Hello, my name is Justin the Clue, and today we are doing a special interview with Stephen

Broomer. He is an author, a teacher, and he's also started his own boutique, Blu-ray label,

for experimental Canadian film. Thank you very much for joining me today, Stephen.

Thank you so much for having me, Justin. Now, how did you get into

experimental cinema? Well, you know, it's a weird, uh, long story for me. I, um, I grew up in a house

where we saw, you know, a lot of 1940s psychodramas like Maya Darren and, you know, Kenneth

anger and Shirley Clark movies. So I already had some exposure to all this stuff before I got to high school and then university and, you know, Kenneth Anger and Shirley Clark movies. So I already had some exposure to all this stuff

before I got to high school and then university. And it always seemed to be the kind of

filmmaking that, you know, I wanted to do. Um, so that's something that's just kind of been with me

for a long time. As a teenager, if your parents are showing you this stuff and you're loving it,

did you try to show your friends, people that you know? Oh, yeah, sure. And did they give you blank stare? Did you find your people? You know, what can I tell you? I mean, when you're that age, if you have a friend who's showing you like Unshanandalu and you don't get it, that's kind of on you. So we have to give them contact? actually like, let me give you a 30 minute introduction. Well, I couldn't do that at the time, but I knew people who were into the same kinds of things I was into, be they psychodramas or Ed Wood movies. And when did you decide like this is going to be a career? Because you've written books about like, not difficult subjects, but ones that aren't tackled that much.

Specifically, I remember coming across your book, this before I knew who you were, about

the McMaster Film Board, which is part of a book that you wrote Hamilton Babylon.

It was in the 60s and was most famous for basically having involvement of a bunch of experimental

filmmakers and one, Ivan Reitman.

Yeah, Ivan was there.

So was Eugene Levy.

And it was at a campus where other people who would later become Canadian and North

American comedy celebrities were Dave Thomas, Martin Short.

But the people who I'm most interested in from that story are people you might not have heard of John Hoffs, as Peter Rowe, David Martin, who started it really to try to echo the things that they were encountering coming out of New York that were, you know, reaching them through, I guess, the word of mouth youth culture and things like film culture magazine.

And what is the process of writing a book

like this like you decide all right i'm going to be the macmaster film board guy oh god i hope i'm not

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