Marathon Mann
Director Ron Mann has made a career out of sharing his quirky passions with moviegoers. A guide to the counterculture connoisseur’s trippiest docs By Jason Anderson
One of the country’s most celebrated documentary filmmakers, the mop-topped Torontonian Ron Mann has spent much of the past three decades paying cinematic tribute to the things he loves— free jazz, underground comics, fungi. The consummate collector of pop-cultural arcana is the subject of both a retrospective at this year’s Hot Docs festival and a book of essays to be published this fall. To mark the occasion, the best and worst of Mann’s idiosyncratic oeuvre.
Good Idea Gone Wrong
Totally Inspired
GO FURTHER (2003)
Woody Harrelson takes a road trip in a bio-fuelled bus to promote eco-awareness. Incessant pro-hemp and yoga testimonials ensue. Patchouli-averse hippie haters break out in hives.
GRASS (1999)
The footage of chimps forced to smoke up got the movie briefly banned in Ontario, but this homage to pot conjures only a mild buzz. Subject too phat for doc’s slim 80-minute running time.
KNOW YOUR MUSHROOMS (2009)
Spotlight on a motley crew of freak flag–flying mushroom obsessives. Wigged-out animations and tracks by the Flaming Lips and The Sadies produce a contact high.
POETRY IN MOTION (1982)
Masters of modern verse throw down in Mann’s second feature-length doc about the original kings of slam: Jim Carroll, Christopher Dewdney, Allen Ginsberg and company.
TALES OF THE RAT FINK (2006)
The life and times of hot-rod customizer Ed “Big Daddy” Roth. Weirdly (but fittingly), Brian Wilson, Ann-Margret, Tom Wolfe and the Smothers Brothers voice the parts of talking cars.
COMIC BOOK CONFIDENTIAL (1988)
A pioneering survey of the medium, one of the first to advance the theory that comics can be art. Robert Crumb, Frank Miller and Stan Lee are evoked to persuade non-believers.
Hot Docs runs from April 30 to May 10.
Posters courtesy of Sphinx Production
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