Return to tiff.’s home page

Canadian Film Encyclopedia

Shopping Cart
 
The Making of Monsters

The Making of "Monsters"


Year: 1991
Language: English
Format: 16mm Colour
Runtime: 35 min
Director: John Greyson
Producer: Laurie Lynd
Writer: John Greyson
Cinematographer: Almerinda Travassos
Editor: Miume Jan
Sound: Herwig Gayer
Music: Glenn Schellenberg
Cast: Lee MacDougall, Ray Kahnert, Taborah Johnson, David Gardner, Stewart Arnott
Production Company: Canadian Film Centre

During his residency at the Canadian Film Centre in 1991, John Greyson, the enfant terrible of gay cinema in Canada, directed The Making of "Monsters," a short film dealing with the 1985 murder of a gay schoolteacher by five teenage boys in Toronto's High Park. This fictional documentary chronicles a movie-of-the-week version of the event. There is a movie-within-the-movie produced by Hungarian Marxist and literary critic and theorist Georg Lukacs and directed by Bertolt Brecht, who inexplicably appears as a catfish in a bowl.

Brilliantly incorporating everything from Marxist aesthetics to hockey machismo to tire fires, Greyso made a film that is immensely enjoyable as well as a strong, fearless statement of gay pride. The Making of “Monsters” established John Greyson as one of Canada's brightest talents.

Related Entries