Hard Core Logo

Hard Core Logo, which debuted at this years Vancouver International Film Festival, is a fictional documentary about a legendary Vancouver punk rock band, Hard Core Logo. The band gets back together for a reunion tour after being apart for years. The film documents the ensuing disintegration of not only the reunited band, but the friendship between lead singer Joe Dick and lead guitarist Billy Tallent.

A documentary film crew, directed by Bruce Macdonald (Highway 61, Dance Me Outside), follows the band on its journey across the majestic West as they try and cover five cities and five gigs in only seven days. Exploring past tensions and the disfunctionality of the band along the way, this fictional documentary entertains the viewer by creating compelling characters, interesting dialogue and constant conflict and debauchery which leads to an ultimate climax of self-destruction that caps this sometimes funny, yet tragic tale.

The film, well worth seeing on the big screen, stars Callum Keith Rennie, Bernie Coulson, John Pyper-Ferguson and Hugh Dillon of the Headstones. Hugh Dillon is exceptional as the both optimistic and fatalistic Joe Dick. Bringing the best of punk sensibilities to his role, Dillon never once lets us down as the self-destructive punk legend who lives only for his music and the next gig but who is unable to come to terms with a declining career and dim future.

Playing opposite of Hugh Dillon is Callum Keith Rennie as the band's lead guitarist. We meet him as he arrives at the airport from L.A. just after his new gig with one of America's hottest bands. The two characters, Joe Dick and Billy Tallent, play off one another with believability and ease as the movie slowly dissects their life-long friendship, strained by a murky past and a clear future that is going to bring one success and another disappointment.

After seeing the movie I had a chance to sit down with Hugh Dillon and Bernie Coulson to talk about the film.

Peak: Hugh, how did you and Bruce hook up?

Hugh Dillon: We've been friends for a while, we met in Toronto years ago and he did a video for the Headstones about four years ago and I was in his last movie Dance Me Outside and then he approached me for this one. I guess we just hooked up on that video first of all and then working together on his movies.

P: What was it like working with Bruce?

Bernie Coulson: I though it was great! It was really good, actually he's become a good friend. He's a very generous man who will let you take the stage. He's not a shouting type of guy. If he doesn't like something he'll come up to you really quietly and suggest trying it this way and then trying it another way. It was nice instead of someone shouting in your face.

P: Was it pretty wild on the set?

HD: It was great experience for me just because it was very disciplined and I'm used to doing things my way because playing in a band you know, it's your band and you call the shots, you're just used to having things go your way. Because I've a lot of respect for Callum and Bruce and Bernie, you learn to kind of curve your habits and you work for the greater cause. It was just discipline, I wasn't used to getting up every day and being down in the lobby and ready to go and clean and sober at seven o'clock every morning. If I didn't have any respect for them, I just wouldn't give a shit, you know what I mean, I'd just do things my way and fuck it.

P: Your experience as a rock musician, anything like the movie?

HD: No.

P: How does your experience differ?

HD: The band I'm in and the people I work with are totally different. First of all, everyone in my band is better educated and we have buses and we take airplanes, so there's the biggest difference. Like Tim, the bass player in my band, he studied bass at Berkeley and Trent the guitar player studied art at OCA in Toronto. And I've been to private schooling and I've gone to Queen's University in Kingston, and you know what I mean?

P: So, it's not as disfunctional?

HD: No it isn't. But as far as drug abuse and alcohol goes, that runs in every rock band but there's a stage where it will either implode or explode or stop. With this movie one of the appealing things is the portrayal of these guys, the constant abuse and stuff. I find with every band the first tour that they do in Canada is there drunkest tour and their most stoned tour because everything is so new and exciting. And that is something that the movie draws on. But with any professional band, you can't really exist and be fucked up forever without eventually screwing up.

P: You play Joe Dick, the lead singer of Hard Core Logo. On the surface, it would seem similar to your job as lead singer of the Headstones. Of course, the movie is not what your experience has been. What did you do to get into the role?

HD: Yeah, the role is totally different, the aesthetics with the mohawk and things like that, it changes your outlook to a certain degree but you do bring parts of yourself to the character and because its a movie your allowed to do things that you can't do in real life, which kind of frees you up because you know you can get away with it, there's no repercussions. Callum and Bernie taught me a lot too; these guys are such good actors that it made me work that much harder and do my homework and really get into it as opposed to saying it's just a job and I'm getting paid. You just bring what you know to it, then you add bits and pieces of everything else; I know a lot of different people and I know other lead singers. Because I'm a musician myself, I just know the debauchery of a lot of it and the desperation of certain people and I added it into the mix and Joe Dick is what I came out with. Of course, on the surface it looks like me, cause it is me and it isn't me.

P: Hugh, you've seen the film, what did you think of it?

HD: I thought Bruce did a great job, he was under the gun and he had a lot of pressure.

P: What kind of pressure was he under?

HD: You know, like anybody else who is doing any kind of piece, it's gotta be good because you're judged on your last piece of work, so if it hadn't of been good it would have been difficult for him to move on to other projects.

P: There's a scene in the movie where the band and the film crew drop acid with the legendary singer Bucky Haight on his farm. What was it like shooting that scene?

BC: The acid scene itself was a lot of fun.

HD: We didn't do acid.

BC: We didn't do acid but it sure felt like it when I saw the scene in the movie. It seemed so real, like after I saw it on film I thought that wasn't even a film camera, I thought it was like out of the eye of a flying bat or something like that.

P: Hugh, what's your future as far as acting goes?

HD: I take it day by day. My loyalty lies with the band and with each script that comes in my guitar player and I look at it with my manager and decide if its a good move. You know, most of them aren't. Even Hard Core Logo I turned down originally, but Bruce has his ways of getting you to do things and so I ended up doing it. It has to be a pretty interesting piece, really, to take it. I don't mind doing cameos and things like that because it doesn't take up too much of your time. Hard Core Logo was a lead role in a movie so it was a lot of work and I just wasn't sure if I was ready to do it or wanted to do it or was that interested. But I'm a writer, so once I realized I could have some input into changing dialogue and even the ending... I didn't really like the ending they had, so I changed the ending so it fit me more than anything else. Bruce was happy with it and went with it and I'm glad he did, but yeah, people offer you a million different things and once you've been in them and they know you can do them, they'll offer you anything.

P: What are you working on now?

HD: I'm in the studio making a Headstones record and that's the most important project that I'm working on at the moment.

P: When is the new Headstones album coming out?

HD: In January and it's called Smile and Wave.

P: Where did you record it?

HD: We recorded it in Montreal and Toronto and we ended up co-producing it with a friend of ours. It's the best thing we've done and it's better than if we got a name producer. With us, we've just gotten so good in the studio at doing our own stuff and with a name producer you end up getting a producer's interpretation of the music you do. We've spent so much time doing things ourselves and we do a better job because we know our own band.

P: Is the new album as dark and brooding as the last two?

HD: Some of it is and some of it isn't. You gotta listen to it.

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