Lobb, Hussey bring their work home with them with Goderich 'Nirvanna' screening
BY SHAWN LOUGHLIN
On Thursday, April 2, Curtis Lobb and Mark Hussey from FauxPop Media will be hosting a special screening of Nirvanna the Band the Show The Movie, which they worked on in editing and post-production supervision, respectively. The event will bring stars Matt Johnson (also the director) and Jay McCarrol to Goderich’s Park Theatre for a special screening and question-and-answer session for the film, which has been impressing audiences and critics across North America throughout the film festival circuit.
The movie represents the continuation of a years-old creative process for Johnson and McCarrol, who first created Nirvana the Band the Show (note the different spelling) as a web series and then as a short-lived television series for Viceland: Nirvanna the Band the Show. The movie, which has been picked up by Neon, an up-and-coming production and distribution company, represents a continuation of the story.
As a foundation, the story of the Nirvanna universe is that Johnson and McCarrol play fictionalized versions of themselves as members of Nirvanna the Band, which is desperate to book a show at Toronto’s storied Rivoli, despite not having produced any music nor reaching out to the Rivoli in any way. The web series and subsequent television series earned a cult following, so, when the movie was announced, the excitement in some circles was palpable.
Just announced on Thursday, the film is nominated for eight Canadian Screen Awards - the whole film was shot in the creators’ hometown of Toronto - though, notably, Lobb’s editing was snubbed after he won one in 2024 for editing Blackberry, another Johnson project.
Lobb and Hussey welcomed The Citizen to its East Street Station headquarters for an interview last week to talk about working on the movie, the finished product, the screening and the projects on the horizon.
Without spoiling anything, the Nirvanna projects have often relied heavily on homages to existing films and television and are often quite referential. The movie leans heavily on time travel - specifically the story of Back to the Future, the god-tier 1985 Robert Zemeckis film starring Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd. As a result, the footage comes from both the modern day and back in 2008, complete with stunning visual effects work to put the current day men in the real-life 2008 footage, among other eye-catching stunts brought to life.
Hussey said that, as a post-production supervisor, that aspect of the work added another layer of complication to the work being done on the film, but that it was his job to ready it for Lobb, who co-edited the film with Robert Upchurch, who is based in Texas, but has made trips to Goderich for pivotal points in the movie’s editing process.
Lobb said that the process for Nivanna has been an interesting one, as he has much more history with it than some of the other projects on which he and Johnson have worked through Zapruder Films. That’s because, rather than simply being hired as an editor by Johnson, he was part of the creative process dating back to the series’ time on Viceland.
In film school, one of Lobb’s teachers was Matthew Miller, who is one of the producers of Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie. Miller was aware of Johnson and McCarrol but, at the time, Lobb didn’t know them personally, but he and many of his friends had become fans of the web series.
He was then brought on as a co-writer for the series, which lasted for two seasons on Viceland. So, he was part of the creative team very early in the process, dating back to the late 2010s.
Because of his history with the project, he was again brought on as an editor when it came time to make the movie, but he is also credited as helping to create the story after a first attempt at the story didn’t - all involved agreed - quite work.
Lobb and Hussey say that there’s an entire second movie that’s on the cutting room floor for Nirvanna. The project began as a road trip comedy with Johnson and McCarrol leaving Toronto and travelling across the United States in an effort to secure a spot on The Jimmy Kimmel Show, all with the goal of securing that coveted show at The Rivoli.
Not only did it leave the creators’ beloved Toronto behind, but, when the creative team got together in Toronto, when the editing was supposed to begin, they watched about 40 minutes of the best footage they’d captured and all agreed it wasn’t working. As a result, they used that week instead to retool and refocus the film, turning it into what it more closely resembles today, very much in keeping with the lineage of the web and television series.
They arrived at the time travel storyline and Back to the Future homage and things began to fall into place, Lobb said. From there, the movie became much more focused on Toronto and became an entirely Canadian project.
The footage then began rolling in. As a result of the very nature of the project - being shot in a guerilla style on the streets with active communities and citizens everywhere - there was a lot of footage to sift through. Again, Hussey did the work to ensure that it all made sense by the time it made it to Lobb and Upchurch, but the fact remains that there was a lot to go through.
As a result, the creative team worked through a number of different iterations of the film. When it screened at South by Southwest, the Toronto International Film Festival (where it won the People’s Choice Award for Midnight Madness) and others, the team used it as an opportunity to further develop the movie, tweaking it, cutting things that didn’t work and beefing up things that did. Even in the late stages, as Lobb worked on the special features for the blu-ray release (due in late May), they were working on the film, adding a post-credits sequence that not many had yet seen.
To both Lobb and Hussey, they see the success story of Johnson and McCarrol very much in the same vein as theirs and the success of FauxPop. The moral of the story is that art can be created anywhere and that being uncompromising in your art and where you want to create it, be it in Toronto when everyone is in Los Angeles or in Huron County when everyone is in Toronto.
When it came time for the final editing blitz on the film, the major players came to Goderich, with Johnson, Upchurch and others booking extended stays in Huron County to complete the work on their film. And now, with the screening, the centre of the film’s world will again be Goderich, with Johnson and McCarrol coming to Huron County for the screening and to participate in a question-and-answer period on the film alongside Lobb and Hussey.
This is similar to what the crew did for their film Blackberry, which set a record for Canadian Screen Award wins in 2024. The screening was well-attended and the event has lived on in the memories of Huron County-based film fans and this next one proves to have that same potential.
When asked about the screening, Lobb said that having it in Goderich goes beyond hosting a cool event in his backyard. Bringing their film work to the screen on which he very literally first fell in love with movies is a culmination of the work he’s been doing for so many years and a full-circle moment that is not lost on him.
Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie will screen at the Park Theatre, followed by a question-and-answer session with the stars and filmmakers, at 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 2. Tickets will be available at the door.