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Director’s Cut: Michael Dowse
Director’s Cut, Torontoist’s series of TIFF filmmaker profiles, gives you the skinny on some of the legendary directors and more freshly minted masters at this year’s festival.
Mike Dowse on the set of Fubar II. Still courtesy of TIFF.
Name: Michael Dowse
Nationality: Canadian
Film: Fubar II
Program: Midnight Madness
Born: April 19, 1973 in London, Ontario, Canada
Selected Filmography: Fubar (2002), It’s All Gone Pete Tong (2004), Young Americans (forthcoming)
Besides being one of those films perched high atop lists of “Movies Containing the Most Foul Language,” Michael Dowse’s breakout hit Fubar retains the less dubious distinction of being probably the most popular Canadian cult film ever. Though TIFF originally snubbed the film when it was submitted for consideration in 2001, Fubar went on to premiere in one of the highly coveted Park City at Midnight spots at Sundance, received a robust theatrical release courtesy of Alliance/Atlantis (where Dowse, who trained as an editor while studying Communications at the University of Alberta, used to cut together trailers), and emerged on DVD as the kind of consistently hilarious, unabashedly bawdy comedy that rewards (many) multiple viewings.
The story of Pilsner-glugging, hockey-haired greasers Terry (David Lawrence) and Dean (Paul Spence), Fubar possessed the ragged, low-budget charms of John Cassavettes and the searing immediacy of Werner Herzog. As in Herzog’s best films, Fubar emits a strong sense of the adventure of its own making, even though it’s more cliff-jumping cannonballs and parking lot boxing matches than trekking deathward down the Amazon River or dragging a thirty-two-tonne steamer over a hill.
Now Dowse and Fubar have had their revenge on TIFF, with the much-anticipated sequel kicking off the Midnight Madness on September 9. Fubar II sees Terry and Deaner decamping to Fort McMurray to land cushy jobs on the oil fields, pitching these loafing headbangers well out of their element. Early critical rumblings about the film have proved positive, but Fubar II must hold itself to the expectations of a harsher tribunal: its rowdy, piss-drunk legions of devoted fans. If you have tickets to the midnight screening, you must arrive well equipped to sufficiently give’r.
Fubar II premieres Thursday, Sept 9 at 11:59 p.m. at the Ryerson theatre as part of the Midnight Madness program. For other screening times, check out the festival’s website.
Want more TIFF 2010? Torontoist’s complete coverage of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival is all right here.