We’ll forgive you if you’ve lost track of the number of projects Canadian director Bruce McDonald has been churning out. This year alone has seen his romance/Broken Social Scene concert doc “This Movie Is Broken” do the festival circuit and hit theaters in Canada as well as his “My Dinner With Andre”-esque, one-night-in-Toronto, relationship drama “Trigger” have its premiere at TIFF. He’s also got another music-related project, the documentary “Music From The Big House,” on the way (more on that in a moment), but his next project is actually already finished and broadcast. Geez, does this guy ever sleep?
McDonald directed a made-for-TV family film that he says “takes the piss out of the Twilight thing.” Titled “My Babysitter’s A Vampire,” the story follows “two 14-year-old, nerdy boys who are on the fringe of the cool gang at high school. Ethan (Matthew Knight) and his pal Benny (Atticus Mitchell) screw up one Friday night and lose sight of Ethan’s eight-year-old sister. His parents ground him, and hire a babysitter to watch Ethan and his sister on their Friday date night – the ultimate teen humiliation. Enter the recently bitten but extremely hot babysitter, Sarah (Vanessa Morgan). The action takes off from there.”
The film was already broadcast on Teletoon this past weekend, and moreover, it spawned a TV series that will hit next year, five episodes of which McDonald has already directed. We’re not sure what turned him onto the project, but perhaps the fact it was written by Tim Burns (“An American Werewolf In Paris,” “Crank Yankers”) offered some incentive.
As for the doc, “Music From The Big House,” it chronicles Canadian blues musician Rita Chiarelli as she travels to the notorious Angola prison in Louisiana and gets together a concert for the inmates. The film is starting to make the festival rounds and hits Montreal’s Festival Du Nouveau Cinema next week where we’ll catch it. You can watch a trailer for the film below.