Picnicface takes its wacky comedy to the big screen with ‘Roller Town’

TORONTO – The Picnicface crew has created some ridiculous new material and this time, it’s hitting the big screen.

The Halifax-based comedy group, renowned for hilarious satirical YouTube sketches, has created “Roller Town,” a spoof of delightfully tacky roller derby films of the late ’70s and early ’80s.

All eight members of Picnicface were part of the troupe’s first full-length work, which was shot in Dartmouth, N.S., just outside of Halifax. Andy Bush directed the film and he teamed up with writers and actors Mark Little and Scott Vrooman to write the script.

Bush sounds like he’s putting on a comedy routine over the phone from his Halifax apartment.

“Oh god!” he cries about a minute into the conversation, with much clanging going on in the background. “Everything’s falling apart! Literally!”

He’d just been attacked by a fan that fell off his windowsill and found an opportunity to riff off it. Picnicface are longtime practitioners of the art of improv, and Bush and the rest of the crew wanted to tap into it for the film. While there was a script, Bush says the actors had some creative license and flexibility.

One scene has the film’s hero, booty-shorted Leo, punch the villain, Gregs the hapless and befuddled gangster, in the face. The dialogue for the scene was all made up on the spot.

That said, it’s not like there wasn’t a plan in place.

“We didn’t use the script as a skeleton; it had a lot of flesh on it. It’s not like it was an outline and we beefed it up,” Bush says.

They also worked to ensure it did have the right structure for a feature film.

“I’ve never taken any formal training, and neither has Scott or Mark when it comes to writing. But we did a lot of research and a lot of reading,” he says.

“We were very interested in structure. I really wanted to make sure there was a love story in there and all of that stuff, but we were also lifting from movies that were already made.”

The film got a bit of an edit after screening at the Atlantic Film Festival, where some scenes didn’t get the audience reaction that was expected.

“We took each reaction and I cut out, like 10 minutes of the film and re-jigged some things based on laughs and things like that.”

He says films like the 1979 flick “Skatetown USA” were huge sources of inspiration, which led to the homage that is “Roller Town.”

“Once we’d all watched these movies, we just sat down and watched them again together and just started writing jokes,” Bush says. “We didn’t have so much of a plot so much as to say, ‘Oh my god, that’s ridiculous. We have to tag that scene there.'”

“Roller Town” hits theatres in Canada on Sept. 21.

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