How a Canadian Back to the Future parody became an international cult hit |
'We have hundreds of thousands of fans': How a Canadian Back to the Future parody became an international cult hit
A low-budget riff on the time-travelling classic set in Toronto, Nirvanna the Band the Show was never intended to be more than a passion project for its two creators. But it has found a devoted following, from the US to South Korea.
One of the funniest moments in Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, the widely acclaimed Canadian comedy that has become a surprise global success, hinges on a brief glimpse of an outdated billboard plastered across the side of Toronto's MuchMusic building – a municipal landmark legendary to locals and the former nexus of one of the country's largest media empires.
Based on the cult web series Nirvanna the Band the Show, the film stars director Matt Johnson and his co-writer Jay McCarrol as a pair of ambitious but air-headed musicians attempting to make it with their two-man musical group, Nirvanna the Band. In the film, as in the show, they banter, plot zany schemes, and interact with real people who have no idea they're being filmed, like a more polite version of Borat.
In the scene in question, Matt and Jay have just taken a Back to the Future-inspired journey to the past, travelling in their jerry-rigged time machine from modern-day Queen Street West to the same downtown strip in 2008. At first, the duo is unaware that their sci-fi gambit has worked – until they spot the relics of a distant, quaintly un-politically correct era. The cover of a defunct alt-weekly boasts a profile of Bill Cosby. An ad on the back of a bus features the smiling face of disgraced Subway spokesman Jared Fogle. A sightseeing bus passes blaring a Black Eyed Peas hit with an unfortunate title.
The punchline is a billboard emblazoned with the visage of Jian Ghomeshi. The long-time host of CBC Radio's Q, a hip talk show with a rotating cast of celebrity guests, Ghomeshi was a somewhat obscure but beloved big fish in Canada's constitutionally small-pond media ecosystem – until 2014, when a sexual abuse scandal made him into a figure of national notoriety. For Canadian viewers who cringingly recall the controversy, the callback is darkly hilarious.
But it also raises the question: would anybody outside of Canada get it?
The film's surprise impact
Johnson and McCarrol have been somewhat amazed by the reaction to that moment – and the film as a whole. Since its premiere last September at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it was rapturously received by local audiences, the offbeat, charmingly idiosyncratic Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie has been doing the seemingly impossible – reaching escape velocity from the atmosphere of Canadian cinema and touring to enthusiastic crowds across the globe.
In the US, the film was picked up by respected boutique distributor Neon and opened to rave reviews and packed cinemas earlier this year, and now this weekend the movie arrives in the UK, ready to prove itself to an international cohort of fans all over again. And so far, the Ghomeshi joke seems to have landed.
"We went on tour with the movie, and we watched it with all these American audiences, and everybody would laugh at the photo of Jian Ghomeshi,"........