By JENNIE PUNTER When Guy Terrifico premiered at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Tex., earlier this year, many wondered why they'd never heard of the "Canadian legend" (at one point in Guy's story, he wears a Canadian flag like a cape and swings from the Buckingham Palace gates, hollering "I'm a national treasure"). Still others wanted to know where they could buy his music (in fact, now they can — the soundtrack, which includes several beautiful "Terrifico originals" co-written by director Michael Mabbott and musician Matt Murphy, who plays Guy, hits the shelves next week).
Adding to the mild but enthusiastic confusion in Austin, country-music outlaw legend Kris Kristofferson — who is also an actor and plays himself in Guy Terrifico — made a significant appearance in another popular SXSW film, Be Here to Love Me, Margaret Brown's exquisite documentary about the influential Texas singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt.
(Are you still with me?) Kristofferson's "performances" in both films—sharing stories about the fictional Terrifico and the real Van Zandt, contemporaries (so to speak) and both substance-abusing artists with metaphorical horseshoes up their asses and nooses around their necks — are equally intimate, poignant and revealing. You may assume one performance is margarine and the other is butter; the reason you can't tell them apart is because they come from the same truthful place.
The secret of Guy Terrifico's success (it shared the CITY-TV award for best Canadian first feature at the Toronto International Film Festival in September) is that part of its development process, before shooting began, was very much like that of many documentaries. The filmmaker gains the trust of someone from the inner circle, a gatekeeper who "greenlights" the project for other insiders with juicy reminiscences.
In the case of Guy Terrifico, Mabbott got an early script draft to the multitalented Donnie Fritts, who has worked with artists like Ray Charles, Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson and is the 20-years-and-counting keyboard veteran for Rhodes scholar Kris Kristofferson, PhD.
Fritts delivers some of the best "truthful" lines about Terrifico — his quip about Guy's two-week gospel phase: "It was like he was saying, 'Oh Lord, save me, but not right now"— and is credited with securing the participation of Kristofferson, Levon Helm and Ronnie Hawkins.
Watching those guys, as well as Merle Haggard (Guy's unwitting hero-cum-nemesis), Grammy-winning pop historian Rob Bowman (Guy's biographer, who describes the musical era brilliantly while revealing Guy's "real" story) and Phil Kaufman (Guy's manager, the truth of his performance drawn from real-life wranglings of notorious musicians like Gram Parsons) reminisce about Guy, you suspect they're talking about themselves, each other or some eccentric musician dude they once knew way back when. Well, indeed they are. Guy Terrifico is the repository of some "heyday" tales these guys love to tell, but won't attribute to anyone lest they incriminate themselves or someone close.
Real-life references abound and it's a whole heck of a lot of fun hearing them because they're probably true.
The jumping-off point of The Life and Hard Times of Guy Terrifico is the present-day investigation of the album "Retribution Honky Tonkus." Bedtracks sent to various musicians by someone calling himself Senor Fantastico are accompanied by a typed note that reads "Bring It Back Home." Everyone starts to wonder if Terrifico (supposedly shot dead during a live club show in Vancouver during his comeback in the early seventies) is still alive and writing songs.
A fake documentarian, rarely seen or heard, weaves together "archival" footage and photographs with interviews. Prairie boy Jim Jablowski, whose songwriting genius was first revealed in the seminal tune "Perogy Moon," wins $8-million, the biggest jackpot in Canadian lottery history. During one of his epic parties he is kicked in the head by a rental horse. When he wakes up he christens himself Guy Terrifico.
Guy ingratiates himself to his musical heroes by creating the legendary club Barrio Terrifico, although he is rarely conscious enough to greet his famous guests. His ill-fated trip to Nashville, where he and his band appear on "The Horton Family Jamboree,"further cements his legend, as musician Stephen Bruton (fake) reminisces: "In walks this guy with a massive head wound and a midget." Go see the film and you'll get it. Guy's musical genius never gets a chance to shine. He is ahead of his time and a screw-up. Foreshadowing punk, Guy gets hit with a beer bottle in New York and "humps the drums"; the move, not his music, becomes his signature. "Giving them what they want is hard on a man's soul," Kristofferson says.
Yet all the fodder from the real-life "guys" would not work without the nuanced, funny and honest performances from Canadian indie rock veteran Murphy and Natalie Radford, who plays it straight as Guy's life-long lover Mary Lou. They make the film sing.
Like the cult classics This Is Spinal Tap (metal) and the more recent A Mighty Wind (squeaky-clean folk), The Life and Hard Times of Guy Terrifico (outlaw C&W) has been slapped with the mockumentary label. But don't you pay no never mind. You know and I know better; Guy Terrifico is alive and well and living in Spain.
Special to The Globe and Mail