As a follow up to the blog entry about making the feature film Roadkill, here’s a story of how Bruce McDonald and I made our follow-up, Highway 61.
It was our original plan that Bruce and I would alternate directing and producing. When we’d finished ROADKILL, my idea for a feature — WEST OF LUNCH — was half-baked to say the least, but Bruce had an idea that was ...
Take this bus to see the movie in Winnipeg this March.
The DVD of The Last Pogo Jumps Again continues to sell (
click store here to learn how to buy it) and theatrical screenings continue on weekends in Toronto at Reg Hart’s cozy
Cineforum.
Note: LSD use not essential.
A nice review in
Big Takeover magazine has created a bit more awareness in ...
Now that we’re this close to locking picture, we’re getting pumped and prepped for our sound design and final mix. And you won’t get anyone at the controls who’s any better than Daniel Pellerin. His resume is an embarrassment of riches, and includes features like American Psycho, Hedwig & The Angry Inch and everything that Atom Egoyan has done. He’ll will be working with Christopher Guglick, who’s resume ...
Hey, we tried. After several attempts to appeal to Joey Ramone‘s brother Mickey (who seems like a nice guy, but claims there’s nothing he can do) it looks like we won’t be having a Ramones tune in the epic awesomeness we like to call The Last Pogo Jumps Again. Which is really too bad: we’d managed to find Super-8 footage of The Ramones at the New Yorker, the ...
Wow. It seems like it was just 1461 days ago that we started shooting The Last Pogo Jumps Again: A Biased & Incomplete History Of Toronto Punk/New-Wave/Alternative Music Circa September 24 1976 To December 1 1978. Now we’re mostly into editing the beast, and with just a few vital interviews to nail down, it should all be over soon.
Back in 1988, when The Last Pogo Jumps Again co-director Colin Brunton was producing his first feature, Roadkill (featuring a cameo by Joey Ramone), he and partner-in-crime Bruce McDonald schemed up many marketing and promotion ideas, adhering to Sex Pistols‘ manager Malcolm McLaren’s number one rule: Establish the Name. Before they rolled on the first day of production, all the local critics and everyone in the indie film ...
Julian Richings as Larry in Animal Control; photo by Mike Perreo
In between dodging Ukranian hackers attacking our site, shuffling scenes around in editing, and lining up the last of the last of the interviews, the crew at Pogo H.Q. have been busy doing other stuff. Co-director Kire Paputts (with partner-in-crime James Vandewater) is putting the finishing touches on his short film Animal Control.
It’s been a rotten few months in the world of old-skool punk. In October, Teenage Head singer Frankie Venom died from throat cancer; in January, Stooges’ guitarist Ron Asheton passed away from a heart attack, and today Lux Interior, frontman of ground-breaking psychobilly punk rockers The Cramps died in an L.A. hospital from a pre-exisiting heart problem. His wife and original guitarist Poison Ivy issued a statement today.
We here at ...
Joey Ramone and Colin Brunton, 1989.
Photo by Tim Sebert.
We hit the NXNE press conference/launch last night, and ran into Last Pogoers Gordie Lewis from Teenage Head and Vince Carlucci from the Cardboard Brains. Fast Eddie Smith snapped shots as we were deluged by a constant flow of eats and beers, and it was all pretty crammed and jammed.
The Last Pogo Jumps Again studies the evolution of Toronto from small town to big city and it’s pop/counter-culture lifestyle during the early and mid-70s. It centers around the first wave of Toronto punk rock and new-wave music, from the Ramones playing the New Yorker Theatre in ’76 through the police shutting down Teenage Head and causing a riot at the Horseshoe Tavern’s infamous “The Last Pogo” concert in December 1978.
