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18. Canadian sketch comedy legends Kids In the Hall reunite onstage at this year’s Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo
4. As we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Calgary Underground Film Festival, we look back at where it was a decade ago and how it got there
10. Calgary journalist Vicki Hall to become the first woman to enter the Canadian Football Hall of Fame
13. Pizza and pints — even in the local craft beer community it remains the perfect combination
14. Musician Tara MacLean delivers her most personal work yet, with her poignant new biography Song of the Sparrow
21. The Calgary Underground Film Festival celebrates 20 years with a full slate of challenging and engaging alternative works, including from Alberta filmmakers
26. Local horror rock gods Forbidden Dimension set to release another album of ghoulish goodness
30. CAM HAYDEN
* Note: The Los Angeles Times Crossword Puzzle was unavailable at press time. Please drop us a line at info@theyyscene.com to let us know if you missed it.
Editor
MIKE BELL
Design KRIS TWYMAN
Cyana Jo. Andalis
Tom Bagley
Sebastian Buzzalino
Autumn Fox
Nicole Gruszecki
Kim Guttormson
Cam Hayden
Leah Hennel
Nick Johnson
Jeanne Kwong
Darren Krause
Hamish MacAulay
Michelle Magnan-McIvor
Teresa Maillie
Joe McFarland
Nathan Millar
Lori Montgomery
Aaron Navrady
Jay Nelson
Adora Nwofor
Rick Overwater
Mike Platt
Shea Proulx
Gwendolyn Richards
Caroline Russell-King
Jenna Shummoogum
John Tebbutt
Don Tse
Krista Sylvester
Zoltan Varadi
David Veitch
Mary-Lynn Wardle
Ian Wilson
Cover: Kids in the Hall
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It’s been 20 years of onscreen weird. This month, the Calgary Underground Film Festival will celebrate two decades of offering the city’s more discerning (i.e. perverse and freakish) cinephiles their yearly dose of challenging, crazy, cool and wonderful, whatthe-hell-did-I-just-see.
Further into this issue of theSCENE, we’ve got the complete schedule for what’s going on at this year’s event, as well as extra coverage of some of the films that will be screening at the Globe Cinema April 20-30, and why you should see them.
But we thought it might be a good idea, before we go forward — hopefully at least another two decades — to look back.
To look back to 10 years ago when writer Josiah Hughes looked back with those who were responsible, are responsible, on the beginnings of what’s become one of yyc’s most unique and entertaining annual events.
As it turns 20, from the hindsight and foresight of 10, here’s to CUFF 2023 and beyond.
For more stories from the FFWD archives, please go to theyyscene.com.
April 11, 2013 by Josiah Hughes
What started as a group of film nerds geeking out over drinks at The Vicious Circle turned into a very real thing when, in 2003, they created the Calgary Underground Film Festival. Memories are shaky and stories half-remembered, but piecing it all together we see an annual celebration of film that seemingly willed itself into existence.
Former technical director Brian “Bunny” Batista remembers it as founder and programmer Brenda Lieberman’s excuse to watch more horror films, while Lieberman claims it sprung from her desire to see more out-there cinema championed in Calgary.
“I was going to film festivals, like Toronto and other festivals, as a passion and coming back and wanting to convince the Calgary International Film Festival to show the movies that I’d seen,” Lieberman recalls. “I couldn’t really convince them. So then the question was, what can we do to show these films? We can’t really get CIFF to show everything we want to see. Whether it was more horror or more quirky, edgier films and maybe more stuff that was from video artist,s we just decided that the best way to show what we wanted to show was to do it ourselves.”
With that DIY spirit in tow, Lieberman and Batista, along with co-conspirators Kari McQueen, Julia Ain Burns, Andra Louis and Andy Eyck … founded CUFF 10 years ago.
The first edition of the fest boasted a modest lineup, and a group of about 30 people gathered in a pre-Hifi Club bar space known as The Venue. It was all going off without a hitch, at least until the first film — a Guy Maddin feature — started to play.
“We were all super excited,” McQueen recalls. “Then the AGLC (Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission) shows up. It’s a lady in this big trench coat and she’s got a real badge. Apparently their liquor license and business license didn’t kick in until the Monday after. We tried to negotiate and have her let us stay open, but she was like, ‘Nope sorry.’ ”
Fortunately Batista also worked as the production co-ordinator at Emmedia just a few blocks away. “I had the keys and we moved the festival there that same night. Down the road to Emmedia.”
“We were running down the street, cash box in hand,” McQueen recalls, laughing. “We had that set up in 20 minutes and we had audience members help drive people over … That was one of my favourite memories. It really showed how tight-knit the community was.”
A decade later, CUFF is much more established. After a few years of screening films at Broken City, then The Plaza and now the Globe, the fest is one of the city’s most reliable annual events.
“For the first few years, I’d say there was a year-to-year feel where you’re flying by the seat of your pants a little bit,” Eyck says. “Then as you become more established, patterns come into place for how to do it and how to accomplish the various aspects you need, whether it’s the programming or the sponsorships. Now I think the festival is well established in Calgary and we can talk about future plans and how we see the growth. It’s definitely on solid footing now.”
That’s not to say they’ve lost that sense of chaos, however — it’s just over a week before the fest when I talk to Lieberman, and she’s still trying to secure more guests.
“I’m trying to convince one of the actors to come with Big Ass Spider,” she admits, referring to the arachnophobic thriller that kicks off the week of programming. “At the last minute, everything feels like 75 per cent of the way there. Now I’m just filling in all the lineups.”
Once it finally gets going on Monday April 15, Lieberman will be able to exhale and enjoy herself a little bit. “I enjoy it when it’s going on,” she says, quickly adding, “I don’t watch any of the movies. I watch them to a point to see how the audience is reacting, but other than that I’m trying to make sure that everything’s running. We’ve got some good hands at the festival, so I also don’t want to micromanage that.”
Those good hands include a small army of volunteers, which, if you ask any festival organizer, is an invaluable asset. “It’s primarily run by people with a passion for the material that’s being presented to the public,” Eyck explains. “We’ve had some pretty dedicated volunteers over the years. As you grow, it takes more and more effort to put on a festival. More people are needed. We put a lot of effort into the films.”
In a broader sense, the film world is often lumped in with music as an industry crippled by the heartless immoral beast known as illegal file sharing. Even on a local scale, we’ve seen struggling independent rental shops boarded up while art-house cinemas close their doors or stick to second-run releases in an effort to stay alive.
Incredibly, CUFF has faced an entirely different fate. A decade in, they’ve yet to have a bad
year, with each festival more successful than the last. Take 2011 as a perfect example — sure, Calgary saw the closure of Bird Dog Video and, later, The Uptown. On the flip side, however, CUFF’s attendance increased by 100 per cent.
They’re one of the last sources to offer both brave new films and a chance for an outing.
Sure you could torrent Werner Herzog’s entire filmography in your underwear with little fear of consequence, but that icy, nihilistic narration will sound a lot better if you’re sipping some beers with a theatre full of film nuts.
“You can sit at home and watch Game of Thrones, but more and more our demographics like their outings,” says Lieberman. And the CUFF organizers do their best to make each screening feel special, hiring DJs and serving booze at the screenings while often hosting themed after-parties at various venues.
As public interest for film increases, CUFF has become an integral source for those curious about the new and weird. “People who love foreign film or independent cinema, they like when somebody picks it for them, in one way, because they find it kind of daunting to look it up on the Internet and find out what to see,” says Lieberman. “Also now that the video stores are closing and there are less art house screens, they don’t know where to find these movies … The festivals are really good because now they don’t have to do any work. They can just come and have fun. The energy of the festival is amazing.” …
Like all good programmers, Lieberman’s driven by the thrill of curation. “I love watching the movies but I more love finding the movies that the audiences like,” she says. “As a programmer, it becomes less about me and more about them. I think that’s what keeps me excited and passionate … It’s a bit of a high you get.”
Though it started as some sort of reaction to the programming at CIFF, CUFF has grown up to the point where it holds as much cultural clout as its forebear. Add the fact that culture writ large has undergone an indie obsession that means most films could reasonably play at either fest and one might expect a little friction between the two entities. Instead, they’ve learned to complement one another.
“We work really closely together and some of us, including myself, work there,” Lieberman says of the CIFF/CUFF divide. “I love being in the opposite time of year than the other festival because often we have opportunities, between the festivals, to show more films. The advantage that I have of working at both is that my finger’s on the pulse of these films all year round.”
That dedication to teamwork is most likely the key to CUFF’s 10 years of success.
The recession is coming! The recession is coming! Just don’t ask the economists when.
