I went to go see HIGHWAY 61 last night on the big screen. FilmCan, was celebrating their ninth issue by doing a small tribute to Bruce McDonald, one of Canada's amazing contemporary, off-the-wall, independent, cinematic auteurs.... A better bio can be found for him on the Canadian Film Encyclopedia, but it can't be hyperlinked directly... so you are just gonna have to look it up if you are interested.... but you should... it's great (and i am not just plugging it because it is a part of TIFFG and i see the people who toil on it til midnights most days... it's actually awesome)
But back to H61..... the movie is from 1990... and I saw it somewhere in and around 2000 (when I started really going crazy for all celluloid Canadian) and its just a whacked out road film that follows a barber, a roadie and a corpse from the northern tip of the route of Rock'nRoll, in Thunder Bay, down to the roots of Jazz in New Orleans.... and, I have to mention, they are being chased by a nutty entrepreneur who believes he is Satan himself, who is trying to redeem the soul of the dead guy, who traded it to him for a bus ticket....
Going in I was a little nervous that I wouldn't love it as much as I did the first time... I have to admit, I have recently begun to be so high on Canadian film that I am wont to push for it, sight unseen, and even if I know it to be... well, "not the best". But I honestly love this film... it is one of my very favourites, Canadian or no.... and it was just like the first time all over again....
Bruce McDonald, and Don McKellar (bleh... I will explain another time my problems with this guy, in this movie, I love him) were in attendance and, as every time I see them, revealed really great stories that typify the behind-the-scenes of Canadian film, or any grassroots, no money, gootta love it production scene. They really are the reason I stay involved in film....
I was asked once by a Canadian director, who shall remain nameless, what makes a Canadian film Canadian. The man was cynical and disappointed by a distribution system for films in this country that just does not work. He had made a GREAT film, another one of my favourites, and it had flopped at the box office, when it didn't deserve to. He was tired and drained and angry and just didn't want to be a representative of a Country that the industry he was trying to gain respect from just had no time for. I couldn't answer him at the time.....
....but now (in the classic fashion of coming up with a witty retort waaaaaaaaay too late) I have to say..... Canadian film is a noble tradition of guerilla warfare.... monkey warfare.... It is a collective that has in common, at its heart, not a theme, or subject or nationality, but a love to succeed in a place where no one is pulling for you... to make your way out into the world to say "look at me, I am weird, and funny, self-deprecating, important, and I have got something to fucking say......" and doing that despite given the obstacles and bureaucrativ hoops that are thrown at you every which way..... it is going to New Orleans, needing a biker gang for a scene and putting the call out on the radio, so that you have actual hell's angels show up on their hogs... its getting beat up by those same Angels, after giving them $100 each and all the beer they can drink, letting them ride drunk around your government-paid for equipnment and having a raucous good time doing it.... it's geting the shot and cutting it together... its, almost two-decades later, talking about it like it was the best time of your life.... It's a love of the doing and not the respect of having done that makes you a Canadian filmmaker.....
....It's still around.... and I FUCKING love it!
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