If constant exercise keeps you finely tuned and keeps your muscle memory on point in any facet of life, that Canadian filmmaker Bruce MacDonald is practically marathon training.
At the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas for the world premiere for his latest film “This Movie Is Broken” — a quasi narrative/ concert documentary revolving around Toronto orchestral rockers Broken Social Scene written by well-known Canuck scribe Don McKellar — the director has barely been able to catch his breath in the last 12 months.
On a cold, uncharacteristically rainy morning in Austin over coffee, McDonald told The Playlist that he’d shot four films in the last year, was lining up another for a summer shoot and still had multiple other irons in the fire.
“I feel like I’ve had quadruplets or triplets this year, it’s been a very busy year,” he said. “We’re in the fast lane right now, we’re in the passing lane. It’s just one of those things where everything happened quickly.”
The day before the interview, McDonald had just been in Angola, Louisiana’s maximum security prison shooting a “Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison”-like documentary about three musical acts — a gospel outfit, a nR&B group and a country and western band — entertaining prisoners serving life sentences, many of them for grisly murders. Titled “Music From The Big House,” the documentary was a spiritual experience and strange one. “It was like the heaviest of the heavy,” he said. “It’s such an odd experience because you’re looking at these guys they’re faces are shining and they’re tearing it up and every one’s full of beans and joys and you realize that these are all murderers. A lot of them are quite changed men and they’ve been in for 30-40 years, but it was intense, man. But it couldn’t have been more touching, beautiful and emotional, a lot of people crying. It was great. So I’m just coming off that buzz.”
The documentary also features the Rita Chiarelli, known as “the goddess of Canadian blues” who first put the nugget of the idea in McDonald’s head and figures prominently in the film as an ambassador for musical healing.
Then there’s two other film recently mentioned that are both nearing stages of completion and already shot and in the can. One is his sequel to “Hardcore Logo” and the other is a chatty, “My Dinner With Andre”-like story of two estranged female friends who reconnect after years of bitter animus called, “Trigger.” Like “This Movie is Broken” and “Music From The Big House,” both center deeply around music.
And “Trigger” is also loosely inspired by Richard Linklater’s “Before Sunrise/Before Sunset” films. “It’s the story of two rock chicks (Tracy Wright and Molly Parker) — it’s kinda like ‘My Dinner With Andre’ with a few more locations. It’s like girls night out. We put on this benefit show at the Mod club in Toronto. The idea is that they meet up after many years of not talking to each other and bad hostiles and they go out on the town in Toronto, ” McDonald said noting that many of the new Toronto bands featured in the movie — Lioness, Heavy Filth, Foxfire, One Hundred Dollar Duets and The Ghost Is Dancing — were handpicked from Broken Social Scene’s Brendan Canning who has a longstanding relationship with the filmmaker (a Canning-lead version of BSS also scored McDonald’s “Tracey Fragements” in 2008).
Keeping with his quick approach, “Hard Core Logo 2” (only a working title so far) was shot in 15 days. The premise is that the deceased Joe Dick — played by Hugh Dillon the lead singer of the Hardcore Logo band in the original film) — has possessed the spirit of a young girl, Care Failure, from the Toronto sleaze-rock band Die Mannequin. “So he’s writing songs through her,” McDonald said of the 23-year-old singer who’s now his lead star. “We follow them as they write songs in Saskatchewan.It’s hilarious and bizarre. So the last few months have been one big musical love train.”
And for an encore? Yet another film set to shoot late summer, called “Lucky Ho” that is just looking for a lead female. “[It’s] a women’s prison martial arts project,” McDonald laughed noting it will shoot in July or August depending on what female they find for the part. “It’s awesome. It’s kind of filthy, hilarious and wrong. We gotta find some totally smoking hot Chinese babe who can kick ass and be naked in the shower a lot.”
While McDonald has been shooting, fast and cheap, he’s perfecting an art of controlled chaos — partly inspired by his interactions with the Broken Social Scene band and their hectic “This Movie Is Broken” shoot — that is part run and gun, part preparedness.
“I’m a big fan of design when you can control it, but there’s a point where you have to give your trust into the moment,” he said. “There’s that famous Miles Davis quote he said to a younger musician. ‘I want you to just play like you don’t know how to play.’ Davis knew his chops, he did his time, and that a certain point he thought, it’s about not trying to control everything and giving it up, letting people solo.”
Here’s the video for Die Manniquin’s “Bad Medicine”
Here’s Broken Social Scene’s “Almost Crimes” performed at the July 2009 Toronto Harborfront show during McDonald’s shoot for, “This Movie Is Broken”