February 08, 2010 14:02
If you like the idea of visiting a slightly parallel universe where Molly Parker and Tracy Wright nearly made the big-time as '90s alternative rockers, then your Valentine’s Day itinerary should already be set in stone. On Sunday (Feb. 14) at the Mod Club, a shoot for Bruce McDonald’s forthcoming feature Trigger doubles as a benefit concert for the Salvation Army’s Florence Booth House Women’s Shelter featuring the likes of Lioness, Heavy Filth, Foxfire, One Hundred Dollar Duets and The Ghost Is Dancing. There’ll also be a performance by Trigger, the fictional band whose fraught reunion is the subject of the Daniel MacIvor-scripted movie, and who inspired the female-centric bent to the evening’s line-up.
Continuing an extraordinarily prolific run that started with The Tracey Fragments three years ago and continued with the mighty Pontypool, McDonald actually has three music-related films on the go. He shot the Broken Social Scene movie This Movie Is Broken last summer and is about to begin a Hard Core Logo sequel in Saskatchewan with the band Die Mannequin. He recently spoke with EYE WEEKLY about all three projects and the greatness of women who rock.
How’d you get started on Trigger?
I watched My Dinner With Andre for the first time in over 20 years about a year-and-a-half ago and I was like, “Fuck, that’s a good movie.” Being the independent cheapskate that I am, I thought maybe we could try something like that. So I wrote Daniel MAcIvor a letter and asked him, “Would you be interested in writing a two-hander with the parameters of My Dinner With Andre, just two guys at a table talking?” He jumped at it. He added a few more locations and instead of guys, we have two amazing actresses, Tracy Wright and Molly Parker. Daniel and I have both worked with them before and they’re the perfect combination of particle theory and wave theory, together at the same table!
So how’d you end up getting the characters away from the table and into the Mod Club?
That was Daniel’s addition. I was all about the “one table/one dinner” thing but he said,
“C’mon, let’s make it about Toronto, the city we live in.” The idea was that they were these musicians who hadn’t seen each other for many years and one thing that brings them together is this benefit show. One is very reluctant and one is very keen. So they start the evening at Canoe, high atop the TD Centre. It’s such a beautiful space and a great metaphor for starting at the top of the world. Then they go back to the streets they used to be hipsters on - they do the Queen Street stroll down the boulevard of broken dreams. So it’s kind of a little portrait of the city over the course of one night.
Was it also interesting to focus on women rockers rather than do another dude fest?
I think a big part of both Daniel’s project and my own is hopefully creating some great female characters. We thought it’d be interesting to take that angle here. I get to make some nods to my musical heroes, like Chrissie Hynde, Courtney Love, Patti Smith and Joni Mitchell. It seems fresher to me to include parts of those people as movie characters. [Molly and Tracy’s characters] are the classic kind of duo - like Page and Plant or Townshend and Daltrey, it’s the genius guitar player with the egomaniac singer. They’re wedded for life whether they like it or not. We’re exploring the female version of that, so we thought we’d follow that through with the benefit show, which focuses on women who rock. We were really struggling with the phrasing - is it women in rock? Women of rock? No, it’s women who rock.
Are you excited that Trigger also counts as a Twitch City reunion?
Yeah, we were all standing around a couple of weekends ago, saying that was pretty odd. Don McKellar does a little part [in Trigger] as Tracy Wright’s slacker, bathrobe-wearing, I’m-writing-a-novel boyfriend. Daniel MacIvor was in Twitch City, too, as were Molly and Tracy. Bob Martin, who was one of the writers, does a cameo as a waiter. That’s all partly because of Daniel’s efforts. He’s a big believer in acknowledging your history and building on it. So we realized we do have history with Twitch City. It’s funny because Callum Keith Rennie was in that, too - Hugh Dillon even had a walk-on part, plus there was Jennifer Jason Leigh. It was a pretty awesome cast. That’s our Fast Times at Ridgemont High!
Speaking of Hugh and Callum, what’s up with the new Hard Core Logo movie?
