It seems that the last 100 (and change) years of commercialization have caused our society to associate the medium of film with its economic output, which of course, like with all art, has become inseparable from it. But there was a time before box office numbers and streaming sales when filmmakers simply put to screen the dreams they saw in their minds.  

Georges Méliès’ 1902 film “A Trip to the Moon” is so striking and memorable simply for the fact it represents an incredible realization of artistic vision so soon after the medium of film came into being. It was as though Méliès was able to project the dreams right out of his head and onto the screen. A magician by trade, Méliès’ was one of the first great artists to push the newly birthed medium to its limits. Since no color film was available, he contacted Élisabeth and Berthe Thuillier, who ran a coloring lab in Paris where over 200 women would painstakingly hand paint films color by color and frame by frame, including several of Méliès’ films throughout the years. Méliès’ was also an early special effects wizard, one of the first to make sci-fi and fantasy films, and films using artificial lighting instead of sunlight, all while starring in many of the films he made and continuing to run his theater. 

It’s easy to believe that era is behind us, especially at a time when Hollywood studios and steaming giants (what’s the difference?) seem content to churn out flatly-lit sequels and endless seasons of popcorn-fodder shows that everyone will watch but few will actually enjoy, let alone feel challenged by or think critically about (cough, cough Stranger Things). Film, like many artistic mediums before it, reached its pinnacle long ago and it’s been a slow downslope since. There will be more great works, but they will never surpass what’s already been done. It’s over… but then you get struck by lightning, or rather a time-traveling Winnebago gets struck by lightning.  

“Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie” is the latest offering from Director Matt Johnson and one that feels like a jolt of electricity running up your spine. It’s got heart, comedy, drama, and chaos to spare, but more than that it feels the way that “A Trip to the Moon” does, like a dream come to life. There’s a refreshing purity of artistic expression to NTBTSTM unlike so many modern movies, which, even with auteur directors behind the camera, feel noticeably bogged down by either fear, studio interference, or both. Johnson, on the other hand, is one of the most fearless and innovative directors working today.  

While American audiences who missed out on 2023’s biographical period drama “Blackberry” may be getting their first taste of what Matt Johnson has to offer, our neighbors to the north must have seen this as an inevitability. A Toronto native, Johnson first gained notoriety through the web series “Nirvanna the Band the Show,” which premiered online in 2008. The series follows the fictional Nirvanna the Band (not to be confused with the band Nirvana) comprised of frontman Matt Johnson (sound familiar?) and pianist Jay McCarrol, Johnson’s roommate and best friend, as they concoct and execute hairbrained schemes aimed at landing them a gig at the local dive bar/music venue The Rivoli. Johnson and McCarrol co-created the mockumentary series where they starred as fictionalized versions of themselves.  

While some parts of the show’s style and humor have failed to stand the test of time, many of its core attributes reflect Johnson’s greatest strengths as a filmmaker, one of which is his reliance on his actors, himself included. Working in the low budget cinema arena, performers are often called upon to carry a project that doesn’t have the luxury of supplementing those performances with special effects or action sequences (although Johnson is great at finding creative ways to do both). Johnson’s films often revolve around themes of friendship, trust, and creativity and rely heavily on the relationships between characters.  

A perfect example is 2013’s “The Dirties”, Johnson’s feature debut, which he wrote, produced, directed, edited, and starred in. Like nearly all of Johnson’s work, it features a main character also named Matt Johnson who is obsessed with movies and sets out to make his own, typically to very little success. The film centers around the relationship between Matt and Owen (portrayed by Owen Williams), two best friends working on a project for their film class where they take violent revenge on their high school bullies, a group known as “the dirties”. The film perfectly encapsulates the emotional rollercoaster of teenage friendship and the devastating impact of bullying. What starts out as a straightforward high school comedy takes a dramatic and eventually tragic turn in the film’s final act which elevates the story to a poignant commentary. 

The film draws heavy stylistic influence from the mockumentary and found-footage trends that dominated the 2000’s but with a distinctly Johnson-Esque feeling to it. Unlike most fictional films, a large portion of the people in Johnson’s work aren’t acting and more often than not, they’re not even aware they’re on camera. “Nirvanna the Band the Show”, which was revived as a full television series by now defunct Canadian television network Viceland in 2017, accomplished this by filming Matt and Jay interacting with average Torontonians from down or sometimes across the street to hide the fact that they were filming at all. The actors would wear hidden microphones to capture sound. “The Dirties” on the other hand filmed inside a real Canadian high school where the students had no idea what was going on. Matt and Owen were allowed to go to class flanked by cameras and capture how real teenagers reacted to every part of what they were doing, including when they were being bullied.  

While you may say to yourself “okay, so what? Isn’t that just like Borat?”, the difference between Matt Johnson and Sacha Baron Cohen is at who’s expense the joke is being made. Even though Borat is a stupid character, Cohen uses that to make fun of the people he interacts with by forcing them to play along. By contrast, Matt Johnson (both the real person and the fictional character) is always the butt of the joke but more importantly, humor is always an unintended consequence rather than an objective. Instead, Johnson uses these moments to forward the story and uncover powerful moments of empathy and human connection. These people don’t see Matt Johnson, they see a guy coming to them in earnest and asking for help, which is partially why Johnson attributes so much of his success to working in Canada.  

That brings us to yet another facet of Johnson’s continued success, his intense patriotism. He’s open about the fact that he thinks Canada is the greatest country in the world and speaks with genuine emotion about how depressing it is that the true marker of success for many Canadians is to emigrate. 2023’s “Blackberry” serves as Johnson’s great big reminder that the smartphone was invented in Canada, by Canadians. As a filmmaker myself who wants nothing more than to be able to stay in Denver despite nearly every single person telling me how terrible an idea that is, it’s refreshing to see a filmmaker of Johnson’s stature preaching about making and taking pride in art about where you are, and where you’ve been. 

