SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
"Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie" is a new movie by Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol. And if you can categorize it at all, it's a kind of time travel mock mockumentary about two Toronto musicians who dream of playing a club there called The Rivoli, if they could get the chance.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "NIRVANNA THE BAND THE SHOW THE MOVIE")
MATT JOHNSON: (As Matt) Good evening, folks. What you're about to see is something you've never seen before. We are Nirvanna the Band, and you are about to be sent to the moon. And then I do my two-step. And this is just no talking, just - like, they just get to watch me move.
SIMON: Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol - who have, in fact, created Nirvanna the Band - with three N's, by the way - as a web series and a television series, as well as the acclaimed 2023 film "BlackBerry," which Mr. Johnson directed - join us now from Toronto. Thank you both very much for being with us.
JOHNSON: Thank you for having us.
JAY MCCARROL: Thank you for having us. It's an honor to be on NPR.
SIMON: How do you explain this film to anybody?
MCCARROL: (Laughter).
SIMON: Can I ask you to begin, Matt Johnson?
JOHNSON: Of course. You know, it's actually a huge challenge, but I got to say that it has been one of the enduring qualities of this project. The more that you try to pitch it to somebody, the more repulsed and stupid...
SIMON: (Laughter).
JOHNSON: ...It sounds. I think it has to do with a kind of youthful arrogance of thinking that these guys could call their band Nirvanna the Band and that that could be a suitable comedy premise. And it stuck with us. And now that it's been 20 years since we first began it, it almost is like the barrier to entry is an important part of joining the club.
SIMON: When we meet you both in this film, it is in a shared house with a lot of unpaid bills that are open and scattered around. Where are you in life when we meet up with you? Jay, if we could begin with you.
MCCARROL: Well, we've always played these naive, young boys, pretty much, that are having trouble growing up and failing to launch. And I think it's even funnier now that we are the age we are at and still stuck here. So it allowed us to really dig into the arrested development themes that we've always explored with these two Peter Pans. And you're dropping into a house where these guys have not grown up yet.
SIMON: I got to ask a protection question. Your duo hatch a plan to skydive from CN Tower into the SkyDome - Rogers Centre, if you please - where the Toronto Blue Jays play.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "NIRVANNA THE BAND THE SHOW THE MOVIE")
JOHNSON: (As Matt) We, during a game, go up the CN Tower - (vocalizing)...
MCCARROL: (As Jay) I don't even think you can get up to the very top.
JOHNSON: ...(As Matt) Jump - (yelling) ah - into the open dome. Whole crowd's going to go insane, 'cause, like, what is this, a terrorist attack?
MCCARROL: (As Jay) Actually. We're coming in - we're going to have the peace signs...
JOHNSON: (As Matt) OK. Hold on. Hold on.
MCCARROL: ...(As Jay) As we float in
SIMON: I don't want to give away at what happens, but it looks like you actually jump. Did you?
JOHNSON: We did not expect to get let through security with those wire cutters and the parachutes. And so, once we were through, we just had to go with it.
SIMON: Oh, my. Look, in addition to that, one of the film's great performances is from an employee at Canadian Tire store. Tell us about that encounter. He's quite entertaining and sagacious.
MCCARROL: He...
JOHNSON: (Laughter).
MCCARROL: That's well said. Actually, sagacious is exactly what he was, and he, in some ways, was prescient in that he seemed to know the danger that we were putting ourselves into and tried to warn us of it. What I love about this character - this is the actual manager at that Canadian Tire. And he is sincerely trying to save our lives.
JOHNSON: Which is very fun to hear from a character in the movie. If, like, you haven't seen these guys or what the Nirvanna the Band universe is all about, you're just dropped in to this movie, and these guys have this insane plan, and they're off on their way to go jump off the CN Tower. And then, luckily, we get to watch them encounter somebody with some sense who's trying to talk some sense into them, and I think it's a very rewarding thing for the audience to sort of see someone just make an attempt to ground these guys.
SIMON: In this film, you retrofit your RV into a time machine, and it goes back to 2008. Why 2008?
JOHNSON: The reason is so simple, and it's that that is when Jay and I began filming ourselves as kids. And so the beginning of this footage bank that we had started at that time, and so it only made sense to go back to the beginning.
SIMON: Do you refer to your Matt and Jay as characters or to yourselves?
MCCARROL: That's a good question. I think we do a little bit of both. Right from the very beginning when we started shooting, what we found really interesting was the moments that we were sort of in a strange, in between character and reality state, where the cameras were still shooting. And we would start to mix and match takes to create a new reality on the other side of the edit. Maybe Matt would ask Jay a question in character, but then we would use a shot of Jay not acting from when it was in between scenes and he's just thinking about something, or he's reacting or making a face. Anything that is undeniably real became a very valuable thing to us. And that was with ourselves and why we shot with real people. Something that feels very true, obviously, goes a long way when you elevate it on screen.
SIMON: One of your characters becomes quite successful on his own. What does that do to the duo?
JOHNSON: I think that's what the film tries to investigate, which is, how does a profound success that literally split up a dynamic affect both members? And I think we tried to, as honestly as we possibly could, deal with the ramifications of a one-sided lottery ticket. We looked at a lot of twin studies where twins are raised in separate homes and have different outcomes but still have a lot of the same patterns in their life. And we thought, oh, wouldn't it be interesting to do this in our own story and basically give these characters exactly what they say they want but that they can't have it together?
SIMON: Excuse me. You did research for this film?
MCCARROL: Very little, very little. But...
SIMON: (Laughter).
MCCARROL: I love the idea of finding real-world analogies that we can refer to while we're in character doing a scene.
SIMON: There is a very touching moment in the film, and it makes you reflect on friendships we have in life, when we're - wherever we're with certain friends, we return to the same almost unplaceable age. I wonder if that happens with you two.
JOHNSON: There's a beautiful idea in friendship and in family, which is that you really cannot escape who you are. When you move to a new town, go to university, start a new relationship, where you kind of get to create a persona that is almost exclusively tailored to that environment - a real friendship always will see past that. It's why a long marriage can be so valuable when you're getting older, is that you have a partner where you can time travel with daily and go back to the memories in the experience and even some of the personality quirks that are only really befitting of a young person, an immature person. I think those types of friendships are valuable beyond the companionship.
SIMON: Jay?
MCCARROL: Well, yeah. I mean, that's exactly what this movie does, is it, in a parallel way, acts as if any one of these variables that could happen to a friendship. You could move somewhere, or you could break up with someone, or a fight could split a friendship. We just took that to the extreme, and we said, OK, what if these characters are sort of hemming and hawing about if they were to have had things different - because they think that they want something. And so we just explored a film that gave them exactly what they wanted. And I think the beauty is the return to yourself and a return to true form.
SIMON: Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol - their new film, "Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie." It opens on Friday here in the United States, and it's showing in select theaters. Gentlemen, thank you so much for being with us.
JOHNSON: Yeah. Thanks for having us.
MCCARROL: Thank you so much. It's wonderful conversation. I look forward to speaking again.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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