Jay Baruchel on stickhandling ‘Goon’ sequel and staying in Canada

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This article was published 23/06/2016 (3630 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TORONTO – Jay Baruchel sounds as battered as the on-ice bruisers in his homegrown “Goon” hockey films these days.

After co-writing the first film, which was a hit in 2012, he decided to make his feature directorial debut on its upcoming sequel, “Goon: Last of the Enforcers.” The experience was like a hard bodycheck into the boards — and the actor-filmmaker from Montreal loved it.

“My health has suffered, I finally have an ulcer and all this cool stuff that comes from being involved in directing a movie,” Baruchel said in a recent interview to promote the upcoming season of his sitcom “Man Seeking Woman.”

“But God damn, was it ever fun. If the movie turned out to be garbage, well at least I had a great time — but thank God it didn’t even turn out to be garbage either.”

“Goon” earned $4.1 million at Canadian theatres in 2012, more than any other homegrown English-language feature film that year. In its opening weekend, it even beat out Hollywood imports and went on to win Telefilm’s Golden Box Office prize.

Michael Dowse directed the irreverent comedy, about a minor-league hockey enforcer who is encouraged to pull no punches in order to win.

For its highly anticipated sequel due out in 2017, Baruchel took the reins while also co-writing and co-starring.

“I had tall boots to fill, because Michael Dowse is a hell of an artist and a dear friend of mine and one of my mentors,” said Baruchel.

“The big gravity of it is, how do you make a followup to a lot of people’s favourite movie?” added the Toronto resident, whose other credits include “The Trotsky,” “This is the End” and the “How to Train Your Dragon” films.

“There are a lot of people that adore this flick. I get people showing me (tattoos) of characters that I created, and so that’s a lot…. If someone likes something enough to get a tattoo of it, you don’t want to disappoint them and you don’t want to just give them the same thing again.

“You have no choice but to give them something that you think is better than the first movie. So that’s why it took five years between the first two movies, is because we wanted to make sure we got it right.”

Baruchel has said the sequel will be darker with more fighting, more hockey and higher stakes. Returning cast members include Seann William Scott, Liev Schreiber and Alison Pill.

And it likely won’t be the last Canadian project we see from Baruchel.

“We have this awful, weird little thing (in Canadian entertainment) that, like, ‘OK, but if you could, you’d be down there,'” he said, referring to the U.S.

“That was never the thing in my family, it was never the big brass ring. I was raised to believe that I grew up in the cleanest, safest, best country in the world — and I like movies. So it seemed to be pretty reasonable to be able to, if I could, make movies here.”

He’s not alone, he added.

“There’s a bunch of … really good people my age and younger who are doing very interesting things, who grew up watching the same movies I did but also have as much of a sense of patriotism as I like to think I do,” said Baruchel, 34.

“So I have a lot of faith for what’s going to happen. I think that the next 10 to 20 years, you’re going to see, I’d call it a renaissance, but a renaissance would imply that there was a naissance to begin with.

“But I think you will see, in the next 20 years, this golden age of Canadian art.”