THE LAST POGO JUMPS AGAIN FullyLoadedDVDreviewedByGregKlymkiwAsBruntonPapputsPunkDocSlavetosMyDick

In anticipation of the upcoming 2015 Toronto Hot Docs International Festival of Documentary Cinema, The Film Corner continues its thrill-packed countdown to said event with a DVD review of a kick-ass documentary, that, to my knowledge, never played at Hot Docs, but most definitely should have played there since every screening would have been sold right the fuck out.

Of course, the cherry on the punk puke sundae would have been the experience of every theatre unspooling the picture being trashed to shit by happy old Punks, responding with glee to the barrage of sound and image designed to activate voltage-gated calcium conduits via their few remaining synaptic neurotransmissions.

Well, we can, at least dream, can't we? They do, after all, shoot horses, don't they? Indeed they do and such are the stuff nightmares are indeed made of.

THE LAST POGO JUMPS AGAIN by Colin Brunton and Kire Papputs is a thrilling epic journey into Toronto's legendary punk rock scene. The MEGA-2-DISC-DVD not only looks and sounds fucking great (especially the sound cuz it's been mixed by the best fucking sound mixer in Canada, Daniel Pellerin), but is a first-rate home entertainment sausage sack stuffed to overflowing; FULLY LOADED with MIND-FUCKING EXTRA FEATURES, a handsome cardboard case with tons o' vomitously beautiful colours, drawings and designs, including a GEEK'S DELIGHT COLLECTIBLE BOOKLET with all manner of KOOL RETRO SHIT dappling each and every page.

And the movie?

It's a Joseph-Conrad-like tugboat ride into some kind of Living Fucking Hell that always feels like a Heaven as imagined by Anton LaVey or, as the testicle-cheeked Lady in the Eraserhead Radiator crooned, "In Heaven, Everything is Fine."

As such, directors Colin Brunton and Kire Papputs are the two halves of Capt. ("Exterminate with extreme prejudice") Willard on a blood-and-piss-soaked mission that has an ambiguous opening and no real end.

If there is a heart of darkness on display, a Kurtz, if you will, it's like every goddamned Status Quo fuck-wad that ignored this exciting cultural scene when it happened in the 70s.

I have two minor quibbles with this DVD, though.

Here's the first: The movie that's included here is the final release cut and don't get me wrong, it's fucking great, but I had the glorious opportunity to see a totally fucking nutzoid 4-HOUR version in a real movie theatre in the East End of Toronto that was packed with old punks giving each other contact highs from decades of collectively ingesting hard-line hallucinogens and guzzling cheap hootch.

I loved that version so much, I was hoping directors Brunton and Papputs would have included a third disc called "The Totally Fucked Version That Only One Sicko Preferred To Our Much Better Final Release Version." And yeah, you get the better version here, BUT, I will always have a soft-spot in my BRAIN for the really long version and believe me, it was REALLY fucking long - longer than Rejean the Lumberjack's dick (and it lasted a lot longer than Rejean can last when he crams his smoked Montreal steamer-wiener through a glory hole).

So, uh, don't mind me.

The version you get here is already 205 minutes long. So buy the movie so that Brunton and Papputs can make so much dough they'll double-dip (in home entertainment parlance) and release a limited numbered edition steel box that has everything this version has, PLUS the 250 minute version, PLUS more outtakes (don't get me wrong, there are 90 minutes of EXTRAS on this sucker, but I KNOW there's gotta be more) and maybe, just maybe, some limited edition vinyl EPs from the soundtrack.

My second quibble is the fact that the handsome folder's covers include quotes from the esteemed critics Geoff Pevere and Norman Wilner, but where the fuck are MY quotes? Fuck you Brunton and Paputts! What am I? A piece of rotting fruit? I see quotes from people I've never fucking heard of, so where the fuck is one from me?

As I said, the quibbles are indeed minor.

So, whaddya get on this super-deluxe DVD? Plenty! Lots of added interviews that didn't make the final cut, Marv Newland's cartoon Bambi Meets Godzilla, a shitload of B-Movie trailers, more interviews, some cool shit about the long-gone 99-cent Roxy Theatre and my personal favourite, tons and tons of Nash the Slash! Yup, I'm not kidding. You get more of the late genius musician in the form of added interview footage, performance footage and a beautiful rendition of "Oh Canada" on Nash's electric violin.

Okay, so that's my spiel on the DVD. Just buy the fucking thing even if you have to hold up a convenience store. (Just make sure you don't blow someone away by accident or you'll be watching this movie on an endless loop in stir.)