This ever-imminent recession reminds me of the steamroller scene from the first Austin Powers movie. A petrified security guard stands screaming for minutes as a steamroller slowly moves closer and crushes him. The security guard is the Canadian worker and Austin Powers, feebly yelling and waving while driving the steamroller, represents Canada’s political and economic leaders.
Calgary has an unemployment rate over six per cent with long lineups at job fairs. We also have a shrinking workforce and employers desperate to fill vacancies. Meanwhile, only four out of ten unemployed workers collect Employment Insurance benefits in any given month, the lowest total since the employment safety net began in the 1940s.
The disconnects in Canada’s labour market are glaring. Years of federal and provincial strategies that focus on jobs, not workers, have made these disconnects bigger and harder to fix both during the coming recession and afterwards as the fundamental changes to work we are already seeing become reinforced.
The Federal government is nearing the end of a long process, two years and counting, to update the Employment Insurance program. It will not be ready when the recession hits and is unlikely to provide the help workers need in a shifting job market. Alberta is having an election this spring, but any discussion about worker strategies will be lost, along with health care and education policy, among the banal, poll-nudging insults and talking points that pass for campaigning.
Worker strategies are not easy. Effective ones are not one size fits all, media-friendly, nor are they based on an out-dated, 20th century ideology such as free markets or socialism. They most often revolve around the hated “T”-word, transition.
There is the transition for youth finishing school and trying to enter a workforce where employers demand applicants be job ready. There is the transition for mid-career millennials to upskill or pay for housing (can’t do both these days) in the valuable job markets of Canada’s largest and most unaffordable cities. The elephant in the room is the transition of immigrants and refugees into the Canada’s shrinking workforce.
All need affordable housing and programs that encourage employees and employers to invest in training for existing instead of
potential employees. Hire and train makes job creation more expensive for businesses which is where the government should help. The opposite, train and then maybe find a job, costs workers, governments, and the economy so much more.
There is also a non-transition happening where older workers just keep working. Calgary’s overall participation rate (people older than 15 working or looking for work) has gone down from 76 per cent in 2007 to 67 per cent, but the participation rate for people over 55 has gone up to 47 per cent, more than double the Canadian rate. The governments’ failures have made a lie of Freedom 55.
Finally, there are people who work the crap jobs. The people who had to show up to work to keep Canada going through Covid. No surprise, they often quit their crap job to take some other crap job. Yet, this human response
to crap, that in a neo-liberal’s dream world creates market-efficiencies, is punished by our EI system. If you quit your crap job, no matter what the reason, there is no EI support while you look for a better job. If there was, job-cre-
ators might be forced to create better jobs. When the recession arrives, Canada’s workers will suffer, our leaders will wring their hands and do a bit of yelling, and we will all keep slowly rolling along in the dark.
By Darren Krause
One woman was in custody, while another in Calgary hospital in life-threatening condition after a fight at the Lions Park LRT station on the evening of March 28.
The latest incident prompted a stern rebuke from Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek on the following Wednesday afternoon.
Calgary police were called to the Lions Park LRT station around 8 p.m. on the Tuesday after reports of an assault involving a weapon.
Police said the District Operations Team was in the area and was able to immediately respond.
When they arrived, there was a fight underway between several women. Two had suffered stab wounds, police said. One of the women was transported to hospital in life-threatening condition, according to police. Two others were taken to hospital and later released.
According to police, the women were known to each other, and it was not considered a random attack.
“Public spaces need to be safe for the public and this type of violent behaviour will
not be tolerated,” said Calgary Police Service Superintendent Cliff O’Brien.
“Together with our partners at Calgary Transit, we have employed copious resources along our train lines and nearby communities to ensure those who need support are receiving it, while at the same time, ensuring those who would prey on the vulnerable or act in a dangerous manner are held to account.”
One woman is in custody and charges are pending, police said.
Transit safety remains an issue; the mayor expects immediate action Recently, transit safety has stubbornly stayed in the spotlight.
A few weeks prior, Ward 14 Coun. Peter Demong said he was frustrated by provincial inaction on root cause issues as two people were stabbed at the 4 Street S.W. LRT station.
It’s not the first time Lions Park LRT has been in the news. The station was brought up after Ward 7 Coun. Terry Wong toured the area almost one year ago to the day. There, he uncovered vandalism, graffiti and drug paraphernalia that required substantial cleanup.
Since the start of the pandemic, incidents like these have become all too frequent as Calgary Transit tries to woo riders back. Earlier this year, however, Calgary Transit did boast that ridership is growing at a faster rate than they expected.
This latest incident drew the ire of Mayor Gondek. She said transit violence is a problem across Canada and Calgary’s no exception.
“I have made it clear to Administration that I expect immediate action and additional resources to be deployed,” she said.
“We cannot wait for the next tragedy to occur before something more is done. As a municipal government, we must provide better transit safety for Calgarians.”
The City of Calgary has invested in more transit peace officers. A couple of classes have graduated in recent months. Twelve Alberta Sheriffs were also added in a 12-week pilot. In one of the more recent moves, City of Calgary corporate security was added to the mix.
“The reality is, the pandemic had a major impact on our transit system. With ridership numbers down due to people being at home, the system became a target for illegal activity,” the mayor said.
“Whether it is workers returning to the office, students heading to school or seniors travelling to a medical appointment, all Calgarians deserve a safe and dependable transit service. Increased ridership alone is not enough to stem the tide of violence we are seeing.”
"We cannot wait for the next tragedy to occur before something more is done," the mayor said
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Vicki Hall never saw herself as a trailblazer.
In a world of sports journalism that didn’t feature much balance among the sexes more than two decades ago, Hall’s mindset was very much aligned with the athletes she was covering.
She remained in the moment, doing her best to perform at a high standard every day.
“I tried not to think about it as being the only woman. I tried to think about is doing a great job,” Hall says, reflecting on the recent announcement that she would be the first woman inducted into the Canadian Football League Hall of Fame in the media category later this year.
It’s a bit cliché, which may be ironic considering Hall has done her best to avoid those for 22 years in an industry littered with them.
“I’m extremely honoured,” Hall adds. “I didn’t think about being the first female when I was told. It didn’t really occur to me until the announcement was made and I started seeing people on social media saying this is the first woman. That’s when I started to realize it had significance — hopefully for people who are coming up in the industry now.”
Times have certainly changed, both in the CFL, pro sports and sports media at large. Women are much more prominent in print and on screens. On the teams, too.
“There are more women around the game than ever now. There are female officials, women are breaking into coaching” Hall notes. “There are more women in the National Hockey League who’ve broken into senior management, but there are women in the Canadian Football League.”
There were women in the industry before Hall. But her ability to captivate an audience through her storytelling led to successful forays into the NHL and the Olympics, in addition to the CFL scribbling that continued with CBC even after she left the beat to be a parent.
As someone who covered the Calgary Flames alongside her for a number of years, at home and on the road, I’ve seen first-hand some of the additional obstacles she faced in locker rooms.
We’ve spoken about the added feelings of pressure she faced — especially as a young writer — knowing that her mistakes would be scrutinized more severely than those of her male colleagues.
When she first started covering the CFL — where she did stints with newspapers in Regina, Edmonton and Calgary — there wasn’t
even a women’s washroom in the press area in Montreal. She had to either request a lookout from a PR rep because there was no lock on the door, or go into the crowds and miss more game action that she was trying to cover.
“And I drank way too much coffee back then,” Hall says with a laugh. “So, it was a problem.”
None of that would deter her from the work, which connected her to a childhood passion for sports. Hall grew up in Alberta as a Calgary Flames fan but found herself in enemy territory when she was 10 after a move to Edmonton.
“That, to me, was the worst place in the world I could have moved because I didn’t like the Oilers at all,” says Hall, now a journalism instructor at SAIT, remembering the lengths she went to just to listen to games on the radio because of how infrequently there were on TV.
“By sitting in my dad’s 1973 Volkswagen Beetle in the garage, I could go in there in my winter coat and listen to the Flames games with Peter Maher. I wanted to call afterwards
to John Henderson and let them know my opinion.
“I loved sports.”
The CFL is returning that love with the Hall of Fame nomination, which will see her inducted alongside some of the legends she covered.
“To me, being the first woman in the Hall, I just want people like my niece to know that they can do whatever they want,” says Hall, whose 15-year-old niece plays tackle football in Manitoba. She also has an eight-year-old son who has extra needs with autism and is actively involved in hockey programs in Calgary.
“They don’t need to have artificial rules telling them that they can’t because of who they are.”
Steve Macfarlane is a sportswriter, journalist, digital media and communications professional with more than 20 years of experience, from hockey to health care. You can find him on Twitter at @MacfarlaneHKY and read his Calgary Flames coverage on calgaryhockeynow.com.
