Here is one of the TIFF stories I wrote for Metro that never found the space in the paper. Enjoy, I am too tired to come up with something original and spontaneous when I have as yet-untold TIFF stories:
Blaine Thurier has a pretty respectable track record. After all, the Vancouver-based filmmaker has had all three of his movies featured at the Toronto International Film Festival over the years.
“I think my films appeal to extreme film geeks,” explained Thurier. “The programmers here (in Toronto) are the biggest film geeks in the world and I love them for it.”
He should. After all, while previous festival entries – Low Self-Esteem Girl and 2004’s Male Fantasy - admittedly appeal to a certain demographic, his relationship with TIFF may pay off with this year’s A Gun to the Head.
Set in Vancouver, this dark comedy follows the follies of a reformed street hustler who spends one horribly errant evening being escorted all over town in search of his loose-cannon cousin who’s wronged a paradoxical thug. In what’s been described as a “low-rent film noir”, the film focuses almost as much on Vancouver as it does a night gone wrong.
“I’m not trying to document (violence in Vancouver) in a journalistic kind of way; I have an absurdist take on it,” said Thurier about the setting. “I like movies that are very specific about place. I’m not crazy about a movie that takes place in some amorphous movieland…and I do love movies with guns, girls and drama so I thought I’m going to take my clumsy aesthetic, such as it is, and try to play with genre a bit.”
Thurier isn’t just a genre-bending filmmaker either. As keyboardist of The New Pornographers, he has displayed that he can also blend a Juno Award-winning music career with directing. With this much on the go, it’s a wonder Thurier even had time to spend the week in Toronto.
“There’s spaces in between,” said Thurier of his filmmaking ventures. “I really try to be as creative as possible at all times so I find the time.”
