Suck

TIFF: Joey (Rob Stefaniuk) is the ostensible leader of the Winners, a bar band going exactly nowhere. They're broke and feuding with one another, and the crappy gigs they've managed to cobble together and call a tour are being cancelled. Even their lame manager Jeff (played with scuzzy relish by Dave Foley) doesn't want anything to do with them. Things aren't much better on the home front. Joey's permanently enraged girlfriend feels neglected and isn't thrilled that his ex, Jennifer (Jessica Paré), is still in the band. But their luck is about to change.

Picked up by a rather scary goth type, Jennifer shows up the next day looking, well, paler than usual. This would normally be a cut-and-dried moral situation, but Jennifer's recently acquired gifts get the band more attention than ever. And as the bodies pile up and the band's tolerance for sunlight drops, Joey is faced with an impossible decision: give up what he's dreamt of all these years, or do the right thing.

Directed and scripted by Stefaniuk, Suck merges two genres so obviously compatible that you're startled to realize how rarely it's been attempted before. But Stefaniuk and his collaborators aren't satisfied with simply connecting the undead and the unemployable. The filmmakers are very aware of the indignities of the road, recording them with a comic exaggeration that isn't too far from reality. (One of the band's regular gigs is opening for the Secretaries of the Steak, local heroes in Buffalo whose fans regularly pelt every act on the bill with raw meat.)

Packed with witty references to rock movies of the past (including Bruce McDonald's classic Hard Core Logo and Walter Hill's Crossroads), Suck features possibly the most illustrious cameo cast in Canadian film history. Along for the tour are Henry Rollins as an obnoxious shock jock; punk godfather Iggy Pop as a crazed record producer and the film's conscience; and heavy-metal legend Alice Cooper as the über vampire. Canuck icons Carole Pope and Alex Lifeson offer up equally memorable turns.

A welcome follow-up to Stefaniuk's debut, Phil the Alien, which was a hit at the Festival several years ago, Suck is a funny and exuberant exploration of ethics, disappointment and desire.

--Steve Gravestock

Rob Stefaniuk is a Canadian actor and filmmaker. In addition to numerous television roles, he has appeared in such films as Superstar (99), The Law of Enclosures (00) and Monkey Warfare (06). He has written and directed the short film Waiting for the Man (05) and the features Phil the Alien (04) and Suck (09).
______________________________________________

Larry Richman: Suck ran extremely late, so I was afraid I'd have a problem making it to Midnight Madness. This was the worst case scenario -- a delayed start to begin the intro, followed by the longest set of introductions and speeches I've ever seen, then the new series of pre-film trailers (longer than in previous years), and a short film to boot. The feature actually began about 45 minutes after the scheduled start time.

It was worth the wait, though. Suck was awesome and an original hybrid of genres that is quite hard to describe. I'd label it a rock 'n roll vampire musical comedy road movie. As it turned out, even though I stayed for the Q&A and got out of Suck at the Varsity at 11:40 PM, I still made it to the Ryerson in plenty of time for Daybreakers at Midnight Madness. As usual, it was a mind-blowing way to end the day. Like the rock 'n roll vampire musical comedy road movie I'd seen before it, Daybreakers is a unique hybrid I'd call vampire sci-fi. Another new genre is born. Willem Dafoe and Sam Neill rocked the house in the Q&A. I couldn't imagine that programmer Collin Geddes and the Midnight Madness crew could possibly top themselves after these past couple of nights.