An
By Erika RavnsborgWhat if you can get whisked away into an enchanted world and have an adventure to remember? The Beauty and the Beast Cocktail Experience is giving Calgarians a chance to do just that until December 31.
Not just a beloved movie for Disney but also a longstanding fairy-tale novel written by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont.
What some people do not know is that this story is based on the real-life tale of Petrus Gonsalvus and his bride-to-be Catherine. He was a man who suffered from a condition called hypertrichosis where thick hair covers the face and body of a person. The funny thing is, this did not bother Catherine and the two of them lived happily together for the rest of their lives.
We loved the Alice in Wonderland experience, so it only seems natural to have another classic story come to life right before our eyes. The Beauty and the Beast. experience was such a hit in New York City in 2021, and now Calgary gets a chance to see this wonderful world unfold. Thanks to the good people at Hidden, who brought us The Alice Cocktail Experience, Neverland, and The Wizard’s Den, we have something very special in our own backyard.
For a short time, you can immerse yourself in the charmed world of a prince who is cursed to be a beast. All of Calgary is invited to a Victorian cocktail party where dressing up is strongly encouraged. After all, when you go into a captivated castle, should you not dress to impress?
This theatrical experience has elaborate cocktails and tasty treats for all to enjoy.
You start off with a welcome glass of prosecco that a couple of lovely French servants bring you. Follow that up with a drink concoction of your own choice. What you choose will depend upon what you want most in life, which could be wealth, love, lust or fame. A couple of sweet little cream-filled pastries just waiting to be gobbled up will be given to you. Finish this all up with a love potion that releases the beast from his terrible curse.
A mix of theatre and an escape room is what you can expect when you dive into this 90-minute veiled adventure. Whether you are looking for a family-friendly day to spend with some young loved ones or wanting to have a fun date night with your sweetie, a little magic is guaranteed.
What is more fantastic than a beautiful
fairy-tale setting where you mix up cocktails, solve riddles and enjoy making some new friends? This is especially true when you get some small treats, a sip of a love potion, and join some marvellous characters to save these magical people from such a terrible fate. They will help you to find the clues, get the ingredients needed for your cocktails, and unlock the mysteries of the castle. So, all is revealed when you experience this entrancing journey.
One thing that they do swear by though is not to overstay your welcome or take anything. Who knows what will happen if you do?
You might just take the curse with you. And who would want that to happen? So, make sure that when you visit this secret location (it’s given when you purchase your ticket) leave everything you saw it as is. Although I can not disclose where this event is, I can tell you that it was chosen because it has been used in the past for its versatility and accessibility.
When real life gets you down, it is time to search for a little magic. Thanks to the talented theatrical team of Hidden we are given a creative story that reminds us of a “tale as
old as time.” It is also an original story for all to see that gives us an interactive experience. So do not wait too long to see this wonderful world of make-believe come to life right before your eyes. After all, time is ticking. Tickets to this fantastical fete cost $47 plus tax. Get your tickets online at explorehidden. com/event/details/beauty-and-the-beastcocktail-experience-calgary-1554304.
immersive way to live your own fairy tale
When real life gets you down, it is time to search for a little magic.
By Don Tse
“I think there is definitely some sort of social link between beer and pizza being so welcoming to all,” says Benjamin Leon, co-founder of Dandy Brewing Company (2003 11 St. S.E.; thedandybrewingcompany.com). “There is a beer for everyone. There is a pizza for everyone.”
Dandy recently unveiled new branding and revamped its tasting room menu. New York-style pizza is the focus now. “Giant hand-stretched pies with a crispy thin base and soft, chewy crust. Big slices to fold up and scarf down. Simple but exciting toppings,” says Leon.
“Our pizza philosophy is really similar to our beer philosophy. We take a simple process, dial it in, and make sure we source the best ingredients,” says Leon. “We use Alberta-grown and milled flour, as well as cold-press Alberta canola oil in place of olive oil. Much like our beer, we’re able to find some of the highest-quality pizza ingredients in our
own (proverbial) backyard.”
Of course, beer and pizza is not a novel concept. An argument can be made that it is one of the greatest food and beverage pairings of all time.
“I think that pizza and beer go so well together because they are both things that are best shared with family and friends. It’s great to go to a taproom with tasty beer and pizza with a bunch of people so that everyone can enjoy a variety of different pizza flavours with different styles of beer to go with it,” says Colin Metcalfe, head chef of Portland Street Pizza located in ‘88 Brewing (#1070 - 2600 Portland St. S.E.; eightyeightbrewing.ca).
The ‘za at ‘88 is Sicilian-style. “This means our pizza crust is very similar to a loaf of focaccia bread, having a very light crumb while getting a very crispy outside crust,” explains Metcalfe. “We top our pizzas on the lighter side so even though our pizza looks like it will be heavy, a lot of people really like how light it is …”
Dandy and ‘88 have recently been joined by Acme Pizza and Two House Brewing (1901 10 Ave. S.W.; twohousebrew.com) forming a triangle (or, if you will, a pizza slice) of brewery pizzerias. The pizza at Two House is contemporary, with interesting pies like Chicken Alfredo and La Koreana (which includes kimchi), and classic Italian staples like Margherita and Funghi.
For those wanting a closer connection between their beer and pizza, Half Hitch Brewing of Cochrane has five Calgary locations of The Mash (masheats.ca), which serves pizza on crusts made from spent grain.
The great thing about both beer and pizza is the broad variety of flavours available. For those who freeze in the face of too much choice, Leon’s favourite is the Dandy White Pizza (ricotta, parmesan, cracked black pepper, garlic and lemon); Metcalfe says the ‘88 Magnum P.I.E. (Calabrian salami, pancetta, pineapple, mozzarella, pickled chillies, dried chillies and tomato jam) is enjoyed by
everyone; Ty Hinton, general manager of Two House Brewing, describes his favourite, Gamberetti al Pesto (arugula pesto, mozzarella, garlic prawns, bacon, confit tomato, feta, chili flakes), with the appropriately simple “so good!”; and Chris Heier, president and brewmaster of Half Hitch says his favourite, with no hesitation, is the Wild Mushroom.
Don Tse has sampled over 26,000 different beers. He is the Official Beer Taster for Craft Beer Importers Canada Inc. and Far Out Exporters Inc. which work with many of Alberta’s breweries. It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it.
By Mary-Lynn Wardle
When PEI-born songwriter Tara MacLean, who now splits her time between there and Salt Spring Island, was approached to write a book about her life, it might have been tempting to armour up. After all, MacLean’s story is punctuated by growing up in extreme poverty including bare kitchen cupboards, yearning for an absent father, living with a mother who struggled with alcoholism, being sexually abused by family and family acquaintances alike, suddenly losing a cherished sibling, the demise of two marriages, and living with the perverse sexism that dominated the music industry for decades. There were also extreme body image issues which included surgery and bulimia, and finding family 5000 kilometres from where her birth family lived.
But in order to write Song of the Sparrow, which was released in March and debuted at #6 on the Toronto Star’s Best Selling Books in Canada List, MacLean eschewed her armour. “I’d say I did the opposite of steel myself; I just took off all my armour. I said if I’m going to tell this story and it’s a story that could maybe resonate with other people, I’m going to have to be really raw about it,” MacLean says from her Salt Spring Island home.
Her meditation practice, therapist, and supportive family — notably her mother who is in recovery — anchored her, especially considering her 17-year-long second marriage had just crashed. “You know when you go through a divorce, you’re kind of flung out into the world.”
And raw it is, with passages so disturbing the reader will wish they could reach their hands into the pages and cradle the children involved. Even the process of writing itself became a kind of guardian to MacLean. “You have to kind of just say ‘OK, like, I’m on my own in this and I have to I have to dive really deep’ so in order to take care of myself when those moments would come when I was really, really raw and really exposed I would just write. It’s almost like the page became what wrapped me up and kept me safe. Swaddled me, you know, the words, the sentences just kind of wrapped around me and I let, for lack of a better word, the truth of my story be the thing that kept me safe.”
And for all the darkness, in there is an invincible light. Not only is the story the stuff that keeps readers up past midnight to devour just one more chapter, but the turns of phrase and matters of choice regarding foreshadowing, imagery, and that which is revealed belie the fact this is MacLean’s first book. “That was brand new discovery. I had a feeling that
I wanted to write a book someday; it was always on my bucket list.
“This came about because of an essay I wrote about women and the music industry and body image and I’d just posted it on Facebook and a literary agent saw it, Carolyn Forde, and she said, ‘You know, I think you should probably consider writing a book.’ ”
While the process took two years following the dissolution of her marriage, it was familiar to the writer. “It just felt like the right time to dive into something deep and excavate my old stories and try and figure out why I am the
way I am.” Working with her editor Jennifer Lambert offered the serendipity that had been scarce in her youth. “She was amazing and so tender with the very delicate content. She coaxed me into spreading my wings and taking up the space and allowing myself to just unfold word by word this kind of new way of expressing myself. It was really fun and it didn’t feel that much different than writing a song really.”
