Hello, my name is Justin the Clue, and I'm here today with Will Sloan.

And you're listening to The Important Cinema Club, Canadian Edition, because we're talking about writer-director Paul Donovan.

That's right. Anybody can do Adam Agoy and anybody can do David Cronenberg.

And we have.

Yeah, long ago. But who's doing Paul Donovan? No one except for us. So Paul Donovan is a sort of journeyman Canadian filmmaker. He's one of the more obscure topics we've done. And this is one that you pitched. So I'm curious to know what interests you. So I saw the movie Siege. I don't recall in what environment. I don't remember who

recommended it, but I remember sitting down with my friends watching a laser disc version of

siege. A laser disc. And being blown away, just loving that we were all kind of like,

our socks were knocked off. So Siege came out in 1983. It's a sort of later Canexploitation tax shelter movie.

It's kind of like assault on Precinct 13 with a little bit of death wish.

Yeah, but it's the most Canadian version of that possible.

And with liberal politics.

Yeah, that it takes place in just one apartment block and that it's all just kind of like normal people.

It feels like a movie that I, and I believe there may be some truths to this that like they shot in a place that one of them was staying. Right. So, and I saw this movie for the first time, maybe eight or nine years ago when you and Peter showed it at the Laser Blast. Film Society. Yeah. Yeah. And this was interesting because we had gotten it From DHX Who had done a remaster of it And they weren't sure What to do with it And that's because The company DHX Was partly owned by Michael Donovan The Brother of Paul Who would go on to be a producer And do a lot of famous things That I'll get to later, which is probably why they had a remastered version of Siege laying around. It has since been released on Blu-ray by Severn. I know that Jason Eisner, director of Hobo with a shotgun, is a great champion of siege. He's called it the best Canadian film of all time, did a Blu-ray commentary with Paul Donovan. So Siege is the movie that, of all the Paul Donovan movies, is the one that's come closest to having a sort of palpable, like, cult movie presence. Was I writing and emailing people that worked at Severin after we did the screening? Hey, man, if a company could put out siege, that would be great. Yes. You see the, the foolish enthusiasm I'm putting out into the world.

The puppet master, Justin DeCleu, is behind so much. And I know that Jason Eisner, I believe he kind of like strong arm severed because they announced that Bluhrie with no special features. And then afterwards they're like, oh, we got a commentary with Jason Eisener and Paul Donovan. Well, good for him. Soldier of Cinema. And I remember, like, after seeing Siege, I looked at Paul Donovan's career and I'm like, who is this guy?

Like, he's been working, but he does not have the classical Canadian filmmaker. All right, I made one or two movies. TV land for the rest of my life. Every Canadian filmmaker. Every single one. Unless you're David Cronenberg. You make a Kinnock'sploitation movie.

You make like Prom Night 3, like that kind of thing.

And then you've spent the last 15 years making like a prince for Christmas.

You know?

Because in Vancouver, which is where all these movies are shot, all the Hallmark and below Hallmark Christmas movies, they're shooting like 20, 30, 50 of these movies a year.

It just keeps Vancouver like fucking flowing.

And it sucks because that means you're taking people that are passionate, that want to be filmmakers, and putting them in a machine where all they have to do is direct traffic.

Right.

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