Blue Rodeo: Lost Together and It’s All Gonna Break will screen at Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema.
By Nick Krewen
Special to the Star
In the next 10 days, new documentaries on two beloved Canadian bands will have their Toronto premieres at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema.
They promise to be music to your eyes.
On Jan. 24, Stephen Chung’s 89-minute It’s All Gonna Break, the story of Toronto indie collective Broken Social Scene, screens at 7:30 p.m. with a band Q&A that night, followed by another screening on Jan. 25 at 6 p.m.
Then, on Feb. 1, Blue Rodeo: Lost Together, Dale Heslip’s 88-minute celebration of the legendary country rockers, screens at 7 p.m., followed by a Q&A. It’s also screening there on Feb. 2 and 22 and will enjoy a brief cross-country rollout at Cineplex theatres on Feb. 2 and 3, before airing on CBC’s Documentary Channel at the end of the month.
Both films exploit anniversaries: one of the themes of It’s All Gonna Break is the 20th anniversary of Broken Social Scene’s landmark 2002 sophomore album, You Forgot It in People; and Feb. 8 marks the 40th anniversary of Blue Rodeo’s first gig at the Rivoli.
Both bands sprouted in Toronto, but that’s where the similarities end. While Blue Rodeo leaders Greg Keelor and Jim Cuddy always intended to give the music business a go — first as early-’80s power-poppers Hi-Fi’s and eventually as a band that has sold more than eight million albums — Broken Social Scene, which over the years has had more than two dozen members come and go, began as something of a pipe dream.
“It was a plan, but it was a very loose plan, that just kept morphing and still continues to morph into what it is today,” said core member Brendan Canning during a recent interview.
According to filmmaker Stephen Chung, a pal who routinely shot footage of the band from the very beginning, the project was originally rejected by the group’s principals when he sent them a rough cut back in 2007.
“They put it to me in a way that I just couldn’t push back on at all,” Chung told the Star, adding that he was initially disappointed by the decision. “It’s still kind of unclear to me what exactly was going on with them that they said, ‘No.’
Canning said it was that the story needed more time to bake in the oven.
“It didn’t seem like a movie,” Canning explained. “It just didn’t seem fully realized. I think Stephen was trying to figure out what story he was trying to tell.
“To be honest, back then, I’m not sure if six or seven years into a band’s career is the time to look back and reminisce on all the good times, especially when you’re struggling. Your relationships take their toll when you’re all travelling together, spending unhealthy amounts of time with one another, and you’re trying to strive towards some sort of creative goal when maybe you don’t always see eye to eye. And now you’re supposed to look back and be like, ‘Oh yeah, those were good times, man.’
“Whereas now, there have been a lot more lives lived. The story makes more sense.”
There were certainly a lot of lives involved in the making of the album, as Chung captured Canning, co-founder Kevin Drew, Apostle of Hustle’s Andrew Whiteman, Do Make Say Think’s Charles Spearin, Stars’ Evan Cranley, Raising the Fawn’s John Crossingham, Metric’s Jimmy Shaw and drummer/percussionist Justin Peroff, with Leslie Feist and Metric’s Emily Haines lending their voices. (Stuart Berman, author of the band biography This Book Is Broken and a Toronto Star contributor, consulted on the documentary.)
Chung said that some of the archival footage made it to the new cut of It’s All Gonna Break. “Basically, the film now is the film back then framed with interviews from today. It brings it full circle because I get to have time and distance and some perspective and so does the band. It’s a much better product today.”
As the band matured, the musicians and their entourage began to lead separate lives as they assumed such adult responsibilities as mortgages and raising kids, and Chung was no different.
But it was the pandemic that enabled him to resurrect the project.
“We had moved from house to house, dragging these boxes of tapes and hard drives around,” he noted. “COVID hit in 2020. I stopped working for the first time and I finally had a chance to just sit and figure out, what am I gonna do with my time? I started meditating and this box of tapes just kept knocking on the ceiling from the basement saying, ‘Hey, remember us?’”
Chung called Drew in England, and within two minutes the musician gave his blessing. Then it took a year to get financing together.