For many years we’ve been talking about doing a follow-up. Hugh and Callum have both been super busy so we thought that while we were waiting - and waiting to see if Joe Dick comes back from the dead - we could take some of the minor characters from the first movie and put them in the foreground. So Bucky Haight, who is their mentor in the original, becomes one of the major characters. I become a major character, too - I play the filmmaker who filmed the onscreen suicide of the unfortunate Joe Dick and who’s wracked with guilt. Care Failure and her band Die Mannequin play themselves - they’re recording an album with Bucky and I’m documenting it. She’s been channeling the spirit of Joe Dick - he’s writing songs through her. It’s crazy but it’s essentially the story of them making a record in this old dancehall in northern Saskatchewan or Kansas, depending on which country we embrace.
I’d done a couple of things with Die Mannequin and I just really got on with them and liked their attitude. I thought, “Hey, if we’re going to do a sequel for Hard Core Logo, let’s do the flipside.” The first one is masculine, Canadian and on the road. The second could be feminine, American and in the studio! Anyway, it’s something to do while we wait for Hugh and Callum to finish their high-paying cop shows and then we can figure out if there’s a No. 3. I know I sound a little bit insane but the music world is just a fun world to play in.
And as for This Movie Is Broken?
We’re basically done - there’s just a few more things to finagle. The band’s been really great and supportive. It’s taken longer because we want everybody to have a voice in it so they see it at different stages. They’ve been busy because they’ve been making their record, too. The Broken movie will be probably ready the same time as Trigger in the fall, but it depends on people’s schedules. We’re working with them and Arts & Crafts to place the movie in the most advantageous spot for the band.
Maybe they tour like Anvil and have the movie play before the band. Maybe they could even screen it instead of playing!
Yeah, they could be relaxing in the sun in Florida and the movie could be touring for them!
"For Florence": An Evening of Women Who Rock - featuring Lioness, Heavy Filth, One Hundred Dollar Duets, The Ghost is Dancing, Carmen Elle, Foxfire, Lisa Lobsinger of Broken Social Scene, Hooded Fang, Alex Olsen & Jessica Lalonde and emcee Caroline Azar - takes place Sunday (Feb. 14) at the Mod Club (722 College). Admission is free; donations will be accepted for Salvation Army's Florence Booth House Women’s Shelter.
Email us at: LETTERS@EYEWEEKLY.COM or send your questions to EYEWEEKLY.COM
BY Jason Anderson February 08, 2010 14:02
If you like the idea of visiting a slightly parallel universe where Molly Parker and Tracy Wright nearly made the big-time as '90s alternative rockers, then your Valentine’s Day itinerary should already be set in stone. On Sunday (Feb. 14) at the Mod Club, a shoot for Bruce McDonald’s forthcoming feature Trigger doubles as a benefit concert for the Salvation Army’s Florence Booth House Women’s Shelter featuring the likes of Lioness, Heavy Filth, Foxfire, One Hundred Dollar Duets and The Ghost Is Dancing. There’ll also be a performance by Trigger, the fictional band whose fraught reunion is the subject of the Daniel MacIvor-scripted movie, and who inspired the female-centric bent to the evening’s line-up.
Continuing an extraordinarily prolific run that started with The Tracey Fragments three years ago and continued with the mighty Pontypool, McDonald actually has three music-related films on the go. He shot the Broken Social Scene movie This Movie Is Broken last summer and is about to begin a Hard Core Logo sequel in Saskatchewan with the band Die Mannequin. He recently spoke with EYE WEEKLY about all three projects and the greatness of women who rock.
How’d you get started on Trigger?
I watched My Dinner With Andre for the first time in over 20 years about a year-and-a-half ago and I was like, “Fuck, that’s a good movie.” Being the independent cheapskate that I am, I thought maybe we could try something like that. So I wrote Daniel MAcIvor a letter and asked him, “Would you be interested in writing a two-hander with the parameters of My Dinner With Andre, just two guys at a table talking?” He jumped at it. He added a few more locations and instead of guys, we have two amazing actresses, Tracy Wright and Molly Parker. Daniel and I have both worked with them before and they’re the perfect combination of particle theory and wave theory, together at the same table!
So how’d you end up getting the characters away from the table and into the Mod Club?
That was Daniel’s addition. I was all about the “one table/one dinner” thing but he said,
“C’mon, let’s make it about Toronto, the city we live in.” The idea was that they were these musicians who hadn’t seen each other for many years and one thing that brings them together is this benefit show. One is very reluctant and one is very keen. So they start the evening at Canoe, high atop the TD Centre. It’s such a beautiful space and a great metaphor for starting at the top of the world. Then they go back to the streets they used to be hipsters on - they do the Queen Street stroll down the boulevard of broken dreams. So it’s kind of a little portrait of the city over the course of one night.
