40 is the new 20: The story behind the song

Guest post today from my friend Steven Morris, who co-wrote an original song for a feature film being released this weekend. Take it away Steven:

On May 29, the totally independent English-language Canadian feature 40 is the new 20 opens in Montreal (AMC Forum) and Toronto (AMC Yonge & Dundas 24). It's directed by Montrealer Simon Boisvert, with a cast including Claudia Ferri (Hard Core Logo, Mambo Italiano), Pat Mastroianni (Degrassi), Bruce Dinsmore (The Myth of the Male Orgasm) and newcomer Diana Lewis, who also produces.

Best of all (well, maybe not best), a song I co-wrote runs under the closing credits. Here's the story of how that happened.

My old friend André Potvin was on the crew for 40 is the new 20, and he kept telling me it was one of the best experiences he'd ever had, after years of working on cookie-cutter films made to feed cable TV.

André has an innate sense of taste. If he said it was a cool film it probably was. Then he dropped the bombshell.

“Steven, I told the director that you and I wrote a song for his end credits and that we would send him a demo.” Tip your hat to André because this bit of hubris was a blatant lie. But it did set a bright orange fire under our you-know-whats.

André and I had once played lots of music together. Two guitars (one blonde the other black), two voices and two rock and roll frames of mind. But a few years ago I had been forced to stop playing because of arthritis. The musical path we’d been on split and I spent time licking my wounds, singing with others and trying to learn different instruments.

This song project represented an opportunity for renewed collaboration. But there were a few problems: songs don’t grow on trees, the shit box digidesign/pro tools home studio I had purchased two years ago had to be figured out, and André and I had to re-learn our lost art of relating as musicians, and as human beings.

Potvin had put together a muscular, highly rhythmic chord progression and a good sketch of an arrangement. But when I asked him what his melody was he stared at me with bland expression which screamed out, “Heeelp meee!”

For six weeks it was a slugfest. I read Simon’s taut script twice, Potvin threw melodic line after line I came up with back in my face until he started coming up with some of his own. Finally, we unraveled the needlessly complex software and delivered the song.

And Simon bought it! That was nearly three months ago.

Being the neurotic I am that gave me plenty of time to doubt André's opinion of the shoot. I was convinced our music and names would be identified with something of unbridled absurdity. That I would have to learn to repeat the line, “Oh, that must be some other Steven Morris, I have never heard of André Potvin.”

Or reverse anxiety: The song we wrote was horrible and Simon didn't know any better. More than one person whose opinion I respect had said, “it is a pity to see you wasting your spare time on this song Morris.” My older brother referred to me as “a head case.”

Finally, the date came for the crew screening. After seeing the film, I beamed with pride. And for all involved, not just me and André.

It is not such an embarrassment to have cradled existential doubt. Just making a film is a miracle. Making a good film is an act of God. Some say magic is involved. Regardless, Simon Boisvert made a good film. And that ain’t easy. It takes lots of courage.

If you have ever been on a web site to meet people, or speed dating, or been invited by friends for dinner and – surprise – there is a single person of the opposite sex there. you will relate to this film. There are legions of us.

40 is the New 20 is a contemporary tale. The actors deliver. The story grabbed me.

Some will loathe it, others love it. Some will be indifferent. But this is a call for you to buy a ticket and respond. Morris, you need your head read, that film is a stinker. Morris, you were right, it hurt me too. Maurice, désolé, peux pas te dire si je suis pour ou contre, car je me suis endormi durant la projection.

Go all out, post a comment on the Facebook group I created called, “40 is the New 20-The Feature Film.”

Please go see it. Hit me with your best shot.

One senior? I'm a believer!!

I don't expect a lot of hard news from the Sunday paper. Especially when it's the Halifax Chronicle-Herald.

