Fans of Phantom find paradise Filmmaker Kevin Smith in Winnipeg for anniversary screening of 1974 cult movie and documentary on city's love affair with it By: Conrad Sweatman Posted: 4:37 PM CDT Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024

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For the third time in about a decade, filmmaker Kevin Smith (Mallrats, Clerks, Dogma) is in town for a Winnipeg-themed film.

Smith has set two horror-comedies — Tusk and Yoga Hosers — in a city the director calls “colder than a witch’s t—.” This time, Smith is visiting Winnipeg in connection with a horror comedy not his own.

He’s here to promote a screening of his buddy Malcolm Ingram’s documentary Phantom of Winnipeg, about Peg City’s unique obsession with Phantom of the Paradise, Brian De Palma’s nihilistic 1974 rock-musical.

Something of a scholar of fandoms, Smith appears in the film (co-directed by Sean Stanley) as an interviewee, and will be at the Q&A following Friday screening’s of the doc at the Burton Cummings Theatre.

“Winnipeggers really claimed (Phantom of the Paradise) as their own and saved it,” says Smith, who wrote and directed some of the most famous youth comedies of the past 30 years.

“It’s as if, like, f—-ing crop-dusters from space had come and sucked each one of them up, f—-ed with their brains and then sent them back home and be like, ‘Let’s make them all love this f—-ing movie.’”

He means this endearingly. For those unfamiliar with Smith’s style and movies, as foul-mouthed as they are, they are mostly warm-hearted in their sketches of comic-book nerds and cultural misfits.

Phantom’s robot-voiced singing, mad scientist musical experimentation and futuristic helmet-masks — all of this, it’s now known, was the inspirational clay French house-music giants Daft Punk used to shape much of their early esthetic.

But when such furious sounds and sights hit movie theatres in 1974, no one came.

Well, no one except the Winnipeg kids who flooded theatres such as the Garrick, over and over, to take in the musical mashup of The Phantom of the Opera and The Picture of Dorian Gray that was a box-office bomb basically everywhere else.

The film opened on Boxing Day 1974 and ran continuously for four months, continuing off and on for another year, until 1976.

This cult following in Winnipeg continues today. Marking the film’s 50th anniversary, legions of “Phans,” as they call themselves, will gather Saturday at the Burt to screen the film, experience local tribute band Swanage’s live rendition of its soundtrack and hang with many of Phantom’s original cast members.

This includes Paul Williams, who played the film’s Faustian villain — a record producer named Swan — as well as providing the protagonist’s singing voice and writing the music. Williams credits “Peggers” with the film’s longevity and, partially, his own.

“I stood onstage for Grammy for Album of the Year … with a couple of robots,” says Williams in the documentary of his collaboration with Daft Punk on their Random Access Memories.

“The reason I was there is because (Daft Punk’s) Thomas (Bangalter) and Guy-Manuel (de Homem-Christo) met at the theatre in Paris at Phantom of the Paradise. They’d seen it maybe together 20 times. And I think that there’s something to Winnipeg in that success.”

Phantom’s niche fandom — which has flourished through the internet, but could only germinate before it — engrosses both Phantom of Winnipeg’s filmmaker Ingram, who lives in Toronto, and Smith, who lives in Los Angeles.

“Toronto doesn’t really have community,” says Ingram, who clearly knows his target audience. “Winnipeg still has community.”

Ingram admits, sacrilegiously, that he isn’t Phantom’s biggest fan, but says he’s “more interested in telling the story of Winnipeg. It’s an incredibly culturally rich city. It’s got its own scene, because it’s kind of an island.”

“Somehow Winnipeggers are like ‘This is ours,’ and claimed it as their own.”–Kevin Smith

Phantom of the Paradise lives at the intersection of two of Smith’s well-known interests: Canada and fandoms.

Years before Marvel Cinematic Universe colonized Hollywood, the hockey-jersey-wearing, Degrassi-loving New Jerseyan was writing for Marvel and DC, giving cameo parts to Marvel’s primary creative Stan Lee, and filling his movies with nerds debating theories such as “kryptonite condoms” and the innocence of the contractors who worked on the Death Star.

Clearly, there’s always been an irreverent edge to Smith’s work, and he says he’s against the puritanical “But is it canon?” streak common to so many fan groups.

But Smith is also protective of smaller cultures staking space for themselves at the mainstream’s margins, whether that be with Phantom fandom or with Canadian culture more broadly.

“I’ve been noticing it for the last, like, 20 years — there’s this homogenization of the entire world. I’m all for, you know, every country trying to hold on to a bit of its identity, but the internet both extols that and eliminates that,” he says.

He sees Phantom, despite not being filmed or set here, serving an unlikely fulfilment of the Canadian Prairies’ need for cultural autonomy, and he jokes about his jealousy of that fandom.

“I could not engineer their affection for my movie,” he says, referring to one of his Manitoba-set horror films. “Now, Brian De Palma didn’t even f—ing try. And somehow Winnipeggers are like ‘This is ours,’ and claimed it as their own, even though it wasn’t even set there!”

Local phans can give off more than a hint of Phantom puritanism. Whatever you do, don’t compare their favourite cult 1970s horror-comedy-rock-musical to the other one that immediately comes to mind.

“That’s the last time you’re mentioning Rocky Horror Picture Show in this interview!” says Craig Wallace, who plays in Swanage.

“Rocky’s hamburger, Phantom’s steak,” says Gloria Dignazio, who, like Wallace, is interviewed in the doc and serves on the anniversary event’s organizing committee.

But this is lighthearted gatekeeping for a group that still exudes wonder over a psychedelic trip they took at the cinema in the 1970s and keep coming back to. Phantom of Winnipeg shows emotional meetings between fans and creators, rocking tribute shows and mostly a lot of fun.

More of that is in store this weekend.

conrad.sweatman@freepress.mb.ca