CJSR-inspired Film Premieres at the Princess

Edmonton’s Princess Theatre has earned the world premiere of the SXSW comedy Campus Radio, written and directed by Northern Alberta native, Aaron James Sorensen.

In this interview, Sorensen, who is also a notable musician, discusses how his time hanging around and listening to Edmonton and Calgary’s campus radio stations also inspired the Texas-centric flick; why he made the decision to create a Canadian-cast, Canadian-funded, Canadian-manned movie about a quintessential part of American music culture; and how he gave the lead role to an actor he just met in a Chinese gift shop.

Campus Radio premieres on the evening of Fri., Oct. 14 at the Princess Theatre (10337 Whyte Ave.).

You’ve had many careers in your 40-odd years. How did you end up making movies?

I was a musician who didn’t make it. I was getting too old to live with bands anymore. I started working with oil companies and teaching high school for a while. I taught in Wabasca. Oil companies — I been in and out of service companies, from a roughneck to a tanker truck driver.

And how did you go from that to film?

I was slowly going mad, and I thought maybe I’d go back to some graduate work. I went back to U of A, but while doing my master’s I wasn’t enjoying it at all. I had a little breakdown, thinking, “I’ve got to do something creative again. And maybe I need a different medium.”

I made a list of all the things I thought I’m good at, and in another column, all the things I’m not good at. And somehow, when I got to the bottom, I had this idea: Maybe I should make a movie.

And that’s the first time that it had ever dawned on me.

Really, there was never a desire prior to that?

None of it, nothing! I had shot a couple of music videos with a local cinematographer, Dave Luxton. And I remember once dancing in a wheat field just east of Edmonton, lip-syncing to a ghetto blaster, feeling like a complete jackass, and thinking that guy had a better job than I did.

I just took an interest in him and his cameras, and went on eBay and bought a Canon Scoopic 16 millimetre camera, and started playing around with it. That was in 2000.

Was that when you fell in love with the campus radio culture, because a lot of Campus Radio is inspired by CJSR and CJSW?

More so at CJSW, because I got my first degree [in education] at the University of Calgary. I performed there as a musician. I was never a volunteer or a host, but I sat in on some shows and I listened to campus radio, both stations. And I just kind of thought this is an interesting culture, how lots of different groups and agendas and communities converge in this station. And its complete lack of consistency was an interesting backdrop.

And, also, I just thought “Campus Radio” was a great name for a movie. I’m often inspired by names, and often just start with a name.

In your music too?

Sometimes.

What’s Campus Radio about?

It’s about love and rock ‘n’ roll and music. It’s about a kid who gets his heart broke, and his best friend is music. He has that relationship to music — for some of us music is what we listen to in our cars, and for some of us, music is integral, and we’re dependent on it. And for Xavier, who’s a dork, and the lead character, when things go bad, he goes to his record collection, not his family and friends. He goes to his vinyl.

Xavier is played by Tom Belding, whom you’ve never worked with before. Why did you cast him?

I was in Austin, Texas, doing auditions out there. It started with very small intentions — a budget of $50,000. And then the project got a little bigger. But after seeing all the agencies, after all the open casting calls, hadn’t found anybody. 

Still looking, I went to L.A. I auditioned 37 guys in L.A. And I still didn’t find the guy I wanted. And now we’re weeks away from shooting!

What were you looking for?

Just that guy that calls out to you. I’m pretty intuitive in everything I do, and even in casting.

So I phoned a friend in Vancouver and said, “Do you have anyone?” And she said, “Yes, I know a great actor.” So I got on a plane and went and met this guy, and it’s true — he was a great actor. His name is Nicholas Carella, and I’d love to work with him some day, but he just wasn’t right for this part.

So that left me now three weeks from principal photography, everybody’s cast, money’s in the bank — I don’t have my lead. So I called Mike McLaughlin in Edmonton, my cinematographer. He said, “Well, I don’t know much about acting, but I just worked on this series in Iceland and there was a Canadian guy, and I thought he was good, he was funny. He’s from Vancouver — so if you’re there, you should meet him.”

