FANTASIA 2007 ““ FINIS

Well, it was the last night of the fest for me and cool evening by anyone’s standards. I went with the full intention of seeing the last film “”Pars Vite et Reviens Tard” but got a little sidetracked when Phillipe Spurrell said he was heading towards the bar (It’s the Irish Embassy btw, finally managed to remember its f*****g name) and the temptation to get drunk with some cool people was just too great. And so I ended up having a few (READ: lots of) beers instead and, well”¦ skipping that whole watching movies thing completely. Talked with Phillipe a lot and congratulated him on putting a f*****g a*****e heckler/internet troll in his place the night before during the showing of Postal. Some guy had been hassling Daniel, one of the Festival guys (and the unofficial mascot of the fest) almost constantly so Spurrell pointed out said heckler/troll to the audience, told them what he’d done and invited them to boo the guy; which they did.

Good! F**k that prick. I booed too.

Met up with Dave Kristian and we talked about the similarities between books and music when it comes to the way they flow. A slow rise, a peak, a fall, then another slow climb, hold the note for a moment and BOOM you end the f****r. That’s how you play a song and that’s how you write a book, one with balls anyway. We also talked a lot about Ramsey Cambell, an author we both admire and who we feel is a born poet whose prose sometimes eclipses his books so much that you sometimes end up not remembering anything about them except how f*****g amazing they were. Oh, and I found out that Kristian had been a member of Psyche, this really cool f*****g 80’s band from Montreal. Now, the reason I knew Psyche is because they’d done an album called “”The Influence” which was Ramsey Cambell themed and I was a big fan of Cambell back then in the late 80’s. Talk about a circular coincidence huh?

Two guys I haven’t talked about yet are Matt Heath and Chris Stapp, the makers of “”The Devil Dared me to” which I didn’t have a chance to watch at the fest, but will review anyway after getting a screener because I don’t care if I have to give someone a b*****b in order to get a copy, this looks so f*****g awesome. I met them a few days ago when Postal played and these guys are seriously SERIOUSLY cool. When there’s some hard drinking to do, you want them on your side. Just watch this documentary from down under about them and tell me if that doesn’t rock the tits straight off a polar bear.

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God how I admire men who act like men. No Metrosexual little p*****s here.I wasn’t there but apparently the showing for “”Devil Dared me To” was interrupted by some sort of bomb scare and the film was delayed by FOUR hours until the cops could concluded that it was perfectly safe to let everyone back in, however true to form Stapp and Heath made up for it by having Stapp taking a running jump headfirst over about four rows of seats during the Q&A as an example of a “”stunt”. The audience loved it and asked him to do it again, which he did.

That’s a showman my friends.

After the bar, me, Mitch Davis (The international programmer), the Devil guys, King-Wei Chu (A fest programmer whose own personal Shaw Bros collection probably puts Tarantino’s to shame), David Kristian and Simon Laperrière (Another festival programmer and a god blessed 100% pure wool French MF just like me.) went into this seedy Karaoke place. And when I say seedy I mean that there were like four cop cars there when we arrived and about eight cops looking ever so serious and being really tightlipped about what had just happened. Was it a Yakuza hit? Maybe whole St-Valentine’s Day Massacre thing done by guys with missing pinkie fingers? PFFFFT”¦ Who the f**k knows? Like we give a s**t. We were there so that we could sit in a small humid room, get drunk off our a*s and sustain hearing damage while singing to really bad generic backing tracks.

“¦and just so we don’t gloss over on the whole seedy thing, when I went to take a piss later on in the evening I noticed the toilet bowl was stained with red around the part where the water is sucked in. Know what that was? The blood from someone’s s**t! HAHAHAHA!

Chris and Matt sort of stole the show because they’re like actual PROFESSIONAL singers and all with their band Deja Voodoo. And Chris absolutely f*****g killed with a rendition of “”Fight for your Right to Party” that sounded so good I wish the Beastie Boys had a New Zealand accent now. 

I guess we know what my suggestion for a Deja Voodoo B-side would be huh?

The other songs of the night included Back in Black (another kickass rendition by Chris), the Womble’s theme song, TWO extremely painful rounds of “”Barbie Girl” a song so goddamn bad that I felt my brain die just a little bit. YMCA by the Village people, a song whom I now suspect may just have a slight sexual connotation. What else? S**t, I sang something but I can’t remember what it was. I suck. The only thing of note I can think of was that Chris tried climbing over the table to get to his seat and managed to nearly kill himself because the table wobbled and shot every single beer bottle all over the f*****g place. Everyone cheered. Well, some of us cheered. Okay”¦ Chris cheered.

In any case, a good time was had by all until we were kicked out at 3AM because of this odd “”Last Call” thing where the bars posit this ridiculous notion that you must a) Stop Drinking and b) Leave. Since no one wanted to stop drinking, we left and all stumbled back to the hotel where we talked some more, drank vodka, posed for homoerotic photographs and eventually all decided that it was indeed 6 f*****g AM and going home might be a good plan.

So here I am, it’s now 10:30AM, and I still haven’t slept because I’m writing this for you cunts, but I can honestly say that Fantasia is the highlight of my summer. Hell, my YEAR. So lots of thanks go out to Mark Bell and Eric Campos for giving me this gig,  Mitch Davis for always being a great guy and allowing this crazy Canuck to come over to spread a little hell at the fest every year. I also want to shout out to Victoria Sanchez who I never got to see once in the whole f*****g festival. Sorry love. Then there’s Dahlia from Fantastik Asia. David Kristian. Phillipe Spurrell. Simon “”Grosse Graine” Laperrière, King-Wei Chu, Robert Kurtzman, Uwe Boll, Bill Zebub, Sion Sono, Eddie McGee, Curt Johnson, Ryan Bruce Levey, and of course Mariko McDonald.

Oh, and just so you know, the festivals been extended by a day and there’s gonna be 4 more films tonight. Check it out if you haven’t yet. Last chance.

And before I leave y’all to go to sleep, here’s Sion Sono and Mitch Davis; Chris Stapp and Matt Heath saying “See ya next year!”