"Smoked Lizard Lips" was an ambitious, but ultimately misguided attempt to blend hip Canadian post-modern screen humor with an avant-garde approach, resulting in what might be described as an episode of "Petticoat Junction" directed by Michael Snow.
The film was made when the Winnipeg Film Group was getting a national rep for the quirky comedies that John Paizs ("Crime Wave") and Guy Maddin were putting out. Hoping to ride the wave, M.B (Bruce) Duggan, then the executive director of the group, and himself an independent filmmaker, teamed up with producer Greg Klymkiw ("Archangel") to raise $1 million to produce what was the group's most ambitious project. Unfortunately, due to the film's rejection at the film festival circuit, it was consigned to a brief theatrical run, then quickly forgotten. Since then Bruce Duggan has never tackled another film project.
It's difficult for me to be entirely objective about this film. Many had high hopes for the project, including myself, but inevitably it failed. Incidentally, I played a small part in the movie as the "second religious fanatic," (the one kissing the dictator's boot).
The basic plot concerns the shenanigans of a mad Central American dictator Sauria (Simon Magana) stuck in a Northern Canadian town. After being thrown out of his native country, Sauria, along with his wife Carmen (Andree Pelletier), are relocated through a CIA branch officer (Kyle McCulloch) to the hamlet of Nuscht, in northern Manitoba. Through a series of hasty negotiations, the residents of Nuscht are alloted $1 million U.S weekly in order to take care of the dictator (this as a substitute when their mainstay industry, a nuclear waste dump, gets closed down). But Sauria cannot be reformed. In an attempt to take over the village, he pits the town's residents against the local native reservation in a divide and conquer tactic. Only the mayor's wife (Margaret Anne MacLeod) is able to see through Sauria's charade, even though it threatens to put the town's livelihood in jeopardy.
The first half-hour works the best, managing to tell a story that spans the White House, Parliament, and the mythical town of Nuscht. Even when its humor tends towards the Royal Canadian Air Farce, events move at a steady pace, helped out by Duggan's own buoyant editing and some first rate casting. Simon Magana is wonderfully robust as the wily, ruthless leader, and there's a great comic bit by producer Klymkiw himself as the town's sleazy MP. As well, there is a visual flair to the piece, doing an okay 50's opening parody at the very beginning.
But things fall apart in the middle. The unorthodox editing which served so well in Duggan's previous half-hour drama "Mike" begins to work against his feature debut. The pace slows and Duggan, in trying an experimental approach, deliberately frames critical scenes in single takes and in long shot. Not only does it dwarf the actors, but it effectively kills the momentum, as well as make it confusing to know what is going on. Worse, the humor sags, the jokes turn stale, and even the dramatic tension concerning Sauria's attempts to take over the town is seriously undercut by Duggan's own mis-en-scene.
Things pick up during the last third, but by then it's too late. Duggan attempts to focus on the film's moralistic overtones result in the whole tone turning sour and downbeat (not helped by the downbeat, repetitive score by the Chronos Quartet). In many ways, it's a companion piece with Paul Donovan's own Atlantic-Canadian comedy "Buried On Sunday". Both films concerned local hamlets fighting for their livelihood, then possessing the means to save it (one gets a Southern dictator, the other a Russian Submarine), and finding that things get more complicated as a result. And both films become so mired in social commentary, that they forget their primary purpose in generating guffaws, not enlightening the masses.
Ultimately the film was overshadowed by more superior Canuck comedies such as "Highway 61" and "Masala", and the small town angle was handled far better in my opinion with John Paiz's "Top of the Food Chain" eight years later. Yet thinking about it, it was such a hotbed for local talent at the time, with the likes of Tina Keeper ("North of 60") and Kyle McCulloch (later writer for South Park) that's it hard not to feel some affection for it. And for all its flaws it does offer a telling commentary of the death of small town Canadian, threatened by globalism, struggling to remain true to itself.
The film was made when the Winnipeg Film Group was getting a national rep for the quirky comedies that John Paizs ("Crime Wave") and Guy Maddin were putting out. Hoping to ride the wave, M.B (Bruce) Duggan, then the executive director of the group, and himself an independent filmmaker, teamed up with producer Greg Klymkiw ("Archangel") to raise $1 million to produce what was the group's most ambitious project. Unfortunately, due to the film's rejection at the film festival circuit, it was consigned to a brief theatrical run, then quickly forgotten. Since then Bruce Duggan has never tackled another film project.
It's difficult for me to be entirely objective about this film. Many had high hopes for the project, including myself, but inevitably it failed. Incidentally, I played a small part in the movie as the "second religious fanatic," (the one kissing the dictator's boot).
The basic plot concerns the shenanigans of a mad Central American dictator Sauria (Simon Magana) stuck in a Northern Canadian town. After being thrown out of his native country, Sauria, along with his wife Carmen (Andree Pelletier), are relocated through a CIA branch officer (Kyle McCulloch) to the hamlet of Nuscht, in northern Manitoba. Through a series of hasty negotiations, the residents of Nuscht are alloted $1 million U.S weekly in order to take care of the dictator (this as a substitute when their mainstay industry, a nuclear waste dump, gets closed down). But Sauria cannot be reformed. In an attempt to take over the village, he pits the town's residents against the local native reservation in a divide and conquer tactic. Only the mayor's wife (Margaret Anne MacLeod) is able to see through Sauria's charade, even though it threatens to put the town's livelihood in jeopardy.
The first half-hour works the best, managing to tell a story that spans the White House, Parliament, and the mythical town of Nuscht. Even when its humor tends towards the Royal Canadian Air Farce, events move at a steady pace, helped out by Duggan's own buoyant editing and some first rate casting. Simon Magana is wonderfully robust as the wily, ruthless leader, and there's a great comic bit by producer Klymkiw himself as the town's sleazy MP. As well, there is a visual flair to the piece, doing an okay 50's opening parody at the very beginning.
But things fall apart in the middle. The unorthodox editing which served so well in Duggan's previous half-hour drama "Mike" begins to work against his feature debut. The pace slows and Duggan, in trying an experimental approach, deliberately frames critical scenes in single takes and in long shot. Not only does it dwarf the actors, but it effectively kills the momentum, as well as make it confusing to know what is going on. Worse, the humor sags, the jokes turn stale, and even the dramatic tension concerning Sauria's attempts to take over the town is seriously undercut by Duggan's own mis-en-scene.
Things pick up during the last third, but by then it's too late. Duggan attempts to focus on the film's moralistic overtones result in the whole tone turning sour and downbeat (not helped by the downbeat, repetitive score by the Chronos Quartet). In many ways, it's a companion piece with Paul Donovan's own Atlantic-Canadian comedy "Buried On Sunday". Both films concerned local hamlets fighting for their livelihood, then possessing the means to save it (one gets a Southern dictator, the other a Russian Submarine), and finding that things get more complicated as a result. And both films become so mired in social commentary, that they forget their primary purpose in generating guffaws, not enlightening the masses.
Ultimately the film was overshadowed by more superior Canuck comedies such as "Highway 61" and "Masala", and the small town angle was handled far better in my opinion with John Paiz's "Top of the Food Chain" eight years later. Yet thinking about it, it was such a hotbed for local talent at the time, with the likes of Tina Keeper ("North of 60") and Kyle McCulloch (later writer for South Park) that's it hard not to feel some affection for it. And for all its flaws it does offer a telling commentary of the death of small town Canadian, threatened by globalism, struggling to remain true to itself.