Showing all posts about Jay McCarrol

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, by Matt Johnson, Jay McCarrol

25 July 2026

Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie, trailer, is a bat-shit crazy (to say the least) time-travel caper I found while perusing the movie listings on Kanopy last week. It’s a story about two musicians, Matt Johnson, and Jay McCarrol, portraying themselves, who live in Toronto, Canada.

Both are in a music act named Nirvanna the Band, where they usually improvise their songs.

Although they’ve been at it for nearly two decades, as of 2025, success has eluded the duo, and many of the city’s live music venues refuse to book them.

Matt is convinced a daring stunt might sufficiently impress the Rivoli, a Toronto bar they’ve long wanted to perform at. He thinks parachuting from the top of the city’s CN Tower, into a nearby sports stadium, during the middle of game, will do the trick.

When that doesn’t quite succeed — so close, yet so far — Matt quickly formulates a plan to trick Rivoli management into believing they are time travellers from the year 2008.

He fits out their RV with a mock flux capacitor, as seen in Back to the Future (BTTF), which somehow ends up sending the pair back to 2008.

It’s at this point the making of the story becomes as an impressive as the story itself. Much of the feature is made using guerrilla filmmaking techniques.

Johnson and McCarrol filmed many of the people, members of the public, they encountered with hidden cameras, usually without their knowledge. Nor did they seek approval from city authorities, or CN Tower operators, to film, meaning many (but not all) of the scenes on the tower were not staged, they were clandestinely recorded.

Some years ago I went on a Sydney Harbour Bridge climb. I was lucky to be able to take my sunglasses up with me, let alone anything else (parachutes, secateurs, etc). Bridge climbers had to strip to their underwear, and dress in boiler-suits before setting out.

Smartphones were stowed in lockers at street level, with just about everything else we arrived with. We could wear sunglasses and bridge climb issue caps, but these were latched to our outfits. This was of course so objects didn’t fall on people and vehicles using the bridge.

I’d have thought the same requirements applied to people on the outside platform of the CN Tower. Indeed everyone was dressed in boiler-suits, similar to those of the bridge climb, but Johnson and McCarrol managed to conceal extraneous, and potentially dangerous, items under them.

You need to see Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie to appreciate just how astonishing parts of it are. Johnson and McCarrol did not obtain clearance to use excerpts, or theme music from BTTF either, something I was certain — while watching — they must have.

Johnson and McCarrol claim use of BTTF footage constitutes fair use, saying their film is parody.

The film is not a one-off affair either. It was based on a web series Johnson and McCarrol made between 2007 and 2009, called Nirvana the Band the Show. That went on to spawn a TV series Nirvanna the Band the Show (note the changed spelling), which screened in 2017 and 2018.

In 2023 Johnson directed BlackBerry, which traced the rise and fall of the once popular smartphone.

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