Canadian director Bruce McDonald has been busy — so busy in fact, that IMDB can’t even keep up. Luckily, the director recently spoke to Toronto’s Eye Weekly and let them know what he’s currently up to.
Right now, the director is in the midst of shooting his latest film, the “My Dinner With Andre”-inspired “Trigger.” While MacDonald’s initial idea was to stick to the “one table/one dinner” format, writer Daniel MacIvor convinced him to open up the setting a bit and now the film is about two friends waxing nostalgic over an evening in Toronto.
“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,” said MacDonald.
Tracy Wright and Molly Parker play the friends and “Trigger” also happens to be the titular name of the fictional band they were once part of that are reuniting for the benefit. McDonald describes the Wright and Parker’s characters as having sort of a Page/Plant, Townsend/Daltrey sort of relationship and that the film will include nods to some of female rock heroes such as like Chrissie Hynde, Courtney Love, Patti Smith and Joni Mitchell. If you happen to be in Toronto this weekend, with nothing to do on Valentine’s Day, stop by the Mod Club where MacDonald will be shooting the concert footage and it will double as an actual benefit show for the Salvation Army’s Florence Booth House Women’s Shelter. Toronto bands Lioness, Heavy Filth, Foxfire, One Hundred Dollar Duets and The Ghost Is Dancing will be performing.
After that film wraps, McDonald will start work on the sequel to his cult classic film “Hard Core Logo.” With Joe Dick (Hugh Dillon) from the first film dead, and Callum Keith Rennie busy, the sequel with focus bring some of the minor characters from “Hard Core Logo” to the fore. MacDonald explains:
“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.”
Again, with this pic, McDonald is flipping the usual script, choosing to focus on women who rock, rather than going over familiar ground with dudes. We have no problem with that as it’s definitely a genre that can use a decent film (or two).
Finally, remember that “This Movie Is Broken,” the Broken Social Scene crowd-sourced docu-drama? The film, which will utilize fan shot concert footage not unlike the Beastie Boys’ “Awesome, I Fuckin’ Shot That”, will also weave in a narrative about two kids trying to get backstage. Anyhow McDonald and Don McKellar have been directing it and according to the former, it’s pretty much done. They are working with the band’s label, Arts & Crafts, to “place the movie in the most advantageous spot for the band” which we imagine will be sometime soon, considering their John McEntire (Tortoise, The Sea And Cake) produced, and still untitled album is set to hit stores on May 4th (and will probably be followed by massive amounts of touring).
So that just about does it. Reading over this again, it looks like Steven Soderbergh has a Canadian challenger for the “busiest director of the year” award.