I can only imagine that it played fucking huge.
It was really rewarding and heart-melting to see so many people, and deliver this to them.
As I said to you off camera, I was not familiar with the show.
Image via SXSW
I sawBlackBerryand thought it was just so fantastic.
I was like, “I want to see what they’re doing next.”
I was really blown away by what you guys pulled off.
A lot of people aren’t going to be familiar with the show or the movie.
How have you been telling people about it?
We just don’t anymore.
Image via Universal Pictures
When people ask, What’s the movie you made about?
We just say time travel.
I can’t explain it."
Image by Photagonist
Our philosophy for us and all of our friends has just been to just not explain it.
McCARROL: I’m so jaded with explaining this show now, and I love it.
Telling people when they ask, like, What’s it called?
Image by Photagonist
It’s calledNirvanna the Band the Show.
It has nothing to do with Nirvana."
It’s like, “Goodbye.”
Image by Photagonist
I have to just leave.
JOHNSON: It’s always so disappointing.
Other people are just being like, I know it sounds stupid, but you should just watch it.
Image by Photagonist
You guys really, really made me laugh.
You do something about an hour in that I howled.
It’s in the Winnebago.
Image by Photagonist
JOHNSON: That’s a crazy moment.
We worked hard on that.
Isn’t that wild?
So people, check it out.
You do crazy stuff in this movie.
You’re making a movie, you’re involving real people.
Its really incredible what you pull off.
McCARROL: All the time.
JOHNSON: Well, let’s be gracious.
JOHNSON: It very rarely ruined things.
You’re all over the place.
Do you get permits, or do you just go for it?
Were not stopping the flow of commerce in a way that a real film would.
McCARROL: We’ve also developed a lot of tricks to just de-escalate the situation.
And he just melted, and he said, Oh, anything you guys need!
JOHNSON: Being from Canada helps a lot.
McCARROL: It’s little pieces that they’re seeing, too.
It’s never looking too dangerous.
It just looks bizarre.
So, it’s like, Is this wrong?
And by the time they’re figuring that out, we’re gone.
The duo explain how they managed this movie legally.
JOHNSON: Kerry Noonan, our production designer, rebuilt it exactly verbatim from the real pieces.
You make a joke in the movie about when someone’s doing the theme, Copyright.
My question is: How the F did you pull this off?
Legally, how were you able to pull this off?
JOHNSON: You’ve seenBlackBerry, right?
WithBlackBerry, we were using all the same tricks.
We have a really brilliant lawyer in California.
His name is Chris Perez.
I talked with him before I wrote the script for the film.
We will just amend until we can fit it.
It’s just never done that way.
We love this reaction, which is, How did you do that?
It seems like you broke the law.
That’s so thrilling.
Thats quite thrilling for an audience because it lets you know the movie’s out of control.
There’s a fucking great moment where you’re looking to give a shot to buy pliers.
JOHNSON: Oh, yeah, with that libertarian.
You know hes just amazing.
We have to get this.
I think the feeling of that actually makes it anti-funny.
JOHNSON: They can keep being themselves.
The joke is, “How could these people even believe that what they’re seeing is sincere?”
McCARROL: It slightly manipulates them, too.
We’re not really going in on any sort of punchline with them.
Theres no acting."
He can tell he’s dealing with people who are slightly gone.
CN Tower is a big part of this thing, and you go in through the lobby.
JOHNSON: We go in through security.
When you’re going in through security, you’re wearing stuff on your back.
JOHNSON: It’s crazy!
They didnt ask about the parachutes.
You’re wearing stuff that could be, like, a bomb pack!
JOHNSON: They’re so focused on the pliers that they don’t even notice the parachutes.
I’ll tell you the story behind that.
McCARROL: And then we would write a story about another way to get in.
Instead, now the movie is that we just went right in.
JOHNSON: The guy just let us.
Our only theory is that maybe he thought we were hunchbacks?
And maybe he thought it would be indelicate to say, “Your backs look quite big?”
You walk through the metal detector, so it didn’t set it off.
If you’d gone through the metal detector, and it set it off,thenit opens the door.
Until then, “Maybe they have medical conditions.”
And we had a huge locus of attention in those pliers.
When his boss cleared them, we were like, Okay, here we go.
McCARROL: Which is probably the most nefarious thing that’s gone through that metal detector, ever.
There are so many shots in this that I’m like, How did you do this?
I don’t want to ruin the movie for people, but I want to talk about specifics.
You’re on the roof of the CN Tower.
There’s stuff that I truly don’t understand how you got.
McCARROL: A lot of different tricks and sleight of hand went into that.
JOHNSON: That shot in particular wasveryhard to get.
VFX nowadays are incredible.
JOHNSON: Our VFX supervisor is a genius.
Weve been working with Tristan Zerafa sinceThe Dirties, and he’s extremely, extremely smart and careful.
People are going to laugh their ass off.
How did you decide on the title?
Was there a thought about, Well, this is a pretty long title?
JOHNSON: You’re asking all the right questions.
It was an internal debate with us for probably a decade, truly, about this exact title.
I paid the ticket.
There’s stuff that you do on Queen Street involving, let’s say, rope.
JOHNSON: That was a crazy sequence to shoot.
I don’t want to spoil it.
I will just say theres just again crazy shit in this movie.
How did you do that?
Then you have a girl laughing and smiling.
People are just letting you do that.
JOHNSON: The girl from France?
That was pretty wild.
Yeah, she was helping me.
[Laughs]
How is this happening?
Canada is a weird place.
JOHNSON: Well, it’s a multicultural city.
There are so many visitors during the day.
I think about half the downtown population are people who don’t live in Toronto.
Its a little bit like Washington, DC.
With that rope, and other things, how did you do all that?
You’re just watching Jay and I do it.
McCARROL: Youre not seeing off-screen sometimes.
There are some elements of trickery.
JOHNSON: There are a lot of things going on there.
What we love is having people react to it, because that’s half of it.
That’s another great example where it is just happening for real.
Jay is there watching it.
People are watching it.
JOHNSON: Which is the kind of stuff that is free, but other movies just can’t do.
You have a cut of the movie that you are pretty happy with.
You start showing it to people.
What did you learn from those screenings that impacted the finished film?
We do that a lot.
Have you screened it before SXSW?
JOHNSON: Many times.
What did you learn from those early screenings that impacted the film?
Did you make any big changes?
JOHNSON: We made millions of changes.
They’re completely different movies.
That is our process.
We test our own movies because we love the testing process.
It’s not like we’re looking for feedback either.
We don’t ask for feedback from the audiences.
You know what to do.
We have to change this.
JOHNSON: We even get new story ideas.
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