When she writes about early childhood in the 1970s, living in a cabin with no running water in the PEI woods, wandering the forest with her sister and being in touch with each ray of sunshine and drop of rain, the tale is enchanting, flooded with love, light, and, especially, the presence of music which was to become her life’s purpose. While chaos abounds, MacLean captures a child’s perspective with authenticity, including the feeling of
being loved and safe, even though, as children always know where they are in the pecking order, she recognizes that other families have things she doesn’t, like secure housing, ample food, and routines. There is a child’s complete acceptance of how her parents chose to live. That grace, and the ability to write sympathetically even about the story’s predators, captures the reader.
“I think (my parents) chose it. They really didn’t want to be part of society and that conservative way of life that was happening. They were such hippies, you know, living off grid and seeing if life would provide and living on that edge.
“We never had extra tucked away in case of emergencies; it was all faith. And when you have kids, like, I wouldn’t do that, but there was a real beauty. It was also the time, coming out of the ’60s and early ’70s, when you had
free love. I think that they knew they were in the chaos but they wanted to be in the chaos. I think they were breaking into the chaos on purpose and I’m really grateful they did. She continues. “My mom came from that military background, you know, her father being a sergeant major, and everything was set. She had to practice the piano for 45 minutes, from this time to this time, and (make) hospital corners on the bed. Everything was so specific and regimented, so I think of her, meeting my dad and the freedom of just being able to live in a little cabin and have the earth be the ground you walk on. I think that was a really healthy choice for her at the time, to break out of the confines of the army brat life she grew up in.”
Partway through the book, MacLean experiences a kind of through-the-lookingglass moment when she bolts from her family to join newfound family she’s never met in Victoria. As teachers, their homes are orderly and stable, the cupboards are stocked with ample food, her school life is stable, and she is even enrolled in dance lessons. No predators lurk among the rooms. It is a time of beautiful reprieve from the chaotic ups and downs of her journey to date, one that the author notes was important to her journey. “The match of the wildness and the music and the chaos in my early life and then landing in this solid place allowed me to still be creative and wild and also functional.”
One of the most fascinating aspects of the story is the cornucopia of juxtaposition. While the family is clutched by poverty, a 10-year-old MacLean ends up with her father living on a boat in the Caribbean, feeding flour paste to exotic fish and thriving in the sun. As a young teen, she travels to the United Kingdom and France, later working with her mother in London for a spell, a European adventure you’d not expect for a family who could barely find food some months. And then, after MacLean is signed to a record label, there are gorgeous clothes, hair and makeup, expensive video shoots, world travel, and time spent in the company of Sarah McLachlan, Bryan Adams,
and other music royalty.
“One time I wrote a poem and I can’t remember it exactly, but it was basically, you know, I’ve stood in line at you know the food bank and I’ve eaten at the finest restaurants in the world. I’ve had to jump start my car and I’ve ridden in limousines. I’ve had the gamut. I’ve had photo shoots with some of the finest photographers in the world and I’ve had my mug shot taken because I stole something from a shop when I was a kid – I don’t think that’s in the book.
“I feel really lucky to have lived this incredible life where I’ve had nothing, I’ve had everything, and it’s made me really realize what actually matters, because when I was a child, I had the richness of music and love. And when I had everything being handed to me, I had music and I had love. And so long as I have music and I have love, nothing else matters. That’s everything.”
Music, indeed, deepens the complexity of the story as MacLean ties songs she wrote to life events that were happening. An accompanying album, Sparrow, collects these songs as a soundtrack to the book.
While MacLean can cross writing a book off her bucket list, she has one further wish for it.
“One of my dreams for this book is that it will be used in classroom settings, that it will be used in sexual assault centres. We’re already sending books out to the sexual assault centres across Canada to get into the hands of the counsellors so they can determine whether this book would be helpful for certain survivors. In terms of maybe helping them bridge to that next part of recognizing they can thrive because of what happened, not in spite of what happened. Yes, all these things can happen to you, and you can still have an incredible, amazing, beautiful, healthy, productive, successful life.”
Wordfest presents Tara MacLean April 5 at the Memorial Park Library, with a special musical performance and conversation hosted by Wordfest’s CEO and Creative Ringleader Shelley Youngblut. It will be followed by an audience Q&A and book signing hosted
“I feel really lucky to have lived this incredible life where I’ve had nothing, I’ve had everything, and it’s made me really realize what actually matters, because when I was a child, I had the richness of music and love. And when I had everything being handed to me, I had music and I had love. And so long as I have music and I have love, nothing else matters. That’s everything.”
TARA MACLEAN
Journalist David Farrier (TICKLED) is drawn into a game of cat and mouse with a mysterious individual. Delving deeper he unearths a trail of court cases, royal bloodlines and ruined lives, in this true story of psychological warfare.
The inside story of the 1990s psychedelic rock bands Olivia Tremor Control, Neutral Milk Hotel, and The Apples in Stereo: the founding groups behind the Elephant 6 collective.
The story of the creative geniuses behind the iconic album art design studio, Hipgnosis, responsible for some of the most recognizable album covers of all time.
British Invasion icons The Zombies reflect on their musical path from teenage friends to legends in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
When an internet vigilante develops a revolutionary new computer program to combat online predators, its rapid advancement leads to serious questions of autonomy, oppression, and what it really means to be human.
While struggling on a solo backpacking trip in Thailand, social media influencer Madison meets CW, who travels with ease and shows her a more uninhibited way of living, but CW’s interest in her takes a darker turn.
The Canadian comedy sci-fi feature based on the TIFF selected short of the same name, follows Casper (Rhys Darby, FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS), a charming, but embarrassingly underprepared Time Traveller, now trapped in the past.
In the Fall of 2020, a financially struggling actor camps and explores early Mormon historical sites as he anxiously awaits national broadcast for his Domino’s Pizza commercial.
Fledgling occultist Onyx and a group of worshipers attend a once-in-a-lifetime ritual at their idol BARTOK THE GREAT’S mansion.
Follow modern-day cinephile and filmmaker, David Redmon, on a quest to track down the massive video collection of the nowdefunct Kim’s Video, an iconic NYC video rental store with more than 55,000 beloved and rare movies.
In the not-too-distant future, the last two men on earth must adapt and evolve to save humanity. Starring Mark Duplass and Sterling K. Brown.
A single mother and a childless morgue technician are bound together by their relationship to a little girl they have reanimated from the dead.
Approaching the end of his twenties, a man impulsively decides to quit his cushy desk job and “embrace life”, only to realize he doesn’t have one. Starring Colin Burgess.
Joe Pickett (The Onion) and Nick Prueher (The Colbert Report) are back with an allnew guided tour through their latest VHS finds. This is a live-event!
The subjects of these shorts are anything but conventional as they blaze their own paths.
Based on the true story of Roger Sharpe, a young midwesterner who overturned New York City’s 35 year-old ban on pinball machines.
BLACKBERRY tells the story of Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel) and Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton), the two men that charted the course of the spectacular rise and catastrophic demise of the world’s first smartphone.
When an ex-soldier who discovers gold in the Lapland wilderness tries to take the loot into the city, Nazi soldiers led by a brutal SS officer battle him in this highlyanticipated B-movie.
o Calgary, no The Kids in the Hall. Whether you’re a casual KITH fan, fond of head crushing and chicken ladies, or the kind of obsessive who can identify Bruce McCulloch’s Bass Player instrument from Episode 16 as an early 1970s Hofner 500/1, it’s Calgary you should thank for the laughs.
Or at the very least, you can credit this city (good and bad) for two-fifths of Canada’s most cutting-edge comedy achievement to date. Without Calgary’s ease of access to the live stage, McCulloch and fellow sketch artist Mark McKinney would have almost certainly missed their calling.
“Calgary was a great city for me – it was a perfect place to go, to start up, and Loose Moose was the perfect theatre company,” says McKinney.
“If it wasn’t for Calgary I don’t think I’d have the happy career that I’ve had.”
Loose Moose is where the misfit, would-be gagsters germinated into comedy insurrectionists, ignoring direction and pushing the same humour boundaries that’s made The Kids in the Hall so vital, up to and including eight new episodes released on Amazon Prime last year.
Calgary, past and present,
has lately loomed large for both McCulloch and McKinney.
Last month, Loose Moose founder Keith Johnstone passed away, leaving McCulloch and McKinney with a mentor-sized hole in their lives. Then, as both former students were busy reflecting on the improv pioneer, it was announced all five members of The Kids in the Hall would be reuniting at the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo.
