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| Scott Thompson and Paul Bellini ham it up in a promotional photo for Mouth Congress: The Documentary |
Mouth Congress: The Documentary receives Long Overdue World Premiere at Kingston Canadian Film Festival
Paul Bellini and Scott Thompson are best known as members of The Kids in the Hall, a critically acclaimed Canadian comedy show that ran on CBC from 1989 through 1995. To this day the Kids still have something of a cult following. Scott Thompson's (many) memorable characters include Francesca Fiore and the pitch perfect Buddy Cole, a gay bar owner who embodied most commonly held stereotypes of what a gay man is.
Paul Bellini, though primarily a writer for the KITH, and later on This Hour has 22 Minutes, is most recognizable as the Towel Guy. A famously mute character, poking the Towel Guy with a stick was the reward for the winner of the Touch Paul Bellini contest. The contest became a Canadian pop culture moment that will long be remembered.
Mouth Congress was created around the same time as the KITH were finding their feet. Mouth Congress was an experimental gay punk band that Bellini and Thompson were doing for fun. The two met while attending York University for Film Studies. Bellini asked Thompson to be in one of his first films, and the rest is history.
Some of the band's songs are surprisingly catchy, such as Me on My Off Hours, and Tactile. They have that ear worm effect of sticking in your head. After watching the documentary on its' March 5th, 2021 world premiere, I found myself humming some of the songs at odd moments.
Full disclosure - I met Paul Bellini when I was an undergraduate student studying Journalism at Ryerson University in Toronto. Back in 2004 - 2008 there was still such a thing as a gay press that published print magazines and newspapers. Paul was a columnist for Fab Magazine, where I interned under then Editor-in-Chief Steven Bereznai.
Paul and I became friends and kept in touch. It was quite exciting when he asked me in early 2016 if I would be part of the show's opening act. Mouth Congress: The Documentary was mostly filmed at The Rivoli on Queen Street West on the night of February 21, 2016.
So I play a small role in the documentary as a Doctor in the audience who, "touches Bellini in an whole new way" by giving him life saving CPR when he collapses before the evening's final song can be performed. You can find a clip of me hamming it up that night on my Twitter feed. I'm happy that I could help the guys out. I certainly had Fun that night.
For any Film Distributors reading this - Paul and Scott are still looking for a Distributor for their documentary. Please contact me if you are a Film Distributor and would like to have a discussion with Paul about this.
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| Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson), leader of the True Knot and the main Villain in Stephen King's Doctor Sleep |
The Shining Sequel Doctor Sleep is a Metaphor for Addiction & Demons that Won't Stay Quiet
Last weekend I bought a copy of Doctor Sleep from the iTunes Store. Released in 2019, Doctor Sleep is the sequel to one of Stephen King's most famous novels - The Shining.
In The Shining Jack Torrance agrees to care for the Overlook Hotel during the hotel's winter season. He brings his son Danny and wife along with him. Also a Typewriter, so that he can work on his novel. Isolated inside the Overlook, Jack falls prey to the hotel's 'hungry Ghosts' and his Alcoholism. At the end of the movie he, and by implication the evil residing in the Overlook Hotel, are defeated when Jack freezes to death in the Hotel's hedge maze.
The book is a none too subtle metaphor for the dangers of Alcoholism and addiction. Jack Torrance's addiction to the bottle, to his "medicine" puts the lives of his son and wife in danger. Young Danny even more so, because he possesses special psychic abilities known as the Shining. This Shining animates the Overlook's ghosts, who rest uneasy, hungry for an animating force.
Danny and his mother live to escape the Overlook. Time moves on, as it does. Doctor Sleep is set several decades later. Danny, played in the movie version by Ewan McGregor, is now in his mid forties. He, like his father, has struggled with Alcoholism. He uses Alcohol to dull his shine. In his mind he has constructed caskets for the Overlook's hungry Ghosts, who continued to pursue him and his mother long after their stay in the hotel.
Doctor Sleep advances Danny's story with his introduction to Abra Stone, a young girl who, "shines like a Flashlight." Her Shine is much more powerful than Danny's. It has attracted the attention of the True Knot, a band of nomadic "empty Devils" led by Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson) who feed off Steam.
Steam is a substance that is given off when children who possess the Shining are tortured to death. This substance has allowed members of the True Knot to live for thousands of years. That they must kill their victims to obtain their Steam does not concern Rose and the True Knot.
Danny is called upon by the ghost of Dick Hallorann (Carl Lumbly) to defend Abra from the True Knot - to pay it forward.
"I'm here because it all comes 'round. Ka is a wheel, Doc. These empty Devils ever found you, when you was a Tyke. If they'd even sniffed you, you'd be long dead. They eat screams and drink pain. And they've noticed that little girl (Abra)," Dick says to Danny during their final meeting.
Stephen King is again working with the metaphor of addiction he established in The Shining. Through renouncing the bottle Danny has earned himself a reprieve, as well as a place in respectable society. He soldiers on, day after day, working in a small town's palliative care home, doing good where he can.
Rose the Hat and her True Knot, by contrast, are unrepentant in their addiction. They may live for Millennia (their Motto is, "eat well, live long"), and they may have traveled to the four corners of the Earth and experienced untold wonders. But they do so at the expense of the suffering of innocents. Their lives, joys and pleasures are bought, time and again, with blood money.
The True Knot's existence has parallels in the real world. As Danny says at one point in Doctor Sleep, "the world is a hungry place."
Good triumphs over Evil by Doctor Sleep's end. At a cost.
The book and movie are both excellent companion pieces to The Shining.
I, for one, certainly enjoyed another visit to the Overlook Hotel.
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