A fanciful yet deeply felt homage to his hometown, My Winnipeg (see On Screen page 13) may be both Guy Maddin’s most personal project and his film with the broadest appeal. While non-Winnipeggers might have trouble fully connecting with the anguish Maddin expresses over such local tragedies as the end of the Jets, the movie’s take on history and memory has great resonance with anyone who ever wondered how we’re formed by the places we’re from. Since its premiere at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival — where it won the Best Canadian Feature prize — it has travelled the world, often with its creator in tow. As on many other occasions, Maddin’s on hand to contribute live narration for the first night of its Toronto theatrical run on June 19 as a fundraiser for the Images Festival. He spoke with EYE WEEKLY by phone from his beloved Winnipeg last week.
At the TIFF screening you expressed relief that it was to be the last time you had to narrate. Yet you’ve done it many times since. What gives?
I actually enjoy it. I get shit-scared beforehand but it makes a difference. It makes for a better connection with the audience. Or maybe it forces them to be more polite. Plus, I’d just finished doing Brand Upon the Brain!, which had been an event more than just a screening and made me feel like more of a showman than a filmmaker. My Winnipeg was a small film and at film festivals small films get lost in a hurry. So poor My Winnipeg had to become an event somehow.

Were you surprised it boasted such universal appeal?
That thrills me beyond belief. The idea that people in Sydney or Berlin or New York or Paris will be forced to listen to these Winnipeg things feels so mischievous. It almost makes me feel proud of being a Winnipegger! Plus, Canadians are so lousy at mythmaking and I’ve attempted to make up for lost time. It usually takes years to make myths — you’ve got to have a news event enter the public consciousness, then a few generations have to boil that down into its essence. Whether they get the facts right or wrong, it usually gets reduced into something that’s truer than what really happened. So I had to do that job of generations and boil many things down overnight and still have them stand up as myths. That felt good to do because they’re artificially created myths in a lot of cases. They’re all true in the same way that myths are true, but they were processed myths — the Velveeta of myths.

The movie also powerfully evokes that feeling many Canadians had growing up, that a more glamorous and fulfilling life was happening somewhere else.
You definitely get that. Growing up in the ’60s as I did, your TV or radio antenna would pick up channels from this wonderfully artificial world. There’d be distant radio stations crackling with dispatches from more glamorous fronts. It would feel like this was where real life was lived. Some of the radio stations I remember were from places like Bismarck, North Dakota. I pictured the radio stations broadcasting from some Great White Way, some Edisonian glittery pavement. I drove back from Toronto the other week and I made a point of cutting through some of those towns that were the origins of my childhood listening ecstasies, and boy, are they suicide-inducingly grim. It was all a mirage.

How have your fellow Winnipeggers reacted to the film?
The first big screening for an all-Winnipeg audience will be June 24, but a Winnipegger pops up in every damn city. There was a screening in Boston where I had a couple of irascible Winnipeggers. This older couple kept saying, “You didn’t mention the concert hall and you didn’t mention the wonderful folk festival!” I said, “Well, no, I was commissioned to make my Winnipeg and I wanted to make the movie 80 minutes and that stuff wasn’t that important.” They wouldn’t leave it alone, though. “What about our wonderful Rusalka dancers?” It finally got to the point where I said, “I do not give a shit about the Rusalka dancers.” “What about the Taste of Tomorrow festival?” “Don’t give a shit. Hate the fucking Taste of Tomorrow.” “What about Transcona Days?” “Hate Transcona, never go there.” I was getting more and more rude and they kept coming at me. Damn Winnipeggers. They did boo Neil Young out of town in the early ’70s. They’re tough on their local boys. So they have me at their mercy.