But first, you need to read my review below. It's a slightly tweaked and rewritten version of what I first vomited into cyberspace after I saw the movie for the first time. You'll find out about WHY this movie is special to old punks all over the world with the added bonus of a lovely preamble discussing the time period, similar punk scenes in other cities (mostly Winnipeg) and then, yeah, the review of the movie proper.

So read on and on and on. The fuck else you doing this week anyway? Jerking off? Thumbing your asshole? Or sticking your dick through a glory hole to get some chump to slaveto the fuck out of it? Just read the fuckin' review, which, by the way, is a hallowed attempt to be firmly lodged in the spirit of the movie's asshole and like the movie, the review is full of good shit - so good, that by the end of this tome, I will provide some info on how you can buy this movie and make money for these clowns to put out the aforementioned double dip.

And then you can watch the fuckin' movie, already!

The Last Pogo Jumps Again (2012) ****
Dir. Colin Brunton, Kire Papputs

Review By Greg Klymkiw

PREAMBLE - Winnipeg's Punk Scene

So, like, some dude who works on the docks, his name is Réjean, corners you in a stall at Jilly's and says: "Suck my dick". We've all been there before. Right? Both parties are too skint to hit the V.I.P. room for some private dancing and before you can say, "Gimme summa dat luvvin, eh", you're greedily gobbling the knob of this bearded, seven-footer with a plaid shirt and hoping for a nice reach-around.

We've all been there.

Right?

So, okay, what if the same dude traps you in the shitter and growls, "Slaveto my dick!" - you're going to be, like, "The fuck, Réjean? You want me to WHAT?"

You see, from the late 70s until I-can't-remember-when, the aforementioned conversation played out in my mind whenever I drove by an old Winnipeg Garment District building in the Market Square area that featured this spray-painted graffiti prominently displayed on its grey cement wall:

 SLAVETO

 MY DICK

Moments after I first read those words (in double-take, mind you) I knew the graffiti was that great song "SLAVE TO MY DICK" by Vancouver punk band, The Subhumans. Some moron with a can of spray paint was shit-facedly inspired to splooge the words via aerosol in a prominent location. The bonehead placed the words "slave" and "to" too fucking close together. The graffiti managed to remained for decades after it first appeared - a beacon at the entranceway to this 7-or-8 square blocks in downtown Winnipeg that had become the stomping grounds of artists, actors, filmmakers, junkies, drunks, hookers and, of course, punks.

It was a scene, know what I mean?

And for about four years, the punk scene fuelled the crazy alternative filmmaking scene at the Winnipeg Film Group. I can't think of a single person in their mid-40s-to-50s from the 'Peg who makes movies and WASN'T part of that scene.

Great 'Peg punk and new wave bands - and I mean GREAT bands - belted out the coolest sounds imaginable. Bars like the Royal Albert or, my favourite, the "Chuckles" (or to malcontent veterans, the St. Charles Hotel) featured gig upon gig with local Winnipeg Punk/NewWavers like the Popular Mechanix, Personality Crisis, Dub Rifles, Lowlife, The Stretch Marks, Discharge, The Psychiatrists, The Bristow Hoppers - the list goes on and on - and bookers (often Winnipeg band members themselves) peppered the local acts with whatever punks from Toronto, Vancouver or the USA who could get their shit together enough to play the 'Peg.

I was running a West-End movie theatre that played mostly cult films, sometimes sprinkled with live acts ("Nash the Slash VS. Eraserhead" read one of the immortal handbills). The "Scene" would come see a movie or two, blast down to the garment district, catch a punk band, then head to Walter and Megan's Lithium Cafe to belt back joe with tired hookers and their hopped-up pimps.

This happened pretty much every night for many moons.

It's funny now, how many film or media people frolicked about the punk scene. John Paizs directed the quaintly perverse cinematic equivalent to 'Peg Punk with his brilliant short film The Obsession of Billy Botski and, years later he used the great Popular Mechanix song "IceBox City" during a joyous dance sequence in his immortal feature length cult classic Crime Wave. Guy Maddin blew his inheritance from Aunt Lil (her beauty parlour became the studio set for Tales from the Gimli Hospital) on 78 recordings of fruity 20s/30s tenors from this amazing store in Minneapolis, but also collected the most amazing number of punk albums which he purchased from Winnipeg's immortal Pyramid Records.

