For those rare individuals who are fascinated by the concept of a Canadian national cinema, Guy Maddin, Galen Johnson, and Evan Johnson are totemic figures. Their collaborative works have been celebrated by critics for their unfettered displays of emotional extravagance and willingness to experiment with techniques and forms drawn from the silent era. Even as their works have achieved an increasing amount of mainstream exposure and popularity, they remain firmly tied to an offbeat aesthetic that isn’t easy to pin down. Their latest film, Rumours (2024), represents an artistic evolution, in a sense, while still retaining the wry sense of humor that they have become so well-known for.
Zita Short had the opportunity to interview the three filmmakers in the lead-up to the film’s release.
Zita Short: In another interview you stated that audiences would be going into this film expecting a traditional satire but you wanted to complicate their understanding of the genre by introducing soap opera influences into the proceedings. What do you think the average viewer conceives of when they imagine a satire and how do you think our vision of this style of comedy has evolved over time?
Galen Johnson: A lot of people interact with satire through the prism of Saturday Night Live. As much as I respect Saturday Night Live, that’s not what we wanted to make here. There’s always an element of melodrama in Guy’s work…
Guy Maddin: It’s my only way of understanding things. I convert 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) into a soap opera and then I start to understand it. Even if that’s not what’s intended.
Evan Johnson: It’s funny that we started from the point of wanting to avoid making a typical satire. If you look at Doctor Strangelove (1964)…that’s my favorite movie. As we are dealing so directly with identifiable types of figures, such as presidents and prime ministers, we wanted to avoid certain types of easy denigration. I’m not saying that there aren’t other styles of political satire that I like, I am a big fan of Armando Ianucci’s work, but we wanted to complicate the viewers’ relationship with the characters on-screen. We didn’t want to give them this feeling of easy satisfaction and, in introducing elements of melodrama into the narrative, we force viewers to relate to these characters on some level and sympathize with their concerns.
Guy Maddin: It creates an empathy and it brings you closer and it encourages you to identify. We can all relate to the experience of failing.
Evan Johnson: We did start from a point of being quite angry at world leaders for their failures but we also ended up in the position of making a film that tries to address this big issue and failing at it. It was so easy to identify with them after going through something like that.
Guy Maddin: Then again, these leaders are worthy of war crimes tribunals.
Zita Short: Many commentators have noted that you have strong roots in Canada’s independent filmmaking community and this film represents a further step into big budget, mainstream productions for all of you. You previously directed a satirical documentary, Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton (2016), which documents the production of the blockbuster war film Hyena Road (2008). How was it to step into the shoes of a Paul Gross-like filmmaker and tackle some of the obstacles that he faced?
Guy Maddin: Maybe we deserved to have someone make a film that was as mean about us as that documentary is about Paul Gross. I just feel as though everyone just sort of fell for our trick. The same DNA is still there. We have bigger stars than usual and we have a few scenes set in the past and a few new locations but I like to think that we’re still up to the same old tricks. It just comes in a new package. I think people won’t come away from it thinking it’s alienatingly avant-garde or anything but it contains some interesting tonal shifts.
Evan Johnson: It’s still alienating. After making something like Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton in which, some would argue, we mock Paul Gross, we deserved to have a big scale production that forced us to confront a lot of problems thrown at us. It’s just hard. You can’t move on the fly as much as you’re used to.
Guy Maddin: I’m sorry about Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton. Well, I’m not sorry that we made it. I feel sorry for the people we made it at.
Zita Short: Why do human beings find the concept of the apocalypse to be so uproariously funny?
Galen Johnson: I think the humor is partially just a defense mechanism.
Guy Maddin: I wonder if there’s a sense of relief. Some people feel that they do deserve that sort of grim ending. Perhaps that’s just my self-pity shining through.
Galen Johnson: When we embark upon our writing process we are primarily concerned with what is funny. We can’t exempt anything from our silliness. The apocalypse is still valid material.
Evan Johnson: I guess you could say that the end of the world is like a punchline. There’s something built into it where it just seems to function that way.
Zita Short: Much of your work has been set in a specifically Canadian milieu and derives its power from your intimate knowledge of this environment. How did you adjust to making a film that centers around a more international perspective?
Guy Maddin: I think it’s always important to ground your film in a strong sense of place. When I worked alone I made a whole film about my hometown called My Winnipeg (2007). That was a chance to get really specific. It was about my family and about my town. This film is set in a part of Germany that we don’t know much about. We did learn about the bogland in the area. There is something specific in the way that we needed these people to speak to each other. It needed to be non-ideologically and it needed to involve the setting aside of personal characteristics.
Evan Johnson: We’re making a film set in Europe that is all about European politicians but you also have the Canadian Prime Minister at the center of it all. It was quite funny for us to imagine, in this foreign environment, this Canadian leader guiding these Europeans through everything.
Guy Maddin: It was also important for us to capture the specifics of their professions and the roles that they play.
