“ #VIFF and the Rheos ”

October 15th, 2009

Vancouver

Picture: "Califonia Dreamline"

Sound Track:

Artist – Rheostatics

Song – “Claire”

Ahhhh, sweet Claire…that takes me back a few years, it must have been 1992 when the Paul Quarrington’s book “Whale Music” was made into a feature film. Of course all the Rheostatics fans of the world were stoked to find out that the Rheos would be recording the soundtrack for the movie. Of course the irony of this is that the Rheos released an album a few years previous named “Whale Music” in homage to the book! So yes the Rheostatics have two record releases by the same name! Two very different albums, and two very fantastic albums. “Clarify me, Clarify me Claire, C-L-A-I-R-E confide in me!”.

Here is a random question, how does the Rheostatics relate to Purolator Courier? Great question! A fantastic artist named Scott Guigze many years ago took a picture of me filming the Rheostatics at the Evolve Festival. It was a shot of my on the hybrid dolly filming Martin Tielli rocking on stage.

The photo ended up back in Scott’s art studio and many years later (6 months ago or so) a friend called me from Ottawa telling me that he saw an art piece at an exhibit and I was in it! I thought this to very cool, so I contacted Scott to see if I could buy it, he was very happy to send it to me, but now many moths later Purolator has closed the account because they lost the package…no compensation, just a “sorry we lost your piece of art, oh well!”. This isn’t the first time Purolator has boned me, I bought a DVCAM deck for $2500 USA, it got here mashed….they gave me $100 and said sorry. Wow. Anyway, this blog is not about the Rheostatics, Purolator or DVCAM Decks, this blog has everything to do with my trip to Vancouver!

Jessica, Kaiya and I are on yet another flight together across the country, travel is non stop. We just spent a few days in Van because Jessica had a medical conference and I tagged along to be a daddy sitter, have a couple meetings, seeing some friends and hitting the Vancouver Film Festival. I got to see my friend Raj Panikkar’s film, it was fantastic…I got to watch all of it with baby Kaiya until the last 10 minutes when a loud crash happened in the film and woke Kaiya up and she screamed. Ha ha, it was hilarious, no one in the theater knew there was a baby in the back row…I dashed out as fast as I could. I try to take Kaiya to as many things as I can, she made it through 2 hours of films at the Atlantic Film Festival the night they screened Papikatuk, she did great, I assumed she would here as well, she did pretty well however. My friend Emily Davidson joined me for that film, then joined me again later that night for the film festival closing night party, it was wild. My other great friends Erika and Miller (the models as they are known) joined us with one of their other actor friends, it was a night of Bollywood and red wine.

I love Vancouver, the last night before we had to go home I hooked up with one of my favorite people in the world Sarah Hedar, Sarah is an awesome editor in the city, and she was my “trailer” mate in film school. Yes Sarah and I were so broke in film school that we ended up buying a motor home for $800 and lived in it for almost two years parking it in vineyards, orchards, and friends driveways. Every time in rained or snowed there would be multiple leaks through the roof, and our propane furnace didn’t have a fan to blow the heat around, so instead the furnace casing would glow so red hot that you could almost see through the metal, if the motor home wasn’t so water logged, I’m sure it would be a lovely fire hazard. This motor home was named Ethel. In fact to bring this all the way back to the Rheostatics, Sarah and I painted a scene on the side of the motor home of the two of us on a beach with palm trees. On top of our portraits were the words “California Dreamline”, Rheostatics fans would appreciate. One more random Rheostatics moment now that I’m on the topic, no wait two more…

1. Where were you the night Princess Diana was killed? I was at the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto standing beside Tragically Hip’s very own Gord Downey as a pumped audience was breathing in the Rheostatics vibrations “Do you get the urge when winter comes!”. Above the stage was a small TV that probably typically has the “game” playing on it, only this night it was a closed captioned shock to me as Tim was singing “It’s a bad time to be poor”…Princess Diana was just run over by a jackass paparazzi, what’s with our pathetic culture…why do we give a damn about seeing a picture of celebrity doing every day human things? I guess Diana’s real killers were the billions of grocery store line up tabloid magazine cover addicts.

2. The Evolve Festival filming of the Rheostatics was never edited. We shot 6 cameras with a killer dolly wide. James Shaw from Red Fish Audio multi tracked the whole show as well. Problem is I haven’t found the time or money to edit this together, or to get James to do the audio mix. I should let the Rheostatics know we have this raw footage. Maybe someday we can put it together. That would be awfully nice. “No matter who you vote form, you always end up with a king, bon Bob, do do do do, Peas and Rice”.