Was it also interesting to focus on women rockers rather than do another dude fest?
I think a big part of both Daniel’s project and my own is hopefully creating some great female characters. We thought it’d be interesting to take that angle here. I get to make some nods to my musical heroes, like Chrissie Hynde, Courtney Love, Patti Smith and Joni Mitchell. It seems fresher to me to include parts of those people as movie characters. [Molly and Tracy’s characters] are the classic kind of duo - like Page and Plant or Townshend and Daltrey, it’s the genius guitar player with the egomaniac singer. They’re wedded for life whether they like it or not. We’re exploring the female version of that, so we thought we’d follow that through with the benefit show, which focuses on women who rock. We were really struggling with the phrasing - is it women in rock? Women of rock? No, it’s women who rock.
Are you excited that Trigger also counts as a Twitch City reunion?
Yeah, we were all standing around a couple of weekends ago, saying that was pretty odd. Don McKellar does a little part [in Trigger] as Tracy Wright’s slacker, bathrobe-wearing, I’m-writing-a-novel boyfriend. Daniel MacIvor was in Twitch City, too, as were Molly and Tracy. Bob Martin, who was one of the writers, does a cameo as a waiter. That’s all partly because of Daniel’s efforts. He’s a big believer in acknowledging your history and building on it. So we realized we do have history with Twitch City. It’s funny because Callum Keith Rennie was in that, too - Hugh Dillon even had a walk-on part, plus there was Jennifer Jason Leigh. It was a pretty awesome cast. That’s our Fast Times at Ridgemont High!
Speaking of Hugh and Callum, what’s up with the new Hard Core Logo movie?
For many years we’ve been talking about doing a follow-up. Hugh and Callum have both been super busy so we thought that while we were waiting - and waiting to see if Joe Dick comes back from the dead - we could take some of the minor characters from the first movie and put them in the foreground. So Bucky Haight, who is their mentor in the original, becomes one of the major characters. I become a major character, too - I play the filmmaker who filmed the onscreen suicide of the unfortunate Joe Dick and who’s wracked with guilt. Care Failure and her band Die Mannequin play themselves - they’re recording an album with Bucky and I’m documenting it. She’s been channeling the spirit of Joe Dick - he’s writing songs through her. It’s crazy but it’s essentially the story of them making a record in this old dancehall in northern Saskatchewan or Kansas, depending on which country we embrace.
I’d done a couple of things with Die Mannequin and I just really got on with them and liked their attitude. I thought, “Hey, if we’re going to do a sequel for Hard Core Logo, let’s do the flipside.” The first one is masculine, Canadian and on the road. The second could be feminine, American and in the studio! Anyway, it’s something to do while we wait for Hugh and Callum to finish their high-paying cop shows and then we can figure out if there’s a No. 3. I know I sound a little bit insane but the music world is just a fun world to play in.
And as for This Movie Is Broken?
We’re basically done - there’s just a few more things to finagle. The band’s been really great and supportive. It’s taken longer because we want everybody to have a voice in it so they see it at different stages. They’ve been busy because they’ve been making their record, too. The Broken movie will be probably ready the same time as Trigger in the fall, but it depends on people’s schedules. We’re working with them and Arts & Crafts to place the movie in the most advantageous spot for the band.
Maybe they tour like Anvil and have the movie play before the band. Maybe they could even screen it instead of playing!
Yeah, they could be relaxing in the sun in Florida and the movie could be touring for them!
"For Florence": An Evening of Women Who Rock - featuring Lioness, Heavy Filth, One Hundred Dollar Duets, The Ghost is Dancing, Carmen Elle, Foxfire, Lisa Lobsinger of Broken Social Scene, Hooded Fang, Alex Olsen & Jessica Lalonde and emcee Caroline Azar - takes place Sunday (Feb. 14) at the Mod Club (722 College). Admission is free; donations will be accepted for Salvation Army's Florence Booth House Women’s Shelter.
Email us at: LETTERS@EYEWEEKLY.COM or send your questions to EYEWEEKLY.COM