Interview: Mike Clattenburg, director of Trailer Park Boys: The Movie, in theatres Friday
There was a time when Canadian television was dominated by nature documentaries, educational films and light comic fare like the Royal Canadian Air Farce. Not anymore. Now one of the most renowned shows on Canadian TV revolves around the lives of three close friends livin’ in a trailer park
between regular trips to prison. The calming face of David Suzuki has been replaced by the mug shots of Ricky, Julian and Bubbles, shoving jalapeño chips and pepperoni sticks into their mouths between swigs of liquor and puffs of six-paper ts. Depending on your point of view, it’s either a great time to be a Canadian or the sign of impending doom for our culture.
The man responsible for it all is the rather unassuming Mike Clattenburg. A long-time friend of the stars of the show, Clattenburg has written and directed every episode of the series as well as the fast-approaching feature-length film. Mike Clattenburg spoke to the Journal this summer during production of the show’s seventh season.
Clattenburg began his television career toiling as a journeyman director; however, in his spare time he produced his own independent short films starring friends Rob Wells and Jean-Paul Tremblay better known to the rest of the world as Ricky and Julian, respectively).
“I met them in high school. [They’re] just wonderfully funny guys and we always connected,” Clattenburg said. “After doing commercial television for a few years I’d kind of lost touch with them. So, we started hanging out again. I encouraged them to get into acting once I found out that they liked the idea of it … “We drove around Halifax in what is now the shitmobile [Ricky’s beautifully antiqued car], ‘cause that was my car at the time, and started improvising scenes, playing around.”
Clattenburg describes his role on those early shorts as “a one man band.” Working as the entire crew, he shot, recorded and edited the films himself. “There were no stakes really. It was purely for the joy and fun of it, and it still is,” he said. In 1998 they produced a short film entitled One Last Shot that
featured early incarnations of the lovable dope-dealing Ricky and his rum-and-coke toting friend Julian.
Clattenburg would soon add these characters to a concept he had been nourishing for years.
“I used to like a show called Cops and I was fascinated by how the cameramen were shooting that stuff.
“The idea to motivate the use of a cheap DV camera hit me as well as that doc-style, the mockumentary. There were trailer parks around, so that’s a freestanding set. Plus, myself, Rob Wells and Jean-Paul had started to develop these harder edge characters and decided to just go shoot in a trailer park. We were going to make Cops from a criminal’s point of view.”
Without much of a budget or from any Canadian filmmaking institutions, Clattenburg created a 70-minute feature entitled The Trailer Park Boys for the 1999 Atlantic Film Festival.
It was there that an independent producer named Barry Dunn approached Clattenberg suggesting that they turn the film into a television series. Initially, the fledgling director and his friends were skeptical about the idea. “We thought ‘ah shit man, [the movie] is too crazy, people must think we’re fucked.’
But [Dunn] was like, ‘No, they’re really well-drawn characters, I love the storytelling, we should pitch this as a TV series.’ So, we stretched it out, broadened it and added a lot more characters … Showcase liked the idea, and then we shot our first season.” Trailer Park Boys premiered in 2001 and slowly built a cult audience. Clattenburg re the instability of the show during those first few years when no one ever knew if it would be renewed once they finished a series.
“I started to see people recognize the guys and freak out and slowly but surely it grew. Now the guys can’t even go out anymore or go to a mall, they just can’t get anything done.”
Such is the show’s success that it caught the eye of fellow canuck Ivan Reitman, the phenomenally successful producer/director who has been involved with such comedy classics as Animal House and hostbusters.
Reitman approached Clattenburg about doing a new Trailer Park Boys feature in 2004 and the movie project has been in development ever since. “Ivan insisted that we do three things for the feature film— first, tell the story for a first-time audience, second he didn’t want any guns … and the third was that he wanted to do nudity in the film. And he wanted a good story of course. We worked for months to get a script that was acceptable for him.”
Although the filmmakers have tried to keep the movie true to the series, they have been forced to make a few concessions for the big screen.
“One of the things we had to be careful with, and Ivan was concerned about was 90 minutes of handheld on a big screen. We toned it down and [also got] away from doing as much interview stuff,” he said. “It still has a doc feel, but not as much as the show, because we had to be careful of [the] watchability of handheld on a big screen. It can be wonderful but the accumulating effect can be nauseating.” While they all enjoy their work on the show, Clattenburg knows that that kind of commitment is not likely to last forever.
“Everyone has many different projects going on and other interests. Doing TV is really hard for me because I direct all the episodes and do some of the editing and writing. So, it kind of consumes me
all year.” So now only one question remains—with all the demands placed on Clattenburg and years spent toiling on the same project, could the show possibly be as fun to make as it is to watch?
“It is. Last year was really tough, because we were all really exhausted after the movie, but we’ve been shooting eight days so far [on the seventh season] and it’s been really fun. Each day I come in at 8 a.m. and next thing I know it’s 8:10 p.m. and I’m driving home covered in bug spray and sweat, going ‘What the hell just happened?’ It’s awesome.” As Ricky would say: “We got this plutonium kind of love shit going and I don’t wanna fuck that up, all right? Now let’s go get drunk and eat chicken fingers.”
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Trailer Park Boys: The Movie is released on Friday and the seventh season of the television show will appear on Showcase this April.
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