Now that it’s out, Canning — who hints that Broken Social Scene may be releasing an album soon — approves of the film and is appreciative of Chung’s efforts.
“I like it,” said Canning. “It’s funny having a little peep at your career in the rear-view mirror. I can’t not be grateful for Stephen being there, capturing pretty crucial moments of our lives.
Chung, who credits the support of his wife, Andrea Menzies, with helping to get the film done, said he’s thrilled to preserve the legacy of You Forgot It in People.
“Everything aligned,” he said. “That is such a perfect record, in my opinion. It caught fire. I think the band’s finding a wider multi-generational audience, because it’s just one of those records that I don’t think is going to go away.”
Back to the Rodeo
Blue Rodeo has been around much longer than Broken Social Scene’s 26 years — and one of Lost Together director Heslip’s chief challenges was cramming 40 years of history into 88 minutes.
Heslip, whose association with the band goes back to 1987, when he designed the cover of their debut album, Outskirts, first reached out to Cuddy and Keelor with a film treatment in 2019, and once they agreed to participate, spent five years sorting out the financing.
“That’s the nature of documentary,” he said. “It is never a straightforward, easy road.”
Heslip’s mandate for the film was to illustrate the half-century bond between Keelor and Cuddy. “Jim and Greg met in high school,” Heslip said. “That started on a football field. And they’ve managed to keep that bond going. They made that pact back on the highway drive from Queens (University) to form a band, and they’ve never looked back. Our intention was to try and get that relationship on camera.
“Our mission was to define that love affair on camera, and I think we managed to do that when we shot them up at Jim’s farm. When it was just the two of them, they were fantastic: they’ve got this cynical, almost self-deprecating kind of humour, but they know how to make each other laugh.”
Heslip does an amazing job of chronicling Blue Rodeo’s initial history and original lineup, which lasted two albums, Outskirts and 1989’s Diamond Mine and included co-founder Bazil Donovan on bass, Bobby Wiseman on keyboards and Cleave Anderson on drums. Especially insightful are lengthy interviews with Donovan and Wiseman.
But for completists looking to learn about the entire Blue Rodeo saga, musicians who joined the band throughout several incarnations are either omitted or just seen briefly in video or performance snippets.
And although the band has released 16 albums, the documentary only covers the period up to the sixth one, 1995’s Nowhere to Here.
“We took it right up to Nowhere to Here, because that’s where the band’s internal crisis was starting to show,” Heslip explained, admitting that his doc could have benefitted from an additional 30 minutes, but his hands were tied.
“The CBC told us it had to be 88 minutes. We had no choice.”
The film does feature some modern elements, jumping ahead to cover Keelor’s health issues, as well as recent accolades he and Cuddy have received (including their induction into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame). The current lineup of Keelor, Cuddy, Donovan, drummer Glenn Milchem, keyboardist Mike Boguski and guitarists Colin Cripps and Jimmy Bowskill perform several songs in an intimate setting, serving as a sinewy soundtrack for the film.
Keelor said he’s very pleased with the final cut.
“I think it’s a great documentary,” he told the Star. “I like that (Heslip) kept the focus on the band and he didn’t really get into the melodramas.
“There’s a few stories that I told just about my own … life events. I’m glad that most of it was discarded and they just focused on the Blue Rodeo train going down the tracks.”
Keelor said that the film’s biggest revelation for him was his impact on his bandmates.
“I guess I was surprised about my effect on everybody in the band,” he conceded. “I didn’t think that what I did affected people that greatly.”
He also laughed when asked to explain Blue Rodeo’s longevity, as these days, the band seems to be more popular than ever.
“I have no idea,” Keelor responded. “We got into the fabric of people’s lives at a certain point — we sort of stayed there. And we’re lucky that our fans played our music on family trips and their kids liked us too. We’re two or three generations deep into the fabric of Canadian music and culture.”
And there’s more to come: in addition to a couple of 40th-anniversary-related compilations, Keelor suggested that new music may be on the horizon.
“Jim and I were talking on the phone the other day and think that maybe it is time to do a new record.”