03.08.2012 | Culture | 9 INTERVIEW >>
Strombo talks career changes and 90s nostalgia Fandemonium and looking around going, ‘God, you’ve got 18-year-old girls fighting each other in a kiddie pool and you’re asking me to do the play-by-play? I’m 31! Are you crazy?’ They were great people at MuchMusic, but I could see that they were moving towards a kind of entertainment media that I didn’t want to be a part of. It was the right time.
Ginny Monaco Culture Editor
TV personality George Stroumboulopoulos will be on campus to take part in the Arts Undergraduate Society’s Arts Last Lecture on March 16. The Ubyssey spoke to him about his CBC show, the current state of entertainment television and why he doesn’t think of himself as an old man.
U: I feel lucky I grew up with MuchMusic in the 90s and the early 2000s. GS: It was a different time, man.
The Ubyssey: Do you think you work too much? Stroumboulopoulos: No. But I think people think you have the life you have because of the job you have. But I think for a guy like me, you actually have the job you have based on your personality. I didn’t have to work like this. I chose to work like this. Sometimes what happens is, you get caught up inadvertently in momentum. The momentum of your daily life takes over and you wake up one day and you’re 39. I work a lot, but you know...My grandmother worked hard. I work a lot of hours, but it ain’t hard. It’s a different kind of hard. It takes a different kind of focus. You have to be creative, you have to try to be funny, you have be smart, you always have to read.
U: What keeps you on the show? GS: I don’t know. If I told you, I don’t think you’d believe me. But I’ll tell you anyways. I don’t think about why I do it.
U: No? GS: Nope. I just go with what feels right...Wherever my head’s at, then that’s the direction we take the show.
U: It felt legitimate.
COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL SPEAKERS BUREAU
“In my core and in the art I consume and the conversations I have, I want to be at the end of the earth,” said Stroumboulopoulos.
The challenge after 20 years or whatever in a career is you have to figure out, “Do you enjoy the process of making it?” Those are the things you have to think about from time to time because you want to make sure you’re really at the cutting edge of your own personality. You know in those days, back when they used to think the world was flat? They would want to sail to ‘the end of the earth.’ In my core and in the art I consume and the conversations I have, I want to be at the end of the earth.
U: Do you ever look back on where you’ve gotten yourself in a 20-year career, or is it more about pushing yourself forward? GS: Well, I don’t look back. I’m sure you’ll experience this when you’ve
DOCUMENTARY >>
Modern life in the Arctic showcased in new doc
Ivana Litavees Contributor
It’s not about science or arts. “It’s an integration of both,” reflected filmmaker Joel Heath on his debut award-winning documentary, People of a Feather. With stunning footage of life in the Canadian north, the film exposes the challenges faced by the Inuit community on the Belcher Islands in Hudson Bay as they try to adapt to the effects of climate change. The film approaches environmental awareness from a multidisciplinary perspective, achieving a complex portrayal of the issue. Canadian ecologist and former UBC student, Joel Heath, first set foot in the Arctic as a member of the Canadian Wildlife Service to investigate a mass die-out of eider ducks in the late 1990s. Heath described the film as “artistic science.” It features the world’s first images of eider ducks diving under the sea ice, captured with an underwater camera system which Heath developed while pursuing his doctorate studies in the area. The documentary is notable for displaying certain Inuit traditions for the first time on film. Heath manages to compare the locals’ modern techniques and technology as they adapt to environmental changes, with their original practices. Through collaboration with
the Sanikiluaq community, the film re-enacts aspects of the Inuit lifestyle and hunting techniques and recreates traditional clothing and sledges from the past. The filmmaker sees his work as an opportunity for Canadians to understand life in the north. “It incorporates Inuit knowledge with Western science,” he said. Praised for its educational value, the project is currently evolving into an “Arctic sea ice” didactic package, including interactive DVDs designed for classrooms. The package will explore physical oceanography, ecology and social sciences. The film continues to attract worldwide attention and is currently nominated for an award in direction and cinematography at the New York International TV and Film Awards. It has stirred an overwhelming response from Vancouverites since it opened in theatres on March 2, and sold out at Cinecenta this past Saturday night at an early screening when nearly 400 people showed up. Heath said his purpose with the project was to “use film as a way to communicate.” Though it has its “roots in academics,” the filmmaker argued he wants to “reach the general audience in more scientific forms.” People of a Feather is screening until Friday, March 9 at Denman Theatre. U
done this for a long enough time. You are actually still the same guy or girl you were 20 years ago. You really are...I feel like a 23-year-old kid who worked at the FAN [590]doing all night sports radio in Toronto. I’m not that far removed from the guy who wore a lizard mascot costume in Kelowna when I worked at a rock station there. I’m obviously a—hopefully—more evolved person and a more developed human being. However, you’re still who you are. I try to exist without any ego at all, so I don’t feel like I’ve accomplised anything.
U: Really? GS: We at the show feel like we didn’t waste the opportunity that was given to us... So I don’t spend a lot of time reflecting. I will say this: as I get older I’m slightly more sentimental than I used to be.
U: How so? GS: Because I’m still the same guy I was when I was 20. I look in the mirror and go, “Fuck, man. Jesus Christ, I look like my grandfather.” I’m sentimental about hockey and music and the early 90s in music and culture. But I think that’s because it’s the moment when you feel for the first time like your heart swells and you’re winning.
U: Were you ready to leave MuchMusic? GS: I was ready to go. I had been there for 5 years, I was 31. Entertainment television as a whole had shifted to be really young. They really, really over-sexualized young girls, which I didn’t think was cool. I mean it’s fine if you’re 15, but I was 31. It was weird. I’m not that guy. I remember doing a show called
GS: We took it seriously. It wasn’t just fluffy “let’s-play-a-video.” MuchMusic is actually one of the most important networks in the country because they need to reflect the youth. I find that it’s pretty narrow-casted right now.
U: Do you think of yourself as a journalist? GS: I think I have elements of it, sure.
U: Is it important? GS: Absolutely. We have these limited scopes based on the lives we lead. We don’t know everything. History is important, precedent is important, trends are important. But when you’re busy living your life, having relationships and breakups and mortgages and rent and leases and dogs dying—all that shit we have in our life—we don’t have time to focus on the whole world. But somebody has to. U —The Arts Last Lecture is March 16 in the Chan Centre. Tickets are still available.