On April 28, McCulloch and McKinney will join Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald and Scott Thompson at Calgary Expo 2023 for a ticketed, 75-minute show featuring “songs, sketches and true stories,” and the five will also be on hand April 28 and 29 for photo-ops and autograph sessions.
Despite never really embracing improv in the way their mentor Johnstone would have liked, the Calgary Kids say the show at Stampede Park (their second fan convention after a Toronto event last summer) will largely be an organic, see-what-happens affair.
“We so enjoyed doing it in Toronto, and to
vacuum until we can actually get together to do true live shows and tours.”
Basically it’s improv with audience questions as prompts – and McCulloch says that from the show to autographs and photos, they’re thrilled to embrace even the most obsessive, Hofner bass-level discussions (and as a footnote, the bass was his dad’s, and McCulloch really can play it).
“It’s great, and you might call them obsessive, but I mean all of our fans are on the spectrum, as are we, and so they’re very complicated people. It’s so great to have even a minute with them,” says McCulloch.
“It’s enjoyable to meet people who care and who are like us – of course the lineup for the guy from Stranger Things, or something like that, is around the block and it’s not necessarily that way for us …”
McKinney agrees, suggesting that fans of KITH are a bit less intense than those who flock around popular science fiction and fantasy shows.
“Sketch comedy doesn’t attract the same kind of minutia as Batman or scifi, or shows where there’s a military element – ‘that was the wrong button for that regiment’ – kind of thing,” says McKinney.
“We really do enjoy being with each other and especially when there isn’t an agenda, when we’re not in a Zoom meeting having to talk about this merch deal or something like that.”
McKinney agrees.
be quite frank, we weren’t sure we would – I’d never been myself to an expo or a comic-con, and it was shocking how fun it felt,” says McCulloch.
“We had a blast because we didn’t have the pressure of a real show and we could have fun with the fans in a way where we could be ourselves and be together, going from a Q&A into a bit of a crazy show. Our intention going forward is to do some more, and we’re doing it in the
“We have people who know some pretty deep cuts and fairly obscure scenes that are their favourites, but that’s more common in the sci-fi world. Our fans are the best though: we’re all outsiders, so there’s kind of an unspoken bonding that happens between us and our fans. We are us, they are them; we are they, they are we.”
As for the “we” that started in 1984 as a live comedy act at a small Toronto club, and both McCulloch and McKinney say that unlike certain aging rock bands who barely associate away from the spotlight, The Kids in the Hall still thrive as a unit.
“We enjoy each other’s company more than ever and it’s great to figure out ways and reasons to be together,” says McCulloch.
“We probably like each other more than the Rolling Stones, that’s fair to say,” he says. That mutual appreciation and attraction of life-long friendship may be the secret behind what could be one of the most successful reboot-revivals in showbiz history, the so-called “Season 6” now playing on Amazon Prime. While they’ve regularly worked together since the original series ended after five seasons in 1995, this is sacred ground: from the Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet opening guitar riff, to the black-and-white between-sketch clips, Season 6 is a purposeful rehash of the original show.
Except it isn’t a rehash, really. Instead of Greatest Hits and familiar characters, this is brand new material, on the same level as the iconic original. Fans and critics alike have praised the new season for being just as edgy, just as fresh and just as funny.
McKinney says a receptive audience is always welcome, but the Kids were feeling confident going in.
“You don’t want to have done this really great thing and then the last thing you leave is a fetid fart. I didn’t think there was a risk of that anyway, because we all had certain
“I’d never been myself to an expo or a comic-con, and it was shocking how fun it felt...” BRUCE MCCULLOCH.
”Our fans are the
best though: we’re all outsiders, so there’s kind of an unspoken bonding that happens between us and our fans. We are us, they are them; we are they, they are we.”
MARK MCKINNEY
sketches up our sleeves that we wanted to do, and enthusiastically so,” he explains.
“I’m glad that the creative way we come together, whatever that chemistry is, was uninterrupted. Naturally it was going to produce something similar, but we weren’t going to do like a million Head Crusher sketches.”
For McCulloch, having something new to say was a motivating factor to revisit the old formula.
“I think it’s important to put something into culture every so often, and times have changed obviously with the new kindness/ political correctness that’s sweeping the world,” he says.
“The comfort we have with ourselves perhaps translates into not trying – at least in my mind – to impersonate who we were 20 years ago.”
Indeed, these experienced, older Kids embrace the grey hair, wrinkles, and sagging bits as canon-redefining fodder for the new season, for which there are only the eight episodes planned.
“I think for us to make sense of and not hide from our age, and obviously so, as I wrote ‘60 on the Pole’ for our first episode,” says McCulloch, referencing the full-troupe sketch featuring the aging Kids as geriatric strippers.
“It’s embracing that we were the young Enfants Terribles and now we’re these sassy weird old guys.”
And like many folks of a certain age, McCul-
loch has a sentimental fondness for the place where he spent his youth and learned that sketch comedy was his future.
While McCulloch returns to Calgary frequently, he admits there’s extra excitement to be visiting his “second home” with the rest of The Kids in the Hall in tow.
“Calgary is still a very vibrant place to me, be it the art scene or great friends, and there’s lots of stuff there that’s really important to me that always refreshes,” says McCulloch.
“It’s also the place that I was a weird lost kid of 14 years old listening to T. Rex, so for me it’s a complicated place – but I love to be able to walk through a city that once chased me in a truck because I looked gay, that’s now transformed into this amazing city.”
By Michael PlattThe wad of cash spoke volumes.
It was 1984. Mark McKinney and Bruce McCulloch were preparing to leave Calgary for the risks, and potentially greater rewards, of Toronto’s comedy scene.
For the future Kids in the Hall, one of the more difficult goodbyes was with Keith Johnstone, a stage legend who basically invented modern improv, and the co-founder of both Loose Moose and Theatresports, where McCulloch and McKinney had cut their teeth.
“He gave us back the money we’d made,” says McCulloch.
“He saved up all the money we had made doing comedy and gave it to us. Nobody ever got paid doing Theatresports, and when we did our show (and we did it for about a year), when we left they said we’ve saved up all the money you made and here it is.”
That wad of cash, around $2,000, was all it took for McCulloch and McKinney to know they had Johnstone’s blessing – and that despite the occasional conflict in vision, he had their backs.
the culture of open stage encouraged by the University of Calgary drama teacher that made Johnstone and the Calgary scene so vital.
“With Loose Moose you could walk in off the street and take a class or two and then be on stage; not too much thinking … not a meritocracy. Everybody was just really friendly,” says McKinney.
Johnstone, who passed away last month in Calgary at the age of 90, had taught McCulloch and McKinney plenty and given them their first taste of stage success – but they’d also rejected many of his cues and pushed back against his advice and direction.
“We were not pure improvisers, and we wanted to use the art form just to catapult ourselves into whatever the fuck we wanted, which was the punk ethic,” recalls McCulloch.
So how would the great man respond to the rebellious pair leaving
“No one asked him to do that, and no one in show business gives away money when they don’t have to,” says McCulloch.
“I think that was his way of saying, ‘I know you guys are bigger than this town, or at least you think you are, and good luck.’ He was proud of us.”
Since Johnstone passed away on March 11, the tributes haven’t stopped. From Hollywood to the local stage, Johnstone’s influence was mighty.
For McCulloch and McKinney, it was more than just improv that made Johnstone great. It was also
“Half the people that were in the theatre weren’t really trying to pursue art track careers. Then you had this genius Keith Johnstone who ran everything, and all the people who wanted to be funny showed up there, so I met my drive there, my life’s drive there.”
English-born Johnstone, who moved to Calgary in 1971, refused to follow an exclusionary system, and from its opening show in 1977, Loose Moose was simply open to anyone willing to try.
“I’m not sure a place like that could have existed happily further east where the cities are older and the traditions are older,” says McKinney.
“There was definitely an element of spirit of the west in the whole Calgary experience.”
“It’s embracing that we were the young Enfants Terribles and now we’re these sassy weird old guys.”
BRUCE MCCULLOCH
After a successful return to the High Performance Rodeo this year, One Yellow Rabbit (OYR) continues the explosive energy this spring with an all-new musical.
The world premiere of Nightingale Alley takes to the stage this April 12-23 in the Big Secret Theatre, Arts Commons.
Previously workshopped to sold-out audiences, this musical is set to transform the theatre from its black box roots and harken back to the gas lamp streets at the dawn of capitalism.
Based largely on the humorous and biting lyrics of anonymous 19th century underground poets and minstrels; these lyrics are the echoes found in subversive flyers from the alleys of the era’s London marketplace. Over 200 hundred years old, they speak with a surprisingly modern view on the female perspective. On the clash of social values, heartache and despair, and the darker, more disquieting aspects of the emerging sexual
economy of street workers.