Guy would gather everyone round to his place, quaintly adorned with his late Aunt Lil's doilies, and spin Richard Crooks singing Stephen Foster's "Old Black Joe", then switching from 78 to 33 RPM, he'd announce something a bit more "challenging" was on its way - code for: this is some good shit I got from Pyramid Records and it's going to blow you the fuck away.

In delicious contrast to "Old Black Joe", the needle gently found its groove and the room swelled with the aural explosion of Feederz crooning "Jesus Entering From The Rear". Radio producer John Copsey (he wears suits now) led a punk band that devoted themselves to worshipping the survivalist movement as preached on Winnipeg's community cable station TV show "Survival" featuring yours truly and Guy Maddin as apocalypse-welcoming rednecks.

Lead singer of several great Winnipeg punk bands was none other than heartthrob Kyle McCulloch who starred in virtually every early John Paizs and Guy Maddin film and eventually became a head writer on TV's "South Park". And lest we forget, Canada's highly esteemed journalist and political pundit in all media, Mr. Andrew Coyne, took to the stage with several other burgeoning writers from the University of Manitoba newspaper and in punk tradition, nary a one of them could actually play, but they gave their all as The Nimrods.

Happy times for many. Times that led to even happier times - for some. All were ultimately inspired by Winnipeg's punk scene, but most of all, the brilliant local artists - the musicians who made you soar higher than a kite with kickass punk/new wave music were the big motivators who instilled a more anarchic, freewheeling, devil-may-care spirit in so many of us to push the limits of our own lives and artistic pursuits. 

The music, unlike the arts inspired by it, had NO outlets of support to take the music and musicians to the next natural level. There were a few limited tapes or EPs cut, a handful of extremely indie albums, but this genuinely brilliant period of Winnipeg music - post The Guess Who and pre The Crash Test Dummies - lives in the minds, memories and movies of all those who loved it deeply and were fuelled by seeing it LIVE - night after night after blessedly blasphemous night.

THE MEAT & CORNMEAL OF THE POGO STICK CALLED TORONTO PUNK: YEAH, NOW YOU GET YOUR FUCKING FILM REVIEW OF

THE COLIN BRUNTON & KIRE PAPPUTS EPIC DOC

It took about 30 seconds of screen time for me to feel a surge of the old excitement I used to get in my late teens and early 20s in the aforementioned Winnipeg Scene. Here I was, watching The Last Pogo Jumps Again, the alternately thrilling and depressing but ultimately powerful story of the Toronto Scene de la PUNK and it mattered not that it was Toronto. Hell, I kind of felt like I was back in Winnipeg all over again.

I embraced the crazy, scrappy, downright dangerous insanity of this terrific documentary and fully accepted its body, its blood - like an unholy sacrement drained and scourged from the everlasting soul of Sid Vicious himself who died, NOT for OUR sins, but for his own and for the rest of us who were willing to commit our own - no matter how heinous or benign. This downright wonderful picture by Brunton and Papputs is a sacrament and I accept its fuck-you-filmmaking-moxie as much as I allow its people, places and music into my very soul as if they were my very own.

On the surface - this is a movie that shouldn't work - at least not by the standards of many un-cool fuck-wads who make cultural decisions in this country at both the public and private sectors - propped up comfortably on the nests they feather atop the podiums they take their dumps-a-plenty from as if they were showering the Great Unwashed with gold. It shouldn't work, but it does. Some might say it is solely about a subject only 100 or so people might get into. They'd be wrong. Others will complain (usually without seeing it) that the movie is too long - 3 hours and 20 minutes PLUS an intermission. Again - WRONG. I saw a much longer version and then this shorter version and frankly, I wish the filmmakers stuck to the original length. In fact, they could have made it even longer for some extra-sweet fuck-you cherries on the ice cream sundae.

Some might say the movie is a mess. Yeah, it is - sort of, but brilliantly and subversively it's a documentary equivalent to the punk scene itself and that's one of the many things I admire about it.

Here's the deal, when legendary Canadian film producer Colin Brunton was a teenager, he worked as an usher at the Roxy Theatre in Toronto - a deliciously fucked joint on the East End that combined 99-cent double features of art films and art sleaze with a kick-ass music scene. This temple of all things anti-peace-love-and-prebyterianism-a-la-Toronto was the jumping off point for so many who would contribute to one of the most thrilling music in the country.

