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Mef there is a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for fictional bands, such as Spin̈al Tap and Rutles will be confirmed as places. Uncertain is the future of the duo formed by Toronto college friends Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol on Nirvana the Band the Show, a 2007-08 web series that was later picked up for two seasons by Vice TV. Johnson and McCarrol play Nirvana the Band, a no-nonsense, no-nonsense pioneer of Kurt Cobain, who will do anything to get a gig at Toronto’s Rivoli club. Undaunted by the lack of music, they pull out one cockamamie song after another, many of them filmed in front of unsuspecting audiences, to boost their unprecedented shows.
From smashing a sign at the Royal Ontario Museum and being chased by security guards to jumping on the tracks of the Toronto subway, they’re willing to do anything – except ask for a gig. Then again, smart is not their strong suit. Upon receiving a cease-and-desist letter regarding their name, they question: “Is there already a band called the Band?”
“We were very proud of that joke,” Johnson says now. On a muggy Toronto morning, she’s wearing a red sweatshirt over her wet hair and fanning her T-shirt to keep cool. He and McCarrol are at my friend’s house, talking to me on the phone about the new big movie, Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie. (They added an extra “n” to their lawyer’s opinion during the Vice TV years.) The clever cinematic high-wire act, directed by Johnson, combines the life-threatening scenes of Jackass, the hidden camera drama of Borat and the plot of Back to the Future. Installing a flux capacitor in their RV, the duo zips from 2025 to 2008 in order to pick up the Rivoli slot and change the profile.
Borrowing the plot of another film, says Johnson, “is a kind of literary fraud. It raises the stakes, which are no longer there: if these guys don’t play at the Rivoli, who does it?Where this is important!’”
The Faintness of Youth is also possible, through a clever transition that connects the two as they are in their 40s from 18 years ago. In retrospect, they check themselves out as little whippersnappers but accidentally create another universe where McCarrol is now the only star playing to thousands of adoring fans.
On and off, the two, with primary mirror images (MJ and JM), differ in different angles but at the same height. A convincing, entertaining Johnson, whose other powers include Blackberry and the upcoming Anthony Bourdain biopic Tony starring Dominic Sessa and Leo Woodall, they discuss in a mile-a-minute documentary. McCarrol, formerly half of the Brave Shores brother and sister duo, whose song Never Come Down was hijacked by Maga’s agents and turned into a 10-hour video featuring Donald Trump dancing, is the more carefree and flamboyant of the two: Seinfeld to Johnson’s Kramer, his ellipsis.
Both men knew that Nirvanna Band the Show the Movie had to appeal to more than just the band’s devotees. Johnson said: “Jay and I have the opposite belief, meaning that people who have never seen anything from us can really enjoy this film. The experience you have.”
Several times they are made to be seen with their jaws wide over their crooked fingers, most notably early in the film when Johnson and McCarrol demonstrate security at Toronto’s CN Tower with the intention of flying from the EdgeWalk platform 356 meters (1,168ft) up. The juxtaposition between their goal (to play a neighborhood concert venue that only holds 240) and the extreme lengths they will go to achieve it (time travel, illegal flying) creates a kind of incongruous comedy.
Credit – or blame – for the CN Tower escape goes to McCarrol. “I knew we had to do a lot, otherwise the film felt like a long TV show.
I think they must have been laughing with joy as they approached the top of the tower, but McCarrol refutes that idea. “The whole thing had to be organized so well that there was no celebration. We have a lot of goals to achieve. What goes through your head when you go through everything is: ‘Okay, that’s 17 out of 50 goals hit… It’s 18 out of 50 goals hit…’ Then we’re in the Uber afterwards, saying, ‘Oh’, which was bad.
Making the film, he said: “It wasn’t really fun. The only time he and Johnson allowed themselves to take a break was when they saw a disturbing cut of the sequence that was filmed at the scene of the crime. After hearing the evening news in May 2024 that a security guard had been shot outside the singer Drake’s mansion in Toronto, the two and their team of skeletons rushed there and collected the images that were included as the basis for the film. fiction crime in the film. “I don’t think we were any higher than that,” says Johnson, still in awe of what they did.
Speaking of drop-ins, long-time fans will note that the humor in the film is of a better quality than the web series. There are no homophobic slurs, except in the movie The Hangover which is used to describe how times have changed. It’s also gone with the editing of the original series with racist jokes: the use of the N word and the P word, which is questionable. (As of 2017, the duo was found singing Cornershop’s Brimful of Asha in “comedy” Indian accents.)
The change, Mr. McCarrol insists, was “life goals in motion. You could say that if an online series came out now, it would be worthless.” At the same time, he said, “We weren’t going as far as Family Guy or South Park.” Johnson blames early 21st-century pop culture: “That was the water we were swimming in.”
He describes the characters to be “like 10-year-old boys at summer camp. They are determined to explore the boundaries of whatever area they are in.”
McCarrol says their play relies on “a well-repressed way of how it’s fun when ignorant or ignorant people are…” Johnson concludes the idea: “Breaking the rules. But I can’t criticize the way I was before because I still enjoy the same thought: ‘Show me anger. What can I do if my parents tell me I’m not allowed to do that?'”
It is revealing that Johnson evokes the idea of parental criticism. Toronto Now magazine he did that in 2017, comparing the show to “watching two very liberal white teenagers hanging out in the safety of their parents’ basement”.
In fact, when Johnson and McCarrol use racist words, it’s not their parents who get hurt. It is a viewer like a fan of Letterboxd itself he clapped his hands but he added that “the amount of racism is wearing … for me as a non-white person … it makes me feel like I have to cry and endure what is not right to make a drama”.
Johnson takes the point: “I understand what you’re saying: ‘Oh, it’s not your parents, it’s all the people.'” But he insists that the “structure” of their comedy, which relies on pushing back on accepted conventions, remains valid. “I still use it to this day.” Jay and I have a line: ‘It’s hard for us to be classy unless there’s a teacher.’”
They differ only once today, reflecting on their youth. “We made a mistake, of course,” admits McCarrol. Johnson, however, counters: “Oh, I don’t want to go that far,” he says. Perhaps the point is lost. In this movie, they put their magic tricks behind them and create a comedy that is scary without prejudice.