This highly anticipated show brings together a dream ensemble of strong intergenerational female voices including the award-winning Jamie Konchak, singer/actor/ composer Allison Lynch, One Yellow Rabbit’s own Denise Clarke and introducing emerging artist of OYR’s educational program the beautifulyoungartists, Grace Fedocrchuk. This performance will be the first time that the beautifulyoungartist joins the stage with her mentoring ensemble.
Fedorchuk was last seen during this year’s High Performance Rodeo to a sold-out audience as part of the beautifulyoungartists’ performance in the Yellow Cabaret Series which showcased local and emerging artists.
An emerging artist from Calgary, Grace studied at the University of Victoria where she received her BFA while embracing her surroundings in nature which she says, “In my art I’ve been exploring these important connections I hold with the earth. I also hope to
create and work on pieces that make me feel something. And hopefully elicit an emotional reaction from an audience as well.”
On her role in Nightingale Alley, Grace says, “What I love about this cast is that we all represent different ages and experiences. This piece will showcase a range of perspectives, experiences, and personalities. I’ll be the youngest performer, bringing to life a youthful character.”
“I started my performing journey as a singer and I’m very excited to get to sing on stage for an audience again. In this production it will be an extra meaningful reward to pay homage to the medium that brought me to where I am today.”
“With its unique blend of music, comedy and drama, this performance promises to be a one-of-a-kind experience that you won’t want to miss,” says director Blake Brooker. “We are thrilled to present this world premiere to Calgary audiences.”
Adds composer David Rhymer who is
reunited for this production with musician Jonathan Lewis: “Prepare for an unforgettable evening of music, laughter, and pure, unadulterated classic OYR,” promises Blake Brooker of this latest masterpiece. Nightingale Alley is directed by Brooker with music composed by David Rhymer and features performances from: Andy Curtis, Denise Clarke, Grace Fedorchuk, Jamie Konchak, Jonathan Lewis and Allison Lynch.
Nightingale Alley runs April 12-23 in the Big Secret Theatre in Arts Commons. Tickets are available at oyr.org and artscommons.ca.
on sale now.
By Mike Bell
This month, the Calgary Underground Film Festival celebrates its 20th anniversary with another succulent serving of cinema you won’t see anywhere else. Of course, they have the usual annual fest faves such as the 48-hour Movie Challenge, the Found Footage Festival and the Saturday Morning All-You-Can-Eat-Cereal Cartoon Party. But beyond that, the roster of weird and wondertaculous alternative films is yet another stroll through the odd and excellent.
Here are what should be some of the best.
Sisu, Saturday, April 22, Globe Cinema, 7:45 p.m. Make the world a better place. Punch a Nazi in the face. Or. Run him over with a tank. Or throw a landmine at him. Or stab him in the head. Whatevs. The idea of killing Nazis is something we need to embrace again. And the film Sisu promises to give us that cathartic experience in deliciously myriad John Wick-ian ways. Jesus. Watch the trailer and try not to get
a chub — male or female or other. It will be, presumably, the greatest Nazi-killing film we’ve all been asking for. and needing. Yes, Tarantino snuffed Herr Hitler with his Basterds, but this film is what I live for. This is, quite literally, the only film at CUFF I want and need to see. And you should want this, too.
Bad City, April 25 April, Globe Cinema, 9:15 p.m. Japanese gangster film? Yes, please. Director Tesh Guttikonda’s film is, “A deadly struggle for survival (which) unfolds between the Korean mafia and the yakuza in this high-action Japanese gangster film.” This seems good. One would assume for fans of The Raid and its exceptional sequel. Punchy, killy fun.
Little Richard: I Am Everything, April 22, Globe Cinema, 2:15 p.m.
The Canadian premiere of this doc, which tells the story of “the black queer origins of rock n’ roll.” Seriously, that’s some badassery right there. Go and celebrate.
The Wrath of Becky April 22 at 10:15 p.m., and April 27 at 9:30 p.m., Globe Cinema A sequel. A blood-soaked sequel. “Two years after she escaped a violent attack on her family, Becky attempts to rebuild her life in the care of an older woman … But when their home is broken into, and they are attacked by an extremist group known as the ‘Noble Men,’ Becky must return to her old ways to protect herself, her loved ones, and her country. A fresh approach to the action horror-comedy.” Always welcome.
Blackberry, April 2, Globe Cinema, 6 p.m. Miss it. As easily as most of of have adapted to the iPhone, there are many who miss the Canada-born Blackberry, what it provided as a communication delivery system. This film, which stars Jay Baruchel, tells the story of “the two men that charted the course of the spectacular rise and catastrophic demise of the world’s first smartphone.” Miss the QWERTY.
The man answering it is Quebec-born, Calgary-raised, Montreal-schooled director Guillaume Carlier, who also has ties to our filmmaking community through his training and participation with the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers.
His first documentary was called Calgary, Ugly, which premiered at the Calgary International Film Festival, and his first feature was last year’s Everybody Altogether Now, described as “an experimental series of vignettes about various odd characters in Calgary.”
The reason for this particular conversation, though, is to talk about a very much City of Saints-shot and -centric story that will have its world premiere at the Calgary Underground Film Festival.
Got it?
Doesn’t matter. Carlier, who’s back in ‘Berta now for the foreseeable future with his wife
there’s much that’s compelling about Gatti as a person and character, more than enough to keep an audience — fight fan or not — invested in his tale.
The story follows him from beginning to end to the aftermath: his upbringing as the child of an immigrant family in Canada; his rise up the boxing ranks in the late ’90s, early 2000s as a ferocious brawler built off of legendarily bloody bouts including a trilogy of classic battles with Micky Ward (the subject of the Mark Wahlberg/Christian Bale/Amy Adams film The Fighter); and finally his sudden death in Brazil, which was ultimately ruled a suicide but which many to this day have questions about.
More specifically, the role his Brazilian wife and mother of his second child may or may not have played in it.
Begging the question: Would the director call this a murder mystery?
“Ah, yeah, ah, yeah,” Carlier says carefully and pauses. “Now that I’ve gone through this process it’s not so mysterious to me what happened. There still are some question marks,
and child while working on a pair of new projects, is promoting his episodic documentary, Thunder: The Life and Death of Arturo Gatti, which will screen as part of this year’s CUFF, running April 20-30.
The doc in three parts is a fascinating, superbly shot, sourced and researched telling of the story of Montreal boxer Arturo Gatti — a beloved folk hero in that city — and the story surrounding his death in 2009 at the age of 37.
Over the course of the trio of hour-pluslong episodes — all three will be screened at the festival with an intermission after one — we learn the “messy story” of Gatti through archival footage, interviews with friends admirers, boxing insiders and the mother of his first child.
That said, it’s not entirely a boxing story, as
of course, but for people who don’t know the story, yeah, it’s going to be very mysterious.”
He later continues. “Basically, this is the soundbite I’m giving to the media: I’m not saying that she did it, but I am saying that he did not commit suicide. And the only other way he could have died is by homicide.
And it seems to me that it was an orchestrated event. Whatever had to happen in order for Arturo to be killed needed an orchestration of different people, many people.”
Before the April 29 premiere at the Globe Cinema and before it begins streaming on SuperChannel in May, we dug a little deeper into the story with Carlier, keeping any real spoilers out of the conversation.
Q: Take me back to the very beginnings of this one. You said it has taken you three years to complete it, but what was the beginning?
It’s not entirely a boxing story, as there’s much that’s compelling about Gatti as a person and character, more than enough to keep an audience — fight fan or not — invested in his tale.PHOTO: MARIA ISABELLE WARREN. WWW.PEXELS.COM
What sent you down this path?
A: Well, we can even go back to when Arturo died. So, I’m from Montreal, we moved (to Calgary) in ’97, and then I went back to Montreal in 2007, and Arturo died in 2009. I was actually just walking down the street, I think I was in second year of university, and I was just walking down the street and there were all of these people pouring out of this church, wearing black, a funeral procession, and people weeping in the streets. I was like, “Whoa, who died?” It looked like Celine Dion had died. And I didn’t know who Arturo was at the time, so I looked it up when I got home and … just reading about his death and appreciating what he meant to Montreal, it resonated with me. And I was getting into boxing at that time — at that time, too, Manny Pacquiao was rising, so it was a good time to get into boxing.
I didn’t know I was going to get into film when I was at university, so a few years later, I met the producer of Thunder, Alex Orlando. In 2017 we were working on a TV show, and him and I had shared this car ride one day and started talking about other things. Him being from Montreal and he’s from the Italian community we started talking about Arturo, and we were like, “You know what, what the fuck happened?” In 2017, it was still very much like, “Well, I guess nothing happened.” It just felt like nothing happened and it was really weird to us … It felt like a slap in the face to Montreal because he was basically a saint in Montreal.
