What to make of news that Bruce McDonald is making a movie in the heart of the Junction called Pontypool? Named for a village on the southernmost part of the Kawarthas — signified by its grain elevator — it was once a summer resort for the Jewish community that lived in the west end. From the 1920s through the 1950s, they retreated from humidity on weekends to what was essentially the Catskills of Canada.

And on the first sweltering night of the year, McDonald is hosting a rare media junket, on location, in the thick of the shoot. Could Pontypool be Toronto’s answer to Dirty Dancing? A clue that it ain’t can be found in the tagline: “Shut up and die.”

Not to mention that it’s being filmed in a church: Victoria-Royce Presbyterian, not far from Dundas and Keele. But the stained glass, pews and organs are in the process of being replaced by 35 residential lofts — the ultimate in gentrification.

The last hurrah for the building’s original incarnation may well be the flick McDonald has been capturing for the past week. The plan is to wrap production on June 7, amounting to 15 total days of filming the script in chronological order.

“The shooting style will be classic and elegant and evolve towards an expressionistic stylized climax,” reads McDonald’s hand-written press release. “Extra special attention will be paid to the sound design to create a sonic atmosphere of suspense and horror.” Pontypool is the first Canadian feature to be shot with the RED high-definition digital camera. And the idea is to have it ready for a gala September premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

If not for winning Most Outstanding Canadian Film at TIFF in 1989 for Roadkill, it’s unlikely McDonald could draw a crowd of journalists so easily — not because of his filmmaking skills, but the speech he gave announcing that he’d spend the $25,000 prize on “a big chunk of hash” defined him as the kind of auteur anyone could talk to. Consider how such impolite stage moments were few and far between in this country back then — could McDonald top that moment today?

“I probably spent a total of 12 seconds coming up with that line,” he tells Scrolling Eye. “I was hungover from the night before, and probably had an hour of sleep, but it kicked in that I would have to say something in response to winning money. I wanted to share the award, and then I figured that was the most sharing thing I could buy.

“Whenever you have an opportunity to speak in public like that, I think you should always try and make people remember something, or help change something. Like the MC5: ‘Kick out the jams, motherfuckers!' I’ve always felt throwing it back helps to empower people. And if they see I can do it, maybe they can do it, too.”

A chunk of the brick-walled church basement is currently housing plenty of outdated audio equipment, but not because that’s all the producers could afford.

Rather, it’s part of the atmosphere of fictional radio station CLSY, where the main character is a defrocked shock jock forced to take a job as small-town morning-show host. Where the horror comes into play is the discovery that seizures, violence and other insane acts are being prompted by certain unknown words.

The words of William S. Burroughs — later appropriated by Laurie Anderson — about how language is a virus from outer space seem an obvious inspiration.

Pontypool Changes Everything, a 1998 novel by Tony Burgess, is the original source material for the screenplay, though. Prior to his writing career, Burgess was a Queen Street boulevardier, whose band The Ether Brothers were apparently heralded onto the Beverly Tavern stage by their namesake scent.

Turning the story into a script was on McDonald’s mind ever since he read the book. CBC Radio called, wondering if the director had any ideas for an audio drama, but running into producer Jeffrey Coghlan at the Horsehoe Tavern three months ago expedited the process of turning it into a blood-and-flesh film instead.

The $1.5-million production budget was quickly raised via private investors — at the same time that the proposed amendment to Bill C-10 risks intimidating such a thing from ever happening again, should the end product lead to a denial of tax credits. The evidence of commercial success would be Pontypool’s best revenge.

McDonald and 22-year-old starlet Georgina Reilly stick around after a full day of work, essentially to ensure a paper trail of stories just like this one, which will accelerate momentum leading to the quick big-screen turnaround. When a dashed-off first review on Ain’t It Cool News is enough to have Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull branded a likely flop in more allegedly reputable outlets, the producers can’t go wrong by choreographing this sort of spin control. Media in attendance are essentially engaged in the creation of the DVD extras.

Mercifully, the scene is more laid back than some kind of participatory Web 2.0 scam would be. Dropping names like Luis Bunuel, F.W. Murnau and RKO Pictures producer Val Lewton suggests the director’s ambition is totally genuine. Giving the individual interviewees around double the face time they’d receive on a Hollywood junket’s six-minute assembly line proves a bit of a challenge when more than a dozen are waiting their turn. They’ll be doing it all over again later in the shoot for broadcast media, although the fact that several websites now pack a hand-held video camera (or two) forces McDonald to keep from slouching over.

There’s a slice of irony amidst this maelstrom, since the 660 CLSY (“The Beacon”) broadcast booth — constructed in a manner that allows for quick dismantling in order to film different angles on the possibly virus-inducing DJ — represents the lowest possible level on which any sort of spotlight can shine.

In real life, there always seem to be news stories suggesting the Play Misty For Me script has flipped, and it’s the radio guys who are more likely to be deviants. McDonald explains he doesn’t actually go down that road, as Pontypool’s on-air protagonist, played by Stephen McHattie, is more a work-starved Don Imus type.

What about radio as an aesthetic influence, then? Like any Torontonian of his approximate vintage — he turns 49 tomorrow — McDonald cites the David Marsden era of CFNY, but also hearkens back to Allen Spraggett’s paranormal show The Unexplained, and mysterious old radio theatre a la The War of the Worlds. Today, he’ll listen to Andy Frost spinning psychedelia on Q107, although it’s evident that Pontypool’s radio setting helps to affirm its retro-horror credibility.

The doom also relies on the Victoria-Royce church basement, on a site that ended up holding services in 17 languages, replacing the long-gone original Junction membership. The imminent loft conversion will divide and conquer.

But just because McDonald considers himself a Toronto filmmaker ahead of a Canadian one doesn’t mean he’s sentimental about how the city used to be, confessing that he likes what has become of the corner of Yonge and Dundas.  

“Now I’m just waiting for the suburbs to become cool — like when some kids from Rexdale who put their skateboarding videos on YouTube end up being big stars.”

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