But when I took a look at this past Sunday's front page, I thought maybe I was reading an edition of The Masthead News instead. That's one of our weekly community papers, given to headlines like Girl Guides to Learn Self-Defence, and serial punctuation abuse: ("... a big, new store.")

The main story is a CP piece about a Montreal woman who has had season tickets to the Canadiens for 55 years. There's a big photo of her above the fold. It's a gentle, boring human interest piece. What really got me was the sub-head:

Montreal senior a season ticket holder for 55 years; believes 2008 team can win the Stanley Cup

Hey, one senior can't be wrong!

Google doesn't know when to be offended

Looking for the number of a researcher I want to interview at Montreal's Jewish General Hospital, I Googled these words: Jewish General Montreal.

The Google ads on the side of the search page were topped by one from Google itself, linking to this page, where I found the following text:

An explanation of our search results.

If you recently used Google to search for the word "Jew," you may have seen results that were very disturbing. We assure you that the views expressed by the sites in your results are not in any way endorsed by Google. We'd like to explain why you're seeing these results when you conduct this search.

A site's ranking in Google's search results relies heavily on computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page's relevance to a given query. Sometimes subtleties of language cause anomalies to appear that cannot be predicted. A search for "Jew" brings up one such unexpected result...

We apologize for the upsetting nature of the experience you had using Google and appreciate your taking the time to inform us about it.

Two problems. 1) I did not search for the word "Jew." 2) These are the first-page search results Google came up with:

• Jewish General Hospital
• Segal Cancer Centre
• Dr. Clown -- Jewish General Hospital (an outfit that sends clowns to hospitals to entertain)
• Department of Otolaryngology -- Staff
• Two Nurses at Montreal's Jewish General Hospital Have Lost Their Licences
• Example: Jewish General Hospital, Montreal,QC (a page from Cancer Care Ontario)
• Sir Mortimer B Davis Jewish General Hospital (search results from a site reselling papers)

You get the idea. A whole cornucopia of offensiveness.

Montreal round-up

Things I learned on a recent trip to Montreal:

• Xavier Caféine's "Montréal (Cette Ville)" (Chorus: "Cette ville va me rendre fou / Cette ville va me rendre complètement fou") is the perfect accompaniment to have when you drive downtown from the airport, having negotiated the Dorval circle, cars whipping from one lane to the other all around you.
• I have been away from the city long enough to have forgotten the frequencies of all the radio stations I used to listen to.
• The few mini-malls near my house that I consider to be horrendous sprawl would barely qualify as one block in Laval.
• Signage continues to be up to its usual standards. Drop your rental car off at the airport, follow the crosswalk to the terminal, and before you get there you're confronted with a concrete barrier and two signs, one for international arrivals pointing left, and one for domestic arrivals pointing right. Departures anyone?
• Ted Tevan notwithstanding, the meals at Chenoy's seem a lot less impressive than they did when I was a teenager.
• The Reluctants have some great new songs, and the new album they're recording should be a good one.
  

Share the Road

It always gets me when public responsibilities become shifted to individuals. Here's an example.

Andy Riga blogged yesterday and today about his experiences riding a bike in downtown Montreal. The situation is maybe marginally better in Halifax, though Montreal has the better bike paths.

I quit riding my bike to work in Montreal after a car door threw me into the middle of Decarie Blvd at rush hour one afternoon. I loved riding, but I didn’t love nearly being killed.

In Halifax we have a bike path down the St. Margaret’s Bay Road, right as you enter the Halifax Peninsula, that is tiny, narrow and poorly marked. It ends suddenly (for no apparent reason), and the road carries on. The bike path’s terminus is marked by a sign showing a cyclist and a car, and bearing the slogan “Share the road.” Yeah, well it would be a whole lot easier to share it if there were a bike path.

Instead of the municipality taking some responsibility for actually building decent paths for cyclists, they do basically nothing. But drivers and cyclists are asked to "share the road." That's right kids. And if we all hold hands and smile, the world will be a much nicer place too.