So we started talking about it and getting the idea together and then things didn’t really start happening until I met Adam Scorgie, he’s a producer here in Alberta, he specializes in documentaries and sports documentaries. So once we started three years ago, we were able to get it financed, we were able to get the people together and it took off from there.
Q: You joked about it being Celine Dion’s funeral, but that’s not too far from the truth, because he was such an incredible figure who loomed large, there was a great pride in him, not just in the boxing community, but the community in general. Knowing all of that, did you feel like an outsider coming at it, or did you feel you had enough distance to properly tell the story?
A: In Montreal, it’s like they got rid of Catholicism, but replaced it with sports. So Arturo, he’s like Saint Arturo. It’s the same with artists. Montreal is very good at venerating its icons. So, in that sense, I can’t say I’m an outsider, from a Montreal perspective. But once the project got started and I started to appreciate the Italian community, I was like, “Yeah, I am an outsider here.” Arturo means something a little extra to the Italian community in Montreal, so we really had to treat it very, very respectfully.
Q: It being the boxing world and a world of egos and self-mythologizing, it must have been tough for you to wade through all of that to get what you did, to get as much truth and honesty as you did. Was it tough for you to
navigate that world?
A: I wouldn’t say that it was tough. It’s not that people were throwing obstacles in the way. It’s very much a, I don’t know how to put this, it’s very much like an alpha world. And you have to step up … You have to come prepared. At the same time, too, my producers Alex and Adam, their experience is in that world. They actually train in boxing, Alex comes from a very colourful background, and Adam is coming off hot on the heels of the Danny Trejo documentary (2019’s Inmate #1: The Rise of Danny Trejo), so it was a team effort to approach this respectfully and at the same time rise up to the subject. Because another thing, too, a lot of true crime people, quote, unquote, wanted to touch this story and I think the community was hesitant about allowing just anybody to talk about it. You had to show that you knew a lot about Arturo’s career and you knew a lot about his life, and that you had been talking to the right people. There was a lot of vetting.
Q: You talk about the world as very alpha, and I will say that is the one thing that bothered me about about the film, was the belief that since in the ring he never gave up, he would never “give up” in life. Just the use of that phrase when we’re talking suicide, I found it a little off putting.
A: Yeah, I’m right there with you. I would kind of roll my eyes when they would say it over and over again. And yet at the same time I had to kind of check myself, too, where I was like, I didn’t know Arturo, these guys knew Arturo. And if I was to die I would want my friends and family to tell people who I was.
Q: Other than talking to his family or his wife, were there people you wanted to get to that you couldn’t?
A: Well, yes, like you say, we wanted to talk to the family. There’s actually an interesting story behind that. I had been talking to the family through intermediaries, and they were very respectful, very positive conversations, but everyone had explained to me that, like, “You seem like a nice guy, I appreciate that you want to do this for Arturo, but we’ve been burned too many times now by the media, and we just don’t want to go down that road any more.”
That was something that I had to sort of wrap my head around, is that CBC, CBS and Discovery Channel had each done a piece on Arturo, and they always seemed to either go with the suicide angle or they would do a non-committal position, where they’d be like,
“Well, it’s very mysterious. All we know for sure that a little boy is not going to have his father.” And they would very deliberately not talk about the same forensic evidence that I talked about. And I don’t know why, that’s still a mystery, I don’t know why CBC and CBS didn’t talk about this stuff.
Q: What do you hope comes from it?
A: You know, listen, I knew if I was going to wade into this pool that I was going to walk into something very intense. I think that it’s impossible to talk about Arturo Gatti and bringing new material to light without anticipating some kind of reaction, so I’m bracing myself for a reaction. But I think that our material is solid, everything has been sourced and fact-checked and double-checked by our lawyers so we’re very well protected.
I guess there’s two answers to this question: there’s an emotional one and there’s just a logical one. The logical one being that I hope
that this documentary when it comes out corrects the narrative that’s out there now, because if you just talk to people or go online and talk about Arturo, everyone knows that his death was suspicious and the suicide angle is not very probable. The problem, though, is that in the mainstream media — so Discovery Channel, CBS, CBC — they don’t have that angle. And if you go and rewatch Fifth Estate or 48 Hours you’ll see that they overlook a lot of things that we are bringing to light. And by the way, CBS and CBC had the same materials as us. I don’t know why they chose not to talk about it … My other hope for how this documentary is going to be received is the emotional one. And I’ve been going back and forth on like, who am I to tell this story? Yes, I make documentaries, but do I have a special claim to this story? To be honest, the answer is no, I don’t have any special claim. But my perspective is one of a fan, and as a fan of Arturo and as a fan of boxing and a believer in truth, I believe that was done to Arturo is not only an insult to his name and his family, but it was also an attack on common sense, you know? It seems so unresolved that people were just willing to sit with that, it just seems so wrong to me that that could happen.
Thunder: The Life and Death of Arturo Gatti screens Saturday, April 29 at 4:30 p.m. at the| Globe Cinema (upstairs) as part of the Calgary Underground Film Festival.
”I believe that was done to Arturo is not only an insult to his name and his family, but it was also an attack on common sense...”
GUILLAUME CARLIER
It’s a term that’s almost as obnoxious as the people who use it to describe themselves. Influencer.
Jesus H it’s a smug, self-satisfied little prick of a descriptor, isn’t it?
It’s also the title and sorta subject matter of Calgary director Kurtis David Harder’s latest film.
Thankfully, though, the picture is not entirely a fawning take on the preening, picture-perfect simps clogging up your feeds with their shilling shots of things and places, but rather a dark, Hitchcockian, Shakespearean, travelogue, horror-thriller and social commentary that plunges an online influencer into great peril.
See, you’re excited now, aren’t you? Excited by that prospect.
Which makes the first question for Harder less an ask than an ask for an admission.
The entire idea for the film came out of your fantasy of physically and mentally torturing someone who calls themselves an influencer, wasn’t it? Of course he hates them. He laughs. “I don’t at all.
“It’s definitely a tricky subject,” he con-
tinues. “I hate the idea that we’re kind of drawn to the narcissistic stuff of it, like looking for attention, but in terms of the people, a big thing for us was a ‘hate the game not the player’ sort of thing.
“In terms of the character Madison, it’s exploring, yeah, she’s kind of trapped in it, but her as a person is up for debate.”
Madison, played by Emily Tennant is, for all intents and purposes, the protagonist in a film that doesn’t make it easy to figure out who is what.
Short description from CUFF: “While struggling on a solo backpacking trip in Thailand, social media influencer Madison meets CW, who travel with ease and shows her a more uninhibited way of living, but CW’s interest in her takes a darker turn.”
So. Think Single White Female. But with a more modern twist.
“It really stemmed from the idea of when you travel all this way and you see all of these people who go halfway across the world, and the first thing they’ll do is eat a burger,” Harder says.
“It’s that as a concept is kind of extrapolated into a story looking into first impressions,
why we trust people based on — like someone who looks like us we immediately are trusting of although that could be your downfall, as we see in the film.”
The film also, Harder says, not surprisingly plays with the idea of “what we put online versus what is really going on,” the fact that we only really post what we want people to know and see, and, in reality our lives, warts and all, are not that Instagramable.
And it also touches on what is real — not just what we pretend it is, but actual reality, which is now in question with the increased prevalence of artificial intelligence, and how it can warp what we see and think.
“We did everything in the film that happens for real in terms of the tech, but back then, when we started writing this in 2019 a lot of this stuff was pretty primitive,” Harder says
“So it’s pretty wild to see a lot of the developments in AI that weren’t really possible when we were making the movie, but now have become more feasible, the story, as the technology has progressed …
“It’s only going to get more and more real.”
Or less and less real.
That said, the most real aspect of Influ-
encer is the stunning scenery, which shows Thailand in that aforementioned travelogue way — gorgeous, picture ready, shot in a way that’s loving and respectful and is a backdrop that makes it that much more compelling.
The location, Harder admits, was one that came after the story was started, and brought to fruition when he was, for all intents and purposes, trying to get away from things.
“I have a hard time taking a vacation, so I might as well use it as an excuse,” he laughs, noting fellow producer and cowriter Tesh Guttikonda joined him there for a couple of weeks while he was supposedly holidaying.
“So we did some scouting while we were working on the script, so a lot of the locations that we shot at we had been there in 2019, before the pandemic.
“That country’s incredible,” Harder continues.
