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.