TRAGICALLY HIP: No Dress Rehearsal

yeah my first road trip as a manager with a band signed to a label the first place I went to was Halifax in this very special episode of the eth podcast we are discussing The Tragically Hip no dress rehearsal a new four-part documentary for Amazon Prime we were lucky enough to speak to the director Mike Downey and the exact producer Jake gold The Tragically Hip no dress rehearsal features candid behind the scenes archive from across the decades and captures the voices of some of Canada's biggest stars and the emotional connection they have to the music the documentary will be screening at the festival and director and exec producer Mike and Jake will both be attended we've done we've done a few of these but um Mike and I if if youve you haven't seen the film yet or the series but um uh you know I signed the band with my partner Alan Greg back in ' 86 and I managed them for 17 years and then we split and then I came back into the picture in 2020 uh after gourd's passing and basically to look after the Legacy and you know keep the thing going and one of the things that was important was uh you know telling this band story um you know there had been a documentary talk uh telling the story of the final tour but never really the story telling story from the B of the band from way back when and from the beginning and um Mike having had you know tons and tons of experience making documentary films and actually had made his first documentary with the band back in 1993 uh it was sort of a natural and Mike contacted me when I came back in and said you know we got to do this and I said you're right um and I went to the van and said okay you know we want to make this documentary um Mike wants to do it and I think the band felt trust and comfort and knew that Mike was would make something of quality and uh I think that was important to them that they could trust the person that they were working with to tell their story so that's really how it came about this was back in 2020 so then we went about Mike and his team put together the pitch and the pitch doc uh document and um we went around talking to people and um the people at Prime in La were the most excited about it and uh and also were the ones that basically said um uh you know you make your film I remember we were sitting here one night the two main guys out of Los Angeles were in town they came over to to where I am now we sat on our on my Terrace with Mike the four of us and they said look you know we want you to make your film we're not in the middle of interested in getting in the middle of any of this stuff but uh you make your film and that was probably besides the fact that they were going to you know um Finance uh a pretty large project you know when you think about 4 or one hours and tons of music and tons of Music clearances and you know tons of uh uh uh footage and Licensing of all that footage for all those years you know we're almost talking 40 years to stop the fact that they on the creative side were willing to let Mike do his thing I think was the Tipping Point for us to go yeah like these are the guys we have to go with because Mike's made a lot of docs over the years and he can fill you in on the difference between someone letting you is sort of complete your vision versus someone having their hands in every single frame that you do so Mike uh obviously this this band is an institution and means so many things to so many people um in terms of your vision where did you start you know the thing about this story is um obviously having lived it um really from those first conversations I sketched out uh four episodes it just made sense to me like I could sort of see this almost like on a graph of all things but you know the the early you know build the rocket episode one rocket takes off gets into you know outer space episode two rocket gets bumpy episode three I don't know what episode four is it lands but I I could just see that crash landing let's just call it that when I just started you know from our first conversation I saw four episodes these kind of things do you have a decision is it going to be a linear storytelling or or or are we going to you know move things around and we did a little bit um the first episode and the fourth episode but I kind of felt that their story is so strong like you just needed to don't get in the way like tell it as best as you can as accurately as you can as honestly as you can and this was another part of the early conversation with Jake and I and the band which was this has to be the full story warts and all this has to be all the things that that you know obviously weren't a part of the storytelling while the band was you know doing like releasing records and and doing all these great things because these were these were more personal some of the inner workings of the band and so you know you put all that together and for me it was just so clear that you know just tell this story with honesty with emotion um and you know leate singer is my brother um that could be a hindrance or that could be you know uh a real advantage and and we were very clear that we were going to make this an advantage in other words you know um there's nothing that I can't hear about about my brother like you don't need to you don't need to edit yourself and I think in many ways it ended up working the way that we had hoped uh we was people were really honest there weren't you know if there was something that was maybe you know sensitive well they're telling it the director of the film is asking the question but they're answering it to if it's about gour they're answering it to his brother so there's no you know like question about is this something um that doesn't isn't appropriate um so yeah I I think that you know um there's so many things about this band that you know when you look at their story and you know I've done a lot of documentaries and often you get really good story elements but you have to kind of work with them a little bit for example you have five guys in a band four of them go to the same high school well then you just kind of don't mention that one went to the other high school but all five went to the same high school they were all there at the same time like it's um and the way that the band sort of you know these two High School bands sort of merged and sort of created this University band The Tragically Hip you know all these elements were there um and you really