Review

http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/festival-central/Festival +nouveau+cinema+Passenger+Side+Matt_Bissonnette/2082958/story.html

Festival du nouveau cinema: Passenger Side's Matt Bissonnette

BY JOHN GRIFFIN, GAZETTE FILM CRITICOCTOBER 7, 2009
MONTREAL - The most enjoyable anglo-Canadian movie since One Week is a road movie set in Los Angeles. It’s called Passenger Side, it’s a two-hander written and directed by ex-pat N.D.G.er Matt Bissonnette, and it stars Adam Scott and his own bro Joel Bissonnette as siblings with issues on a mystery day trip through greater L.A.

Scott is Michael, a 37-year-old novelist with a “fear of the future” that manifests itself in old phones, typewriters, kettles and the cassette deck in his car, a sun-bleached 1975 2002 series BMW that is the third star of this smart, funny, moving little picture, and director Bissonnette’s own local ride.

Joel is Tobey, younger, but older, a reformed junkie, and apparently more engaged in the world. He needs Michael to help him run a few errands. Michael could enjoy his day in other ways, maybe, but family is family, so he grudgingly agrees to play chauffeur.

I’m not going to say much more about the story, because there’s not a whole lot to tell – bright men joined at the hip despite themselves, with talking as a contact sport – and because you really want to see it when it comes out commercially next April.

Bissonnette spoke from his home in Echo Park yesterday before flying here to present Passenger Side at Cinéma du Parc Monday. “Ever since I moved to L.A. I’ve wanted to do a road movie.” he said. “It was really fun to make, loose and fun to do,” he said.

After the relatively big-budget production, 2007’s Who Loves the Sun, it was back to basics for Bissonnette, with a small cast and crew, a 14-day shoot and HD cameras, filming in an L.A. tourists don’t see, with a side trip to Joshua Tree National Park that tested the limits of the brave, but much travelled Bimmer.

And no, it’s not about him and his brother. “I’m a fiction filmmaker, not a documentary filmmaker.”

Still, “family is such a primary unit. Relationships are so fundamental. There’s no one else you know for such an extended period of time. They’re your mirror.”

So the Bissonnette clan – Joel lives nearby and their mother is currently visiting from Montreal on the pretext of spending quality time with Matt’s 3-year son, William – doesn’t factor into Passenger Side. But the guy who writes some of the sharpest dialogue in the business did admit he begins with characters he knows, before placing them in a narrative he doesn’t know.

“They need to be grounded. “I can’t think up anything weirder than what shows up on YouTube every single day. But I do get character.”

And, as someone who has tunes in his life the same way he has air, Bissonnette also gets music. As fans will know, the movie title is also the title of an old Wilco song, and it rides out the movie. Now Wilco are great human beings and all, but securing rights to one of their songs at the going rate would have blown the film’s budget before the first gas station stop.

“Mac McCaughlan was doing some music consultancy for us. He’s the co-founder of Merge Records and knows Jeff Tweedy and Wilco. I know some of Leonard Cohen’s people. When we got them to come aboard, others followed.”

The soundtrack to the stars includes Superchunk; Dinosaur Jr.; D.O.A.; Cohen’s immortal Suzanne; Camper Van Beethoven and Montreal’s Asexuals – “John Kastner lives just down the road. Our kids play together. Great guy.”

According to Bissonnette – and this is a Canadian-funded film so it’s easy to believe – bands laughed when they saw what they were being offered for their music.

“Then some asked to read the script. I was shocked they were so willing to go along with the caper. I guess if there wasn’t any money they could have their pride at being attached to a project they respected.”

Bissonette’s love for American movies of the late 1980s and early 1990s is reflected in the loose-limbed construction of Passenger Side, and its razor-sharp dialogue. It’s like Slacker in a car. Reaction on the festival circuit has been positive, and release secured. Bissonette’s hoping to open the film in a less traditional way.

“Maybe with bands, and bars, and a projection screen. Like a tour, with music and film.”

Like Passenger Side, that works for me.

Passenger Side screens at Cinéma du Parc Monday at 7:45 p.m.

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