We do things a bit differently here in Canada, eh.

On the last day of Christmas Icetastrophe, we had a one-hour delay while the art department swapped out the British Columbia license plates with California license plates. They took down a Canadian flag in the distance and swapped it out with a California flag, even though there was never a reference to the location in the movie. Can a shitty Christmas movie not take place in Canada?

I did a few of these shows, but it was always the same: everyone was miserable, everyone complained about the expensive catering, everyone stared at their watches as lunch approached, hoping they would go late so they could get a meal penalty, and then bitching endlessly when we went late. These were the real sets that Black Mountain Side apparently should have been more like.

After that I was done working on ‘real sets’. I decided I would only whip out the old boom pole if some buds needed help on an indie—as long as they were doing it right, with a case of beer and an excited attitude. That’s how movies should be made. If you want to make real movies, avoid ‘real sets’.

“People have called us lucky, or ‘an outlier’, but I don’t think that’s true.”

That’s why I left Vancouver, eh, to get away from that purist, Hollywood-worshipping cult where everyone is brainwashed after years of slaving away on big fancy American productions. And because the Canucks are fuckin’ garbage. I think the Leafs have a real shot at winning the cup this year.

Christmas Icetastrophe had a budget well over a million dollars, while Black Mountain Side had a budget of about a tenth of that, and Black Mountain Side has been seen more times, reviewed drastically more positively by critics—and we’ve even popped up on countless top ten lists from film fans and critics alike.

People have called us lucky, or ‘an outlier’, but I don’t think that’s true. I’ve heard them say the same about other indies springing out of Canada, but the reality is we do things differently here in Canada, and I think people around the world are starting to take notice, eh.