didn't need to there was no massaging required when they went to get management they got Allan Greg and Jake gold you know like an incredible uh you know Duo from Toronto we're small town Guys these are Big City guys you know like all the elements were there so it really was you know like don't don't um you know don't overthink it tell a good story tell it as you know accurately tell it openly and honestly and that's what we did you know Mike's family whole family in it his two sisters and his brother and his mom for that matter um getting them to be really open and honest I think was a lot easier uh for them with knowing they're talking to their brother so they're knowing they're talking to the guy that they'd be telling the same thing whether the cameras were on or not and I think that's a really important part of this story um uh and I think it was an important part of the story even with the guys because the guys grew up with Mike too I kind of felt like um you did an amazing job uh depict in and making me feel as a viewer like I was kind of going to Kingston during that era the high school scene um the way used the archive um from the from the time uh and in terms of photos and video and I kind of felt like Kingston was a real character in that first episode yeah you that's it Kingston is a character and needed to be a character in the documentary and um and I would take it a little further um that first episode is is a love letter to Kingston um and there are there are some elements in there that I you know that there were you know notes that came back and maybe a little too much maybe a little too much Kingston but it needed to be so much um that we establish in the first episode comes back it's it's really you know the storytelling is is circular um and it's going to blow your mind I think by the time you get to the end of episode four just how circular the story is I can't say it any better than Dan Arro oh Kingston yeah that town between on the down the 41 between Toronto and Montreal no that's the town to built The Tragically and you know it just it's true it's true and also I think you know and it and it comes up in a few of the clips it it is also meant to be um in many ways a an homage to small town life uh because you know listen this this is this Toronto is is is you know a great City Halifax a great City so many of you know the people that end up calling at home come from somewhere else and and they bring with them I think in many cases these uh lessons and these strengths that they learn in this the you know what would you what would you say the safety or or the you know um you know from a small town from from the that so so yeah absolutely essential in that first episode um you mentioned Dan arroy and one of the things that um I loved was the the people like you know will arette you had uh Justin Trudeau you know you had these uh Canadian icons who were um willing to talk uh emotionally um and and I felt like they was I kind of got the impression that it wasn't hard to get them to talk but tell me you know when when you kind of initially said we were going to do this and you started reaching out to people what kind of reaction did you get um yeah well it was all it was very positive um and um yeah we definitely when it came to um you know the I don't know celebrity uh interviews if you will um we definitely did not try to cast it to have you know the For That Celebrity quoti if you will they all had relationships with the B the funny thing is is their relationships were there was two kind of relationships because Dan Arro is very very good friends with all the guys in the band and especially Johnny they uh they're very close um but will Arnette Jay barell were super fans of the band that never met that went to multiple multiple shows and never met the band H which really blew my mind uh and I didn't realize the depth of their love of until we interviewed until we interviewed them and uh but it then it it kind of madees sense will Arnette uh described the you know he first moved to New York uh and he would go see the hip shows and it was his connection back to Toronto back back to Canada because there' be other Canadians there and his friends would fly down from Toronto as well so it was kind of a like a homecoming that the hip were sort of facilitating and the same thing when he moved to LA so it it his emotion is you know as somebody who was really touched by by the music but it goes way deeper because it really for his you know living in the states for all these years it was one of the You Know ellic chords that you know sort of kept him connected to uh to Canada and and and Jay um we had uh we were working with a director for the um the video for ouch um of a song that we found when I came back in and and um Jay was cast as the main character in the video although we had never met him but when we went to issue the press release about the video coming out we asked him for a quote and he tells the story about um his first concert was seeing the hip at the Bell Center in 1995 and you're like wow like I didn't know that like we just cast him in the as as to play in the in the video um and then we realized oh this guy's a real fan and so when Mike and I were talking about people I said oh You' got to talk to cuz he's like a real fan and he's got a connection to the B but again never met the b in fact I think on Thursday will be the first time next Thursday will be the first time he's going to meet the band at the at the the premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival which is so odd when you think about it you know I to to come back to the the archive um obviously the wealth of documentary work you you had already done with a band mic and photos and um these kind of behind the scenes and on the road how did you approach that kind of must be a a huge archive that you have uh to to sift through to tell a story was that um I guess it was emotionally charged but also it was a a logistical task in terms of sorting what you wanted to tell the story I guess so one of the first things when I came back in is I called a friend of mine who um does basically what I do but he does it for the Beatles and I had called him and said okay you know for and he he also was a guy that worked with the band and uh he was our marketing guy at MCA records for our first two records and uh and I called him up right when I first came back in and I said okay what you know what advice do you