Eventually the Scene moved further west in the otherwise Presbyterian pole-up-the-ass city. Pockets of fuck-you exploded at the New Yorker Theatre, along Spadina, in Kensington and, of course, Queen Street West when it wasn't full of fuck-wit rich people pretending to be poor. And the biggest fuck-you explosion in Toronto was the exciting punk rock new wave scene.

Brunton and Papputs focus on a two year window - beginning at the Roxy and New Yorker Theatre gigs and ending with the famous Last Pogo when the Horseshoe Tavern on Queen decided to flush punk off its stages forever and a legendary concert that eventually culminated with a visit from Toronto's Finest Porkers with their night sticks and guns to boot the bands off the stage and patrons out onto the street. In reality, the window of this history is probably a wee bit larger, but what happens within the period the filmmakers choose to focus on is pretty much the trajectory that occurred not only in Toronto, but Winnipeg, Calgary, Vancouver, Montreal - anywhere in Canada that had a vibrant punk scene, lots of devoted fans and absolutely no support from most of the mainstream media and a total fucking from the music business (like, what else is new?). The music business - virtually non-existent in Canada anyway - chose to ignore the Scene and for the one or two bands they took a passing fancy to, they basically sucked them RAW and DRY.

Uh, and like, what else is new?

NO REACH-AROUND!!!

Brunton was fully enmeshed in the whole Scene and chose to document the Last Pogo concert at the Horseshoe with a 16mm camera ('natch). This resulted in a scrappy little movie called ... come on, give it a guess ... come on, you can do it - Yesiree-Bob!!! You win the fuckin' Kewpie Doll - it was called The Last Pogo.

That was then - this is now and during the past six years the filmmakers embarked on an odyssey to interview as many members of the Scene as possible and create a document that would serve as an artistic and living testimony to a slice of Canadian popular culture that many would prefer to forget and/or even refuse to acknowledge it even (or ever) existed.

And The Last Pogo Jumps Again is a joy - a real joy. Blending new and archival interviews and footage with all the onstage and behind the scenes players, the movie tells a tale as inspiring as it is sad - but what keeps the whole thing buoyant is the mad genius on view in both the words and performances of the likes of D.O.A., The Viletones, Teenage Head and all the rest of this Scene of gloriously talented purveyors of fuck-you-and-the-horse-you-fucking-rode-in-on. Some of those interviewed keep playing, others have morphed their love of music into other areas of the music business while some have chosen to grow up and get real jobs - and it's a testament to the obsessive qualities of the filmmaking itself that it's simply impossible to NOT like anyone in the picture.

Some of the interview highlights for me were poignant moments with the late Frankie Venom of Teenage Head, the brilliant, erudite Andy Paterson of The Government and without question, the vitriol-and-venom spewing Steve Leckie from the Viletones - a poet, an artist, a gentleman curmudgeon of the highest order.

The Last Pogo Rides Again definitely feels like a Joseph-Conrad-like boat ride into some kind of Hell that always feels like a Heaven as imagined by Anton LaVey. Brunton and Papputs are the two halves of Willard on a mission that seems to have no real end. And if there is a heart of darkness on display, a Kurtz, if you will, it feels like every Status Quo fuck-wad that ignored this exciting scene.

And it's an important film.

So much of Canada's truly vibrant culture has been squashed or ignored. Here's a film that holds up a slice of it that not only created great work in and of itself, but was an inspiration and seed for so much that followed in a variety of artistic mediums.

Never mind the cornucopia of great artists, filmmakers, writers, playwrights, actors and other truly gifted iconoclasts who sprouted from Toronto's Punk Scene - they're out there, doing their thing - they know who they are and so do we. But a word about the visionary Colin Brunton: he might well be the true soul and pulse of indie filmmaking in the Toronto Scene and even to this day, one feels his visionary influence upon the first two great rock pictures directed by Bruce McDonald. Roadkill and Highway 61 feel very much like they're as much Brunton's sensibilities as they are McDonald's. What sets Brunton apart from most film producers in Canada is that he doesn't come from some bullshit rarified place - he's the real thing. He's been there. He's done that. And all his collaborations feel like they're moulded and charged by his love for film, his knowledge of ALL the rules - artistically AND practically - so he can motherfucking break them when necessary and finally, his genuine life experience which he injects into every project he undertakes.

He's all over The Last Pogo Jumps Again, but he clearly has a collaborator in Paputts that shares this crazy-ass vision. They clearly make a great team because they've made a great movie.

See it. Or die, motherfucker!

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

"The Last Pogo Jumps Again" is available on DVD and can be purchased HERE