Guy Madin My Winnipeg It begins with the director’s sonorous voice repeating the name of his hometown three times before moving on. He revealed that it was not a stylistic choice It happened in Hollywood – He simply did not write the script.
“I was very intimidated by the prospect of writing 75 minutes of voice-over,” Maddin said. “So I would go for five minutes a day and just improvise, talk forward, and I promised myself I would never stop talking. … I start the movie by saying the word Winnipeg three times. That’s because I didn’t know what to say after the word Winnipeg got in there.”
Madden’s 2007 film, which he calls a “documentary,” blends real Winnipeg history with invented myths so seamlessly that it sometimes loses track. It’s one of four Maddin films that will be screened this weekend as part of “Weekend with Guy Maddin” at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, which runs from July 11-13 with the director present at each showing.
The project was commissioned by a short-lived Canadian outlet called The Documentary Channel. “I said, ‘Just give me something and I’ll do it,’” Maddin recalls. He said, ‘Well, make a documentary about trains, or about Winnipeg.’ …I chose Winnipeg right away because I felt from my childhood that Winnipeg just needed to be legendary for its film emulsion.
He didn’t have a script until a Q&A in Paris, when an audience member asked what his hometown was really like. “I just explained for 15 or 20 minutes what Winnipeg was like,” he said. “And I basically edited my Winnipeg script.”
Some of the film’s strangest claims are true. Medin confirmed the story of horses that drowned while crossing a frozen river during a fire that broke out in the 1920s, leaving their heads visible in the ice during the winter. “It’s real,” he said. “They got their heads stuck during this really bad cold snap…and their frozen heads stayed stuck in the ice for the entire winter.”
Other details are invented for the sake of emotional truth rather than reality — including a supposed sleepwalking epidemic in Winnipeg and a law requiring residents to carry the keys to their childhood homes. “Some of this stuff is intentionally untrue because I wanted it to be emotionally real, and there was no way to portray emotion without displaying it,” Madden said.
This confusion extends to the film’s family scenes, where Madden enlists the help of retired noir actress Anne Savage (wrap) to play his mother inside a rented replica of his childhood home. At first he let people assume it was really his mother. Madin also described his invention as a child as a memory of a non-existent TV show called Ledgeman – A man who talks from the edge daily – which he now believes was the way he dealt with his brother’s death by suicide.
He was asked about the similarity to Nathan Fielder’s entertainment-heavy series RehearsalMadian did not hesitate. “No wonder I love him so much,” he said. “I have no idea whether he saw May Winnipeg or not… He’s taking it a lot further than I am.”
The episode also touched on a 2007 encounter that became one of Madden’s favorite stories: a Q&A for the Reykjavík audience in which he privately committed to lying on every even-numbered answer and telling the truth on every odd-numbered answer – until Björk, who was sitting at the back, asked if the story of the drowned horses was true. “It was her turn to get the lie,” Madin said. “I’ve been putting it together like crazy with Björk.” Later, she and her husband, Matthew, took Barney out for a whale burger, which he ate reluctantly as a committed opponent of whaling: “I felt bad because I was so anti-whaling.”
Madden also recounted directing Shelley Duvall in the mid-1990s, describing an impromptu multi-day road trip around Manitoba that included a farm stop and a drive-in “Independence Day” show because Duvall’s friend Harvey Fierstein was in the cast. “She had one of everything in the franchise,” Maddin said. “She got half of it free because she was popular.”
“Weekend with Guy Madden” runs July 11-13 at the Academy Museum, featuring a new 4K restoration of the museum. Careful (premiere in the United States), Green fog, The saddest music in the world and My Winnipeg In 35 mm size, Madian is present in every show.
The full interview is now available on It happened in Hollywood.