And I gave Tom Belding a call and we met on Granville, walked around, had a coffee, and I started liking this guy and started picturing him as Xavier, but thought he doesn’t look the same. We walked by a Chinese gift shop and I saw these glasses and put them on him and there he was — Xavier.  If you want the part, you’ve got it.

After all that work, official casting and work, I gave it to a guy at a gift shop on a sidewalk in Vancouver.

What about Mike McLaughlin, why did you hire him as your cinematographer?

Aaron Munson, from Edmonton, was on the crew of my first feature, Hank Williams First Nation. I wanted Aaron to shoot this, and he was going to, but one day he said, “I can’t — I’m too busy, I can’t get away. But, there’s this guy in town… he’s better than I am anyway, he’s only 24 years old —” and he just went on about this guy. So, just on Munson’s recommendation I hired him.

So why did you choose Edmonton for the premiere?

A couple of reasons. We kind of got ran out of the States …

OK. So, why did you get run out of the States?

We started trying to do these test screenings in Texas, and we got shut down basically by the MPAA [Motion Picture Association of America]. They are a real little mafia down there. Not only do they rate [films], but they have all say on all marketing and promotional material down there. We just booked a little theatre like we did here in Canada. We had posters and ads, things they hadn’t approved, and they literally just came in and shut us down.

But that was just part of it. I was also in a space to return back to Canada from Austin, where I was for four years. I’ve already rented a space in Calgary.

But [for the world premiere] the guys at the Princess Theatre were just so good to me with Hank Williams First Nation, we ran there for seven weeks. And they just got behind the film like no one else did, so when he [the owner] heard I had a new film, he sought me out.

Campus Radio is a Canadian film — Canadian funding, Canadian actors, Canadian crew. But it takes place in the U.S. around a popular American festival, South By Southwest. Was there no pressure on you to make this have some Canadian content?

No, not at all. Campus Radio is kind of an R&D project [research and development] for a new film studio we’re making.

I wanted to move to the U.S. after Hank Williams. I did the movie here, privately funded, and loved it. I did the miniseries for APTN and it was done with “soft money” — the Canadian way of doing things. And that experience was hard on me. It beat me up a bit, and by the time it was done, I didn’t want to be a part of this public-financed Canadian film process.

And, at the same time I had an opportunity to work in L.A. So I split for that, but I didn’t really click there. But I made some music with Billy Bob Thornton, and he sent me an invitation for a show in Austin, where a lot of my heroes come from. So, I went there, and afterward I stayed behind. I just got a room and stayed in Austin for a couple of weeks.

At the same time, I was working with people from here [Canada] to make Canadian films for Canadian audiences, for profit. And so I was wanting to find out how they do it down there, how they make independent movies. What crews were like, what the process was like.

So I started telling my investors here that I can make a good Canadian movie for $1 million. And Campus Radio became my test to show what I can do with a third of a million dollars, independently. So you can imagine what I can do with $1 million.

This studio is Dominion Films. Tell me about it.

We’re making four new Canadian movies. [The first two are] 40 Below and Falling, shooting in February, and Hockey Mom shoots next summer. I’ll be a writer and producer on all of them, and probably direct at least one of them.

We’ve got an Emmy-award winning editor, Bridget Durnford, Mike McLaughlin and a businessman, Frank Lovsin, who just received the order of Canada.

And we’re making Cineplex movies, movies for shopping malls, so sticky floors and overpriced popcorn — that’s what we’re going for. We’re not trying to win awards or go to TIFF [Toronto International Film Festival]. We want to sell tickets. And we’re unapologetic about that.

One of the things that breaks my heart is you ask Canadians what they’re favourite Canadian movie is and those people don’t have one. They don’t like Canadian movies.

When you say “they,” do you mean people outside of the arts circles?

I’m talking about truck drivers and nurses, and people who go to malls to go to movies, and there are 14 movies playing at a time and not one of them is Canadian.