During the 2010 SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas, the Playlist sat down with Canadian filmmaker Bruce McDonald for a looong conversation about myriad projects including his latest film, the Broken Social Scene concert film/narrative feature “This Movie Is Broken” which made its world premiere (read our review) at the fest.
McDonald obviously told us about several projects like his upcoming women-in-prison martial arts film, “Lucky Ho,” the chatty rock girls reconciliation film, “Trigger” a New Orleans-set documentary called, “Music From The Big House,” and his sequel to “Hard Core Logo.”
But of course there’s more for the filmmaker who is easily becoming the most prolific director in the Great White North. We couldn’t help but ask McDonald about those rumors to a sequel to the strange zombie/horror film, “Pontypool” which was released in 2008 and gave an excellent star turn to the character actor Stephen McHattie (known recently for portraying Hollis Mason, the first Nite Owl, in “Watchmen,” as well as an awesome appearance in “A History of Violence”).
Whether “Pontypool 2” will ever happen probably depends on whether there is money people to front the bill — it would be bigger in scale than the original — but McDonald confirmed a script was written. In fact, it was supposed to come first.
“It’s funny, the sequel or whatever terminology is, was written way before than the [original] movie that we did,” he said. “Pontypool itself was really a spin-off of what we really had been working on for many years. But because that project would have been $5-6 million dollars — it takes forever to find the right combination of actor, producer, director, timing, click and then suddenly [the smaller scale version] happened. It’s adapted from the book which is insane and full of riches. There’s not really one story in the novel and it has many of these little things. So the writer of the book kinda has this trilogy going.”
Trilogy you say? But the irony of sequels to films that cost under $2 million dollar (or in some cases much less) is not lost on the filmmaker. “I feel a little insane talking about sequels to these small independent movies like ‘Hardcore Logo,’ but part of me, is like, why not, let’s do it. It’s pretty rich source material. So essentially the Pontypool thing is almost the same event, but sort of in it, rather than listening to it. Different characters, different cast. You could make a TV Series out of it. We’ll go to HBO!”
Since McDonald always seems to have several projects simmering on the burner we asked what else might be cooking and he said he’s writing a Chet Baker-like jazz music film for McHattie, who clearly he adores. “McHattie’s the best. He’s a little intimidating at first, but he’s an incredible actor and a big teddy bear at the end of the day,” he said fondly. The filmmaker is working on a potential adaptation of Michael Ondantje’s, “The Collective Works of Billy The Kid,” which might be rather difficult as that work is a piece of experimental poetry, but McDonald is never one to steer away from challenges.
When will these projects happen? McDonald laughs, “The money guys will probably go, ‘Let’s calm down here and focus our attack.’ ” But at the rate he’s working (four films essentially shot in 12 months give or take), hopefully we shouldn’t be waiting too long.