Movies for Mann kind

>> Canada's renegade documentarian Ron Mann gets a retrospective

by MATTHEW HAYS

In the past two decades, Canadian documentary filmmaker Ron Mann has become internationally renowned as a chronicler of alternative cultures. His '81 film Imagine the Sound is a fascinating and groundbreaking jazz feature, a project in which avant-garde artists discussed their art in detail in between their unedited performances. He also focussed on counter-cultural icons like Harry Crumb, Lynda Barry and William M. Gaines in his '89 feature Comic Book Confidential, a celebration of alternative comix art. With Twist ('92), Mann retold the early history of rock 'n' roll, tracing the co-opting of black culture by whites in the musical arena.

Mann has created a staggering body of work, highlighted this month in an exhaustive retrospective at the Cinémathèque québécoise. His progressive politics can be felt throughout, from his dramatic entry Flak, an environmental activist short he made at the wee age of 16, to his spoken-word homage Poetry in Motion, to his most widely-seen film Grass, which is nominated for a Best Documentary Genie at this year's awards (which will air Jan. 29). He has consistently distanced himself from his documentarian brethren, both aesthetically and politically. Mann spoke to the Mirror from his Toronto office.

Mirror: I look at the films that are being represented in your retrospective, you have such a huge range of topics that you focus on--

Ron Mann: Actually, it's funny, I don't see them as eclectic. But I see what you mean. I was at the Atlantic Film Festival, showing Grass, and I had some time on my own, so I walked around Halifax and I went into a jazz record store and bought a CD. I hand the guy my credit card, and he said, 'You're Ron Mann! Did you do Imagine the Sound?' And we had this conversation about avant-garde jazz. And then I went just a few stores down to a comic book store (usually the kind of stores that I go to are all in the same district) I bought a Classics Illustrated comic. And the guy said, 'I know who you are, you're Ron Mann, you did Comic Book Confidential!' And I was thrilled that he knew the movie and we started talking about comic books. Went out of the store and went into a hemp shop and of course the people there had all seen Grass the night before. None of the people had seen any of my other films, they just knew the jazz film or the comic-book film or the marijuana film. It was fascinating in a way because I make films about sub-cultures and those audiences are so appreciative of them. For me they're all about the same thing which is alternative culture.

Rethinking the '60s

M: So that's how you choose your topics?

RM: It didn't start out this way. I really made films about visionary artists I wanted to give recognition to. As well as to reveal hidden histories. I think those have been the two thrusts. When I did Imagine the Sound and Poetry in Motion, the context of making these films was the early '80s, when there was a reaction against the '60s culture. It was as if anything from the '60s was to be dismissed. It was the Right rewriting history. I felt a responsibility to set the record straight. A lot of my direction was steered by Emile de Antonio, the political documentary filmmaker, who I was friends with for 10 years. De's films were a look at the Cold War from the McCarthy period to when he died in '90. My films are more of a cultural history, more about the politics of culture.

If you go back to Flak, it's funny, because that film is so political, and it was made by a 16 year old! I just cast four friends in it who were older than I was. They decide they have to do something about this factory, which is causing so much pollution. It's really about how we went from such a political decade to such an apolitical one. I suppose my documentary work grew out of that too. So in a sense, I see a real through-line.

M: Your films are so closely aligned with that sensibility we associate with the '60s. Yet though your films have touched on social issues, in particular racism in Imagine the Sound and Twist, the closest you've come to making a social-issue film is Grass. Have you ever thought about making an outright social-issue film?

RM: I'm doing one right now with Woody Harrelson. Woody is going to be going down from B.C. to California riding a bicycle and talking to students about diet and yoga and getting off the grid--having a choice about what foods you eat. You don't have to necessarily buy from Proctor and Gamble. Woody told me that he'd love for me to film his lecture tour. He'll be going down on a bike, but he's going to be followed by a bus, and the bus is run on biodegradable fuel and solar power and there's a greenhouse on this bus. I've been transformed by diet and yoga in the past six months. I've lost about 40 pounds. I spent a year bingeing out--I made a film about grass, after all. I had a very healthy appetite. Now I've gone sort of the other way, to make choices about the kind of food I eat. I think more of us now are concerned about food safety. And mind-body harmony. What yoga does is bring a consciousness to the environment and a greater receptiveness to what you eat and what you wear. This film is really out to promote a lot of those ideas. The name of the film is Woody Harrelson's What Every Young Person Should Know. I think a lot of people feel good that there's a man like Woody out there doing these things, because I think we live in a certain denial, wearing Nike or Gap, drinking coffee at Starbucks, so I think a lot of people are happy to see someone not accepting it. It's a film about activism, really.

Rejecting idiot-box culture

M: You talk about De Antonio, is there another documentary filmmaker who's really influenced your style?

RM: No. It wouldn't be documentary. It would be Hollywood. I was a screenwriter for Ivan Reitman. From Imagine the Sound on, my effort has been to Hollywoodize the form. Because before Imagine the Sound, jazz films were never like that movie. Most jazz films had hand-held camera, smoky rooms, didn't care about sound quality, often cut the music off. What I tried to do with that film was to bring a certain elegance and opulence to the form. I tried to carry that through. I use dramatic story devices and humour all the time to try to get my points across. My influences have been cinema in general. I lived at the Roxy in Toronto for a while and just saw everything, from the B-movies of Roger Corman, whether it was Truck Stop Women, or Marguerite Duras. What I loved about the cinema was cinema.

Something I didn't want to do was TV journalism, because TV just struck me as such a trash can. That's why there's always sort of a tension when I'm around other documentary filmmakers. I have nothing to do with them. And I don't like their films, actually. I was just at a documentary film festival in Amsterdam and it was the first time I've ever been to one that was specifically for documentaries. Most of the documentaries today lack a voice. They've become a product.

M: You've managed to make documentaries that have been commercially viable. What do you think it is that sets your films apart from other documentaries that don't manage to make money?

RM: Well, essentially that they're not TV documentaries. My films are essays. I've always had a literary or academic approach to my work. I've always seen taking on a film as a post-graduate thesis. A TV documentarian has to get it on at six o'clock that night. I can spend two years in the archives to build the best argument I can. I feel it's a real responsibility to get these things right, it's a responsibility to the artists and to history. So I feel I have to get it right.

I think I use humour, which is a good tool to make points with. MAD Magazine really shaped me. There was a MAD Magazine cover that said, "Think." That magazine sent a message out to the counter culture, and that was to think for yourself. MAD helped me to learn to use humour to make a point. MAD and De Antonio.

The Ron Mann Retrospective runs at the Cinémathèque québécoise from Jan. 17-28. See repertory listings for showtimes