Johnson’s second film, 2016’s “Operation Avalanche”, turned its attention from school shooters to conspiracy theorists with a period thriller about two low-level CIA operatives, Matt and Owen (again portrayed by Johnson and Williams), who are tasked with faking the 1969 moon landing. The film appears to me as a love letter to the idea of movie making in general and the magic that occurs when an audience agrees to simply accept what they are seeing in front of them as opposed to questioning the reality they are presented. For most people who have been watching movies their entire life, this seems stupid to even discuss, but it’s a huge part of filmmaking and an incredibly challenging one to get right. Most big budget movies have teams for continuity, costumes, sets, effects (both digital and practical), and sound design to ensure (hopefully) that your immersion is never broken. You tend to notice it a lot more in low-budget, amateur, or student films when the sound of footsteps doesn’t line up with an actor’s walking pace or when you catch a glimpse of the camera operator in a mirror. Often you may not be able to point out exactly what’s wrong when this happens, just that something is wrong. 

This could easily be the case with many of Johnson’s films, which are often cut together from hours of improvised scene work, not to mention the stock and archival footage that help to bridge the gaps in a film like “Operation Avalanche”. Making a period piece is neither a small nor an inexpensive feat, but Johnson makes it look like child’s play. An early road trip montage seamlessly blends stock footage from the time period with footage filmed by Johnson’s crew inside a period-accurate car. It’s a stroke of genius that blends fiction with reality so well that you’d forgive audience members unfamiliar with Johnson’s work for wondering if what they are watching is a real documentary shot in the 60s (which, in a way, they are, much of the archival footage used is from Canadian documentaries filmed in the 60s).  

Much like the fictional Matt in “Operation Avalanche”, the real Matt Johnson understands that the most important thing is never giving the audience a reason to believe that what they’re seeing isn’t real. This ethos carries Johnson far, especially in his most recent films “Blackberry” and “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie”, where he’s taken it to even further creative and legal extremes. In “Blackberry”, Johnson uses everything from movies to video games to Apple keynotes featuring some of the most famous and often litigious intellectual property of all time, and he does it all without informing any of the copyright holders and without paying them a cent.  

You’ve probably heard the term ‘fair use’ thrown around before, especially if you watch a lot of YouTube. It’s a legal doctrine that protects against the use of copyrighted material if that material is being transformed or commented upon. The opening credits of “Blackberry” play over a montage of different pop culture depictions of what would come to be known as the smartphone before it existed with Johnson’s overarching argument throughout the movie, the one that allows him to take advantage of all of this copyrighted material, being that “nerd culture”, specifically the video games, movies, and board games of the 80s and 90s, had profound effects on the engineers, programmers, and hardware developers who would go on to pioneer the first smartphones.  

Johnson uses similar tricks to both hilarious and heartfelt effect in NTBTSTM, with copious references to the “Back to the Future” series being the most obvious. This is yet another throughline in Johnson’s work that defines him as a filmmaker; his ability to pay homage to the films which his art is indebted to without losing their own voice. Often, artists can get caught up in referential humor, parody, or satire to the degree that it limits the art from achieving its full potential, whereas Johnson consistently does the opposite. The references inform and elevate the filmmaking while still allowing Johnson’s unique voice and style to shine through and drive his films to new heights.  

Similarly, although most of Johnson’s work is shot in the mockumentary style, he deftly avoids the many pitfalls of the genre others have often succumbed to. Many will remember the late seasons of “The Office” where the documentary crew which had supposedly been filming all along was brought through the fourth wall and into the story in a way that for me, and I suspect many others, felt subtly wrong in some way. Johnson avoids this by mimicking amateur video rather than the reality television that shows like the pioneering “Arrested Development” tried to emulate. 

 Johnson never tries to convince his audience that what they’re watching was filmed by some unseen professional film or television crew with a big budget (especially because some of the time it certainly is not), but rather leans into the idea that the people in front of and behind the camera are inherently intertwined. Whereas many mockumentaries want to capture the scene in a subjective view while remaining outside of it, Johnson, as both a filmmaker and a character within his own films, references the camera and its operator, often by name, as Jared. Jared Raab is a longtime collaborator of Johnson and his primary cinematographer dating back to the original NTB web series. Raab deserves a similar amount of credit for pioneering the pervasive style of Johnson’s films, which can sometimes feel more akin to YouTube videos, where the subjects routinely address the camera without impacting the immersion of the audience. While it may seem trivial, this is yet another example of Johnson’s acute awareness of what his audience will tolerate. Even within this environment, there are rules. In NTBTSTM, the camera is never expectant. If Matt and Jay walk into a room, the camera isn’t pointed at the door in anticipation, it’s sitting on a table or hanging at the operator’s side and must react to find them after they enter. It’s a subtle touch that you probably wouldn’t notice the first or even second time you watch the film, but it makes a subconscious difference for an audience member.  

Aside from all the technical aspects, Matt Johnson is not only pushing the limits of what is possible for low budget or independent films, but doing so while making some of the most deeply impactful, personal, and relevant films of the last decade. “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie” feels like a culmination of everything Matt Johnson does so well, it’s referential and silly all over but it’s also a heartfelt piece about friendship, creative ambition, and what it means to be successful executed tactfully in surprising and satisfying ways. If you missed it in theaters earlier this year, I hesitate to tell you much about it because I think there is value in seeing a movie like this blind. The film is now available for rent or purchase on digital platforms, and a Blu-Ray edition will be out in May, which will hopefully answer the question that pretty much everyone who has seen this movie has: How in the hell did they do that?