Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie got a 'rapturous reception' at SXSW

CBC

14-03-2025

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Nirvanna the Band the Show is a Canadian mockumentary series where two friends, played by creators Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol, make up "Nirvanna the Band," an unlikely piano-poetry duo. Together, they spend their time pulling various stunts around Toronto as they try to land a gig at concert venue the Rivoli.
The show first debuted as an early-aughts web series, and then later as a 2017 TV show on Viceland. Now, Johnson and McCarrol have premiered Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie at SXSW, which sees character Jay trying to make it as a solo act — and subsequently triggering a tear in the space-time continuum that accidentally sends both Matt and Jay back to the year 2008.
Today on Commotion, film critics Barry Hertz and Teri Hart join guest host Rad Simonpillai to talk about how the film was received by the audience in Austin, Texas, and what the project suggests about Matt Johnson's signature as a filmmaker.
We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, where the panel discusses the Canadian film Can I Get A Witness? and Netflix's new adventure epic The Electric State, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.
WATCH | Today's episode on YouTube:
Rad: Nirvanna the Band the Show is a Canadian comedy TV series from 2017 that follows an indie band trying to book their first gig. That show was co-created by Jay McCarrol and Matt Johnson. Matt Johnson, being the director of BlackBerry which, of course, swept the Canadian Screen Awards last year.
This week, Jay and Matt were at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin for the world premiere of Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, and Barry, you were there too…. How did it go, and how did the people down south, you know, receive what Jay and Matt had to offer?
Barry: I think it was for me, personally, a top five screening experience of my life. I've really never been in a room where they were locked in and on the same wavelength as the film from the opening second. Laughter regularly drowning out dialogue that preceded a scene. Spontaneous applause. And even before the end credits rolled, when people knew it was over, they just leapt to their feet. It was a rapturous reception.
Rad: I mean, it's a very Toronto-centric story too, right? ... Do you feel like they were missing other parts of the culture?
Barry: No, I don't think so. I mean, there were some Canadians in the room; Johnson and McCarrol brought, like, two dozen of their team members down for the festival premiere. And if you were a Canadian in Austin otherwise … you were at that screening. But at the same time, it was like a 400-plus auditorium, and there were tons of locals down there, and they totally got it too. Either they were fans of the series from the get-go, so they knew the kind of Toronto-ness of it. But I also spoke with several members of the press who were just kind of there because it fit their schedule, or because they were kind of curious — had not seen the series, had not seen BlackBerry, and still were like, "This was a wild ride and I loved it."
Rad: Right. Well Teri, you and I did not get to have this experience — one of these top five lifetime experiences that Barry is talking about. But we of course are very aware of Matt Johnson's whole career as a filmmaker, but also as a rabble-rouser within the Canadian film industry. So what are you thinking in terms of his evolution as a filmmaker, and potentially flagbearer for our national cinema?
Teri: Matt is such an interesting guy to watch. Not only is he remarkably talented, but he certainly likes to stir the pot. I mean, he was very, very critical in very, very public ways, including an article in the Globe and Mail, criticizing the entire system of funding and who gets to make movies, and then, God forbid, the kinds of movies that those artists make. He's been very public about the history of Canadian film and why it's problematic, in his mind. And now he is a person working squarely in that system. Frankly, one of the people that he criticized most ended up producing BlackBerry. So, I mean, he's kind of done a full circle from his criticism of it to then kind of being in bed with these same people that he criticized. So maybe he looked at it as it being terrible at the beginning, and then thinking, "Well, maybe it's not so bad. Maybe it does work out."
But what Matt's still doing is something a little bit different: the fact that he premiered this film at SXSW, the same strategy as him premiering BlackBerry in Berlin — whereas most Canadian films and filmmakers are looking to make their world premiere if not at the Toronto Film Festival, then at Cannes. So, I do think that Matt is always going to be an outlier. I think that Matt is always going to be looking at things with a critical eye and trying to figure out how he can change things up. And I think that's one of the reasons why he's such a great artist.