would you give me he goes first figure out what you got then you'll know what to do with it so the first step was we needed to digitize all the music cuz so much of it was sitting on quarter inch inch cassette 24 trap tapes so I I went to the record company and we made a deal that they were going to digitize everything and then I brought in this company um uh that is a specialist in building archives um and they're out of Boston and they do tons and tons of really big artists and they literally go into they they just finished doing Russia's archive and you know de leopard and you know you name it and that's their specialty and they work with professional archivists and they literally come into your house or your storage lockers and they just grab everything and then they start to scan it and organize it and build it so that was almost a year process uh but the beauty of it and that was just ephemera that was not video or audio so we had the we had the record company doing uh audio and little bit of video that was found and these guys were doing the ephemera and you name it like every photo every newspaper article every contract like boxes and boxes of stuff and um so what they did is they built a digital version of it so Mike's team could literally Year bye or by idea it's like oh we're looking for a ticket stop oh you you search ticket stops and all the ticket stops come up you know and um but they also built the physical version and that sits in a in a uh secure two rooms in in the West End of the city um so if they found something online that they wanted to use they could go and pull it and know exactly where it was because the online version was barcoded to be able to access the the physical version so they could pull it and shoot it and everything else so this was all happening at the same time um which made it really easy for everybody to work with um and there and so now we're sitting with this giant archive physical but we also still have the digital version up there because we have other projects that we're doing and we have a book coming out um that really came from all the transcripts from the documentary um of the band telling the story in their words um and so you're you're we were able used that archive for a lot of things and it and and the value of it was indispensable to say the least Mike can talk about some of the the great video finds and some of the ones that he didn't find because those are as interesting as the ones you find yeah yeah uh and that that this started um well yeah I was just really I was so aware of uh what had been done over the years uh having done some of it myself a few music music videos earlier documentary that that Jake mentioned um but I was we also really aware of all the other things that happened so there was just a constant you know reaching out to to get filmmakers who had done some cases music videos um Don Allen from revolver did you know CBC special in 1992 they followed the band around for I think almost 18 months Jake and they went to the with them to the state so when you see them in the van that was shot by da Allen Sean Valentini the DP and Pete Henderson a really well-known director um and it was a treasure Trove we um had full access to that they also shot it on 16 millimet film and it was and you know that was a time where you know for the special they doing it would have been shot on beta it would have been on video for sure uh and they went the extra mile and shot it on felt we ended up eventually tracking down all the film cans uh that we were able to get at and uh so then but then there were other uh pieces there's a amazing bit of footage that a a super uh real hip fan Andrew uh track down it's backstage at Bishop's University somehow he got to the bar manager of Bishop's University in like 1986 he lives in California and he had film that they're all hanging out Johnny talks right to camera you know what are you looking at or something and and we actually tracked this guy down Andrew did and he still had the tape he was a he's in the film business it had been carefully stored um you know and and that was just another fine and then you know uh uh Don Smith uh who did produce the first two records uh was a bit of a shutter bug himself so he had a video camera in the studio with the band in Memphis it was Jake was the cameraman because he had and you remember video cameras were that was not this was not a household item back then this was a specialty expensive you know piece of equipment and Jake and Allen took a camera down with him and Allan had uh Allan Greg had uh put all of his archive uh into the Queen's archive a number of years ago and in my conversation with him said oh you're you know you can get a list of everything I put in there there's some good stuff in there sure enough there's a videotape and that's a videotape from from them recording their first record in Memphis um so like that kind of you know it's one thing you know you got these great stories but if you don't you know if you don't have the material to back them up to to create the time travel it's really limited you know you end up with uh well you end up with Talking Heads or you know you end up with you know you're kind of borrowing from other places to make you know whatever close enough so to speak and yet time and time again especially in those first early records somebody had had a camera rolling and and um so th those were just you know incredible finds and then the one that I really the first call that I made when we started talking about doing this you know doing this documentary was my best friend who was a real video nut uh back in the 80s and he worked at a at a camera store in Kingston UD dougas Murray and he could sign out a video camera anytime he wanted and he shot a few really really uh early early gigs up the band so I called Hugh and I said hey Hugh time to get that box of tapes out of the basement and he said oh oh I lost those years ago they're all gone I'm like kidding it's like yeah I lost in a move I'm like oh but you know what he actually took some he took some amazing Stills and and he still have the envelope right you know the these documentaries they live and die on the archive what was your what feeling or what what emotions and kind of understanding do you want people to walk away from once they they finish uh the entire film um what was your intention for them to kind of uh have left behind in them well I I would say you know