“We kind of joked the whole time, ‘Well, if we can convince three people to go visit Thailand I think the movie’s a success.’ ”
Influencer screens as part of the Calgary Underground Film Festival on April 28 at the Globe Cinema at 7 p.m. For tickets go to calgaryundergroundfilm.org.
Speaking to Forbidden Dimension founder Tom Bagley, before we get to talking about Midnight Stew, the band’s eleventh album, there is something to get out of the way. It’s a bit of a gush from theSCENE about the fact that another album from a band Bagley was part of just before he formed Forbidden Dimension — Colour Me Psycho’s 1986’s Kiss Me…Then Colour Me Psycho — is one of the greatest collections of songs to come out of Calgary.
In fact, due to the efforts of a band member’s friend Jack Tieleman, who was a radio host and founder of Lance Rock Records, the album was reissued on vinyl in 2021. A low-key Bagley, who uses the stage name Jackson Phibes, laughs at this enthusiasm for a nearly 40-year-old album.
“It was kind of like somebody making a big deal out of something you did in high school. I was probably about 20 when I wrote those songs. All this bad girls cause trouble — I don’t think I’d even had a girlfriend when I wrote it. It’s like AI.
“I never advanced beyond it, either, so maybe that’s a good thing.”
Eleven albums in with a band he formed in 1988, a band that captures and keeps fans hooked on the familiar mix of heavy under-
tones, ghoulish lyrics and hooky riffs, one is first, grateful he never advanced, and second, wondering if the whole process feels a bit like doing the same thing over and over again.
“Making a déjà vu album? I just use it as a medium for telling a few stories. You can’t blast them out really quickly. It usually takes me about five years to come up with passable stuff. The last album we did (2018’s Muchos Moscas) I think there was only a year gap between the album because our bass player, Virginia (Dentata), she sort of manages us, she was like, ‘They’ve got a sale on CDs if we get this thing by March, so can you write an album over the next month?’.
“This one I wrote pretty much during COVID. A couple of the songs were just before COVID — we’d just started playing them live — and then the rest were, well, I guess I’ve got nothing but time. Play these songs a million times until they get so complicated that I can’t play them live.”
Good thing he got extra time to write, for when the pandemic hit, Bagley’s plate was, as usual, full. His life outside of music involves creating art - including all the art for Forbidden Dimension — doing T-shirt designs, posters, magazine illustrations (he created uncountable cover illustrations for FFWD Weekly when it was around, and the first ever cover of theS-
CENE) and much more. During the pandemic, he did the cover art for Corb Lund’s Songs My Friends Wrote and along with more indie stuff.
Of the two, the songs suck up the most time. “Art’s pretty fast. Writing a song, you have an idea, the end of a riff or something like that, and then you kind of beat it to death so it’s halfway presentable. But art is a pretty quick turnaround. If someone wants me to do something they’ll usually have an idea of how it’s going to be executed, but if it’s my own stuff I beat myself up over it. It’s fun, it’s not a torturous process. The songs either write themselves or you end up Frankensteining riffs together. You’ll have something that sounds fine but you almost have to go into a major chord hook to make it, because I like hooks and catchy melodies, with kind of sub heavy metal kind of stuff.”
Bagley gives a bit of insight into how the songs come about. “A lot of the lyrics for this particular horror band comes from inside jokes and misheard things, and then I’ll twist that into a full-length song.
“The last song (on Midnight Stew) is an instrumental called When the Monkey Cry, Everybody Die. That was my kid (both Bagley’s sons appear on the album playing keyboard). We were joking about the King Kong movie from the 1970s. It was a big deal. (Producer)
Dino De Laurentiis’s line was, ‘When the monkey die, everybody cry.’ And my kid said, ‘When the monkey cry, everybody die.’ Yeah, there’s a song title.’ ”
In the early days, Forbidden Dimension was signed to Cargo Records for their first three albums, and toured out to Montreal as well as playing around Western Canada between Winnipeg and Vancouver. There was the odd US gig, like a garage band convention in Las Vegas.
“We actually play more shows now. We go down to Nashville every three or four years, go to New York, we did a thing in Boston. It’s so weird; it’s the same as playing here, it’s the same small crowd. It’s people that we know purely from pen pal correspondences.
“It’s very cool, it’s like sub-cult. We’re a subcult level band. I think that’s why I’m still doing it is because we didn’t blow ourselves up doing touring, sleeping in the van, we never did that. We’d go out and stay with friends or get a motel room and it would be a really short trip and we’d come back and get back to your day job. I didn’t have a super major falling out with anybody. I’m still playing with (drummer) P.T. Bonham (Mark Igglesden); he was in Colour Me Psycho and that was almost 40 years ago now.”
Forbidden Dimension release Midnight Stew April 15 at The Palomino.
Every artist has a complex with success. They want to be paid for work, but not viewed as a sellout. They want to be praised, but not by everyone. They want to be validated for their work, but don’t put themselves in situations for that to happen. Particularly when it comes to awards.
As the YYC Music Awards gear up, and we are on the back end of the JUNOs, I want to tell you how most of these award nominees, and winners get decided, and why you should apply. It isn’t rigged. It isn’t who has the most Instagram followers. It has nothing to do with a label (except that it’s someone else nominating you).
First, you must submit your music. No one is going out of their way to find you. In every situation either the band, management, or a label submits for an award. This goes for Grammys, JUNOS, YYC Music Awards, all of them. With the submission comes a nominal fee. It’s not to make money off you. It typically covers small admin costs OR it’s there to set a small barrier of entry. This is standard.
Next, all the submissions go into a pool a jury sifts through. They vote on the artists/ songs, choose their favourites, rank them etc.
and sometimes this creates a long list, then the same process goes into what becomes the short list. This is typically what’s released for say, the JUNO nominees. All acts who submit music are technically up for the award, but it gets filtered down. It must.
Finally those short-listed nominees are voted on a final time.
Majority wins.
That’s it.
The winners are typically chosen by musical peers, people with nothing to gain from the winner, someone with no conflict of interest.
It’s as fair as it gets.
The reason I’m putting this out there is because I hear of far too many bands who don’t put their hat in the ring for any award, or opportunity for exposure … but why wouldn’t you? Every act has a shot at winning, and moreover, it shows that your industry is there to support you.
Of course the prizes aren’t lavish. Your life isn’t going to change overnight. But it helps when booking a tour, or pitching yourself to radio, or to a label. Proof that others are backing you.
I feel the need to share this for numerous reasons, one of which is when we used to run
the Xposure contest on X92.9 prizes included cash but most importantly radio play was awarded. A lot of it. That is something you CANNOT buy, yet hyper talented bands in the city just simply never applied.
Submissions are open for the YYC Music Awards now, and the JUNOs go down next March in Halifax.
So put yourself out there. For everything.
Make something happen for yourself. Even if it’s a group of other Calgary musicians giving you applause. Hell, at the very least, someone will likely buy you a beer.
Matt Berry is music director at X92.9, and host of Xposure. If you see him out after midnight at a show please do not drunkenly tell him about your band. Just send him an email to matt@x929.ca.
Apr 1 SatPrime Time Big Band Brunch
Apr 1 SatRooks
Apr 2 Sun WNBB: Some of Our Best Friends Are Singers
Apr 5 WedIronwood Open Mic
Apr 7 FriFour Rooms: A Songwriters Collective
Apr 8 SatSteve Fisher Bluegrass Band Bluegrass Session
Apr 8 Sat Dave McCann & The Firehearts
Apr 11 Tue Kitty & The Rooster w/ Jack Garton
Apr 12
Apr 13
WedIronwood Open Mic
ThuRed Hot Hayseeds Red Hot Hootenanny
Apr 14 FriStar Collector
Apr 15 SatPrime Time Big Band Brunch
Apr 15 SatBryson Waind & The CB
Apr 16 SunSongwriters Showcase
Apr 16 Sun Jonathan Reishman & The Jaybirds
Apr 18 TueDan Duguay’s WhoKnows Variety Show
Apr 19 WedIronwood Open Mic
Apr 20 ThuLonesome Ace String Band
Apr 21 FriScott Cook & Pamela Mae’s Southward Spin
Apr 22 SatDoc James & The Flatliners
Apr 23
Apr 23
SunCalgary Songsmiths Volume 2 CD Release Party
SunNick Maclean Quartet feat. Brownman Ali
Apr 25 TueSonia DeLeo
Apr 26
WedIronwood Open Mic
Apr 28 FriLittle Miss Higgins
Apr 29 SatPrime Time Big Band Brunch
Apr 29 SatJazzYYC Presents Lush
Apr 30 SunErin Ross’s Blue Gospel Revival
Apr 30 SunScott Morin’s Purple Jazz
For more info visit www.ironwoodstage.ca
For Reservations 403.269.5581 1229 – 9th Ave SE
