Hard Core Logo
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| Hard Core Logo | |
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| Directed by | Bruce McDonald |
| Produced by | Brian Dennis Christine Haebler |
| Written by | Michael Turner (novel) Noel S. Baker (screenplay) |
| Starring | Hugh Dillon Callum Keith Rennie John Pyper-Ferguson Bernie Coulson |
| Music by | Schaun Tozer |
| Cinematography | Danny Nowak |
| Editing by | Reginald Harkema |
| Distributed by | Shadow Shows Incorporated (Canada) |
| Release date(s) | October 11, 1996 |
| Running time | 92 min. |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Hard Core Logo is a Canadian mockumentary adapted by Noel Baker from the novel of the same name by author Michael Turner. Director Bruce McDonald illustrates the self-destruction of punk rock.
The film, released in 1996, documents a once-popular punk band, Hard Core Logo. The band is composed of lead singer Joe Dick (Hugh Dillon), fame-tempted guitarist Billy Tallent (Callum Keith Rennie), schizophrenic bass player John Oxenberger (John Pyper-Ferguson) and drummer Pipefitter (Bernie Coulson).
Julian Richings plays Bucky Haight, Dick's idol. Molly Parker plays a member of the riot grrrl band Jenifur.
Several notable punk musicians, including Art Bergmann, Joey Shithead and Joey Ramone, play themselves in cameos. Canadian television personality Terry David Mulligan also has a cameo, playing a fictionalized version of himself.
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[edit] Synopsis
Punk aficionados can't help but see a little bit of themselves in each character.
MacDonald demonstrates the death of punk through the course of events portrayed in the film. Just as transplanting wildflowers guarantees their destruction, the desperation with which lead singer Joe Dick tries to recapture the glory days of Hard Core Logo literally kills punk. The circumstances are void of the dynamics which spawn the culture, and to keep a semblance of the spirit alive, Joe resorts to incanting the name of his role model, punk demigod, Bucky Haight. He claims that Haight has been the victim of gun violence - losing one (or both) of his legs - and gives the impetus for going on this last tour a romantic, even noble appearance.
Bucky Haight represents original punk. He did not pursue a lifestyle which showcased benchmark characteristics of the culture, but was rather an individual who lived through the formative circumstances, and was able to translate the experience into music. His alleged mutilation is Joe Dick's way of acknowledging that the original punk culture has ceased to exist. In fact, Bucky Haight has retired to a life of comfortable solitude. He has matured past punk, and lives on a farm. He expresses anger toward Dick for claiming he has been shot. To illustrate his lack of sentiment toward the past, he gives Hard Core Logo guitarist, Billy Tallent, his famous Stratocaster, in an offhand way. It is as if, rather than passing a torch, Haight is ridding himself of rubbish, as he communicates clear disdain for Tallent when he tells him to keep the guitar. It is not a mentorship; punk is dead.
There are die hards who cannot let go of their affinity for their chaotic days within the culture. For them, the film may well be a harbinger of things to come. Their inability to adapt to the times very well may end tragically, either in suicide, or commercial franchise. It is this certainty which is picked up by MacDonald, and has made Hard Core Logo a touchstone of Generation X's obsession with itself.
MacDonald leaves the ending void of morality, which is congruent with punk culture, and allows viewers not familiar with its internal tensions to experience some of the gut emotions which foster it.
[edit] Production
McDonald grew up in the Vancouver punk rock scene in the late '70s and early '80s and was drawn to Michael Turner's book about aging musicians. McDonald commented in an interview, "what I thought was really interesting is where it is 15 years later, and what are these guys doing now." He had just come off the critically acclaimed Dance Me Outside and friends warned him not to repeat himself by making another road movie. However, McDonald did not see Logo as a repeat of previous films. "On the other films, they (the anti-heroes of Roadkill and Highway 61 go down the road and meet a nutty person and things happened. Here you're with the same people throughout - and they are the nutty people!"
McDonald had to persuade Dillon to do the movie. "He was going 'Wow, what if the movie is shit, then I'd lose all my fans from the band, I'd lose all my credibility!'" The director auditioned 200 actors for the role but kept coming back to the musician. Dillon remembers, "as soon as he gave me freedom to make the screenplay more believable, I became interested. Bruce allowed me creative input and that's what made it a special piece for me." Dillon drew a lot on his own real life experiences of being in a band.
Hard Core Logo screened at the Cannes Film Festival. McDonald remembers, "Cannes was very humbling. You're in the same arena as Bernardo Bertolucci and Czechoslovakian pornographers. It's such a bizarre spectrum." The film went on to be nominated for six Genie Awards, including Best Picture and Director. Quentin Tarantino saw Logo at a film festival and liked it so much that he bought the U.S. distribution rights under his Rolling Thunder vanity label and even toyed with casting Dillon in Jackie Brown.
[edit] Soundtrack
Although music figures heavily in the film, a conventional soundtrack album was not initially released; instead, McDonald had several notable Canadian bands record covers of the songs in the film, and packaged them as if they were a tribute album to a real band. That album, A Tribute to Hard Core Logo, was also released in 1996. (A proper soundtrack album was released later in 1998 on Velvel Records.)
[edit] Other Trivia
- A Canadian punk band of the 2000s, Billy Talent, is named after Hard Core Logo's guitarist.
- Michael Turner was earlier in a band called Hard Rock Miners.
- In the movie Billy Tallent is reading I Never Liked You, a graphic novel by Chester Brown.