there's kind of there's a few different categories of people that we had in mind when we were making the film certainly three uh hardcore fan which we're very familiar with um a lot of them um casual fan you know um or yeah just regular fan if you will and then um the the nonan that you know either on somebody on the other side of the world or somebody who generationally missed it and so we kind of wanted all of them to um have you know have something that they were going to connect with and and I think I think we managed to do that you know for the hardcore fan I think we remind them yeah this this really this really was special like what you experienced your devotion was well warranted like it's all there now that you know deeper deeper stories um and then I think it's a reminder to to the regular fan casual fan that um this was a once- in a-lifetime kind of thing and and good that you know and and now you maybe realized there's a there's a lot there was a lot going on there there's a reason why this band was meaning so much there's a reason why the Canadian reaction to gord's illness and death was so dramatic because this the story is is so dramatic and so unique and so uniquely Canadian and then for the for the you know the the next generation of fans um it really I hope is you know it's the same kind of message it's like here's a story that you know on its own is a really great story it's you know it's iconic practically small town taking on you know you name it going around seeing the world and all of that oh by the way the music's fantastic so yeah really interesting story you know interesting music oh and the music doesn't really fit into a genre or time it actually doesn't and that this is you know one of the things that you know I guess it helped the band or or or hindered them at times because they weren't a part of a blossoming you know genre uh so uh oh there's one other thing their live performance is legendary so like for the non-fan there's a lot in there to digest and and I'm I'm most excited about you know it's one thing to say well what song should I listen to you know if if I'm talking to somebody on the other side of the world or someone who's just come upon it and and you know it's like well that's tough there's 14 Studio albums Jake um like there there's so much material so now I hope it's like well why do you watch a couple of episodes of this documentary and then you go off on your own you then now then you go and you find the music that really connects with you because you are going to find a lot of music and a lot of diversity and and something for everybody really so yeah I I I I'm really excited about you know get you know getting the hardcore fans you know them getting off uh remind you know getting the the Casual fans reawaken you know wake up to to what they experience and then the you know for the new fans they're the luckiest of all because it's all in front of them so and and part of it was um you know when you think about the final show in King in 2016 there was um you know 11,000 homes watched it but probably another couple I mean 11 million probably a couple probably a couple of um more million in in town squares you know and then another million in bars and places like that which don't count and then you got another million streamed it around the world um that was a generational it was soup toight you know you had 12-year-olds watching it with their parents and their grandparents and those 12-year-old kids remember they experienced something special but they weren't as connected to the music well now fast forward eight years later they're 20 and they're like oh I remember that night I remember that event I remember experiencing my family huddled together to watch this and the the the sort of emotional response from everybody watching it um now I have a chance to kind of understand why because I didn't really know why I was 11 12 years old at the time and I think that's kind of um at least in this country uh who we were saying to like hey this is why this and this is this is again back to the initial um uh uh uh intent which was you know why this band why this country well this is why this is why you you saw what you did when you were 11 and 12 years old here's why and here's why all of that happened that night you know and and the do doesn't end that night obviously um it it continues Beyond um but it was important for for us to be able to let let people see the why so how does it feel to be bringing The Tragically hyp no dress rehearsal uh to a this September I it goes without saying that we're really excited to be coming the Halifax you know like we've set these film festivals up it's a bit like um uh and I did get to go out on tour with the band back in 93 for a while but it really feels really appropriate to be taking this film uh you know to the different parts of the country um and getting people fired up and um you know just like the band did for all those years you know like just like they did at the Misty Moon 1990 uh you know in Halifax and and uh it we're really grateful that uh AF AI uh programmed us programmed all four episodes um yeah means you know Jake and I and Brent Hughes are are coming out to hallifax and and we're we're really excited about it so we're very grateful very grateful for yeah my first road trip as a manager with a band signed to a label the first place I went to was Halifax and we played a club called the network and back that back then you would come and play for a week at a club and so that was my first foray into being on the road as a manager with a band signed um was a week in Halifax uh so there's always been a really special uh place for us um uh and and like Mike says we're kind of taking this show on the road uh because we go Halifax and the next week we go to Calgary and a couple weeks later we go to Vancouver and then we we go to Windsor so we're we're doing our best to cover the country no that's amazing I know that this film will be a highlight of of the week of um of production and everything so thank you so much for your time and and joining us and hopefully I'll bump into you at the festival um it it'll be uh amazing to to see you all in Halifax yeah yeah was nice to meet [Music] you thank you for listening to the 2024 Atlantic International Film Festival podcast you can find out more about the events and book tickets by visiting Atlantic film festival.com 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