The Ballad of Don Quinn 1992
The Ballad of Don Quinn tells the story of southern Saskatchewan’s original punk rocker and his attempts to resurrect his band a decade after their scarcely noticed demise.
This was my first film after university, shot over the course of four weekends in October 1990, with a small crew and cast of mostly first-time actors.
Mike Burns, a local music impresario, plays the title character in his first acting role. Laura Pollock, a film student at the U of R played Ziggy Panzer. The cast included Chris Cunningham, Dave Loblaw, and filmmaker Alan Zweig, who spent a year in Regina teaching at the U of R. When I relocated to Toronto, I cast Alan in my film Ecstasy.
Quinn was certainly influenced by Jim Jarmuch’s Stranger Than Paradise, and to some degree by Cervantes’ Don Quixote.
The film was produced with the support of a grant from the Saskatchewan Arts Board (now known as SK Arts), and I used gear from the Saskatchewan Filmpool Cooperative. The film benefited from the NFB program PFAPS, which meant that the film stock was developed for free at the NFB’s Montreal lab, though there was a couple months turnaround for the “rushes”.
Cinematographer Ronald Jacobs had a very noisy Eclair NPR camera to work with, which caused extra challenges when Pat Butler was working on post-sound. It was like having a sewing machine on set.
Shot on 16mm Kodak 7222, the film was edited on a 16mm Steenbeck.
Eddie Lester (Les Holmlund) of Regina’s original punk band The Extroverts did the original score, and the soundtrack featured the music of a number of Regina bands. Pat Butler and Steve Hasiak worked on the post-audio on what might have been a very early version of Pro Tools.
Midway through picture-editing, I had the opportunity to go to Japan to teach English through the JET program, but I decided to stay in Regina and finish the film – a sliding door moment.
The film had its debut as a work in progress at the 1992 Local Heroes Festival in Edmonton, and its full debut at the Toronto Festival of Festivals (now TIFF) in September 1992, to a capacity crowd at the long-gone Backstage Theatre. It screened as part of a trio of films with Rick Hancox, who I would get to know when I began my grad studies at Concordia, and Kid In The Hall Bruce McCulloch.
The late, great Winnipeg programmer Dave Barber listed the film in his Top Ten Canadian Short Films of the 1990s in Cinema Scope magazine.
HD scan from 16mm negative
Mark Wihak Producer, Writer, Director, Editor
Mike Burns & Laura Pollock
with Chris Cunningham D. Bob Loblaw and Alan Zweig
photography by Ron Jacobs
original music by Eddie Lester
