Kevin McDonald returns with ultra-short comedy concieved by Quarrington
July 11, 2011
Kevin MacDonald in Papillon
Comedy sketches come naturally to Kids in the Hall member Kevin McDonald. Writing anything longer than a few minutes does not, he bemoans in his famously high-pitched tone.
“In the past 15 years I’ve pushed myself to learn how to write hour-and-a-half things, like movies, or half-hour things, like pilots for TV shows,” McDonald said in a recent interview from Niagara Falls, Ont., where he shot a film cameo.
“At first they were like long sketches. (Then), each scene was like a sketch. And now I’m (thinking): ‘Oh, maybe this scene doesn’t have to have a horribly funny thing, just a mildly funny, witty thing. Because it adds to the next scene and the story’s important.”‘
It’s fitting then that his return to series television on Monday comes by way of what could be Canada’s shortest show — the four-minute “Papillon.”
McDonald stars in Bite TV’s offbeat farce about an ultra discount airline and its peculiar employees. The frizzy-haired funnyman plays Darius, a nebbish co-pilot with a fear of flying. Other characters include cocky pilot Cal (David Fraser), pragmatic flight attendant Marcia (a cross-dressing Randal Edwards) and the severe — and possibly homicidal — flight attendant Eva (Hannah Cheesman).
The outlandish comedy — in which the frugal airline eliminates frills such as drinks, meals and seatbelts — was created by late author, musician, filmmaker and playwright Paul Quarrington.
McDonald says it was originally envisioned as a 30-minute sitcom but evolved into a short series.
Bite TV — which populates the rest of its joke-heavy lineup with critical faves “Arrested Development,” “Extras,” and “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia” — says the “Papillon” shorts will be packaged into 30-minute episodes at the end of August.
McDonald says the Internet has fuelled a renaissance in comedy shorts.
“It’s funny how modern technology advances make you go back. Like, now it’s three-minute pop songs that are the thing,” says McDonald, who co-wrote three of the 15 “Papillon” episodes with partner Paula Blair.
“That’s the way the world is going.”
“Papillon” starts Monday July 11 on Bite TV.
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by Cassandra Szklarski, The Canadian Press
Date: Friday Jul. 8, 2011
Read the complete story at http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Entertainment/20110708/KevinMcDonald-return-small-screen-110708/
Doc Film – Paul Quarrington Life in Music – to air on CBC June 16
June 12, 2011
The CBC will premiere the documentary film “Paul Quarrington Life in Music” on the Documentary channel (aired nationally across Canada) Thursday June 16 at 8:00PM Eastern, with a repeat same night at 12am Eastern / 9pm Pacific. The film is a cinematic essay of renaissance artist, Paul Quarrington, as he comes to term with his life through the power of creativity.
Check your local listings!
2011 Leacock Winner Trevor Cole salutes Quarrington’s influence
April 30, 2011
Trevor Cole has won the national award, which comes with a $15,000 prize from TD Financial Group, for his third novel, Practical Jean — an interesting title for a protagonist who, as Cole explained, had never dealt with “the hard practicalities of life” until she watched her mother die of cancer.
Cole was competing for the Leacock medal against Todd Babiak ( Toby: A Man), Terry Fallis ( The High Road), Red Green ( How to do Everything) and David Rakoff ( Half Empty), each of whom will also receive a cash prize. He was in good company, as he is now as a medal winner, and he knows it.
“One of my personal heroes was Paul Quarrington,” he said of the late author and past winner of the Leacock medal. “I was quite young (when Quarrington won), but that made me really perk up and see this as something I’d like to win, not just because he’d done it, but he made me aware of the award and I was able to figure out just how important it is.”
“It’s a little darker than usual (for a Leacock medal winner),” said Mike Hill, president of the Stephen Leacock Association. Winners of the award often write “a lighter, brighter kind of humour.” “This is black humour, and it’s funny,” Hill said.
Excerpted from The Barrie Examiner, April 29, 2011 - read the full article here.
Paul Quarrington Life in Music Doc Wins Gold Remi at Houston WorldFest
April 27, 2011
Out of more than 4,300 international category entries in the 10 major Remi Award Competitions, WorldFest-Houston, the third longest-running International Film Festival in North America, announced its roster of Award winners this week. PAUL QUARRINGTON LIFE IN MUSIC garnered a Gold Remi in the category of Biography Feature. The film is a production of BookShorts Inc., in collaboration with Bravo!, a division of CTV with the support of Canada Media Fund. It was directed by Bert Kish and Executive Produced/Produced by Judith Keenan, with Executive Producer William Laurin and Bravo executive Charlotte Engel. For complete credits, trailers, and to purchase the DVD, visit http://www.bookshorts.com/pq_life_in_music
The documentary is an intimate portrait of an amazingly talented artist who is given a life sentence by one of the most ubiquitous diseases of our age – cancer. Diagnosed at stage 4 (there is no stage 5), his lung cancer gave Quarrington only ten months to live. But live he did, pouring his heart, soul and emotions into a host of creative projects: he toured the country and recorded a new album with his band Porkbelly Futures; made his first solo album called The Songs; finished writing his memoir Cigar Box Banjo: Notes on Life and Music; completed scripts for a dramatic series and a screenplay for feature film. And of course he made this documentary film, capturing all of these endeavours on camera.
Though the filmmakers do hope to inspire audiences to live life to the full by sharing Paul’s journey, the film is steadfastly not a “cancer film.” There are no hospital shots or doctor’s diagnoses. Instead, the audience witnesses an artist at the height of his creative process, delivering his story with humour, candour and poignant insight. As Paul says himself, he wants his audiences to cry through their laughter, and laugh through their tears – that’s when a person is truly open to all the incredible experiences life has to offer, be it one year, or one hundred years long.
Hunter Todd, Chairman & Founding Director in his correspondence to the winners, states “It is very difficult to win a Remi in WorldFest… with so many entries, only about 15-20% are good enough to win the Award for Creative Excellence. In some categories, sometimes no awards are made because the entries that year did not score high enough to earn a Remi Award. My personal congratulations for a job very well done.”
WorldFest, founded as an International Film Society in August 1961, became the third competitive international film festival in North America, following San Francisco and New York. WorldFest evolved into a competitive International Film Festival in April 1968 and has a long list of “discovered” film greats such as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, David Lynch, Ridley Scott, Oliver Stone, Atom Egoyan, Randall Kleiser, Ang Lee, Robert Rodriguez, the Coen Brothers, John Lee Hancock and many others from their beginning efforts for film submissions early in their careers. Multi award-winning producer/director Hunter Todd founded this film festival to honor all categories of film and video production continuing his long dedication of “Discovery,” spotlighting emerging Independent filmmakers as “the Spielbergs & Ang Lees of tomorrow.” The Remi takes its name from the famous artist Frederick Remington, who captures the spirit of Texas and the West with his brilliant paintings and sculptures.
For more information and screening copies, contact:
Judith Keenan, Executive Producer & Producer
Judith-at-bookshorts-dotcom
Bravo Encore for Paul Quarrington Life in Music
January 8, 2011
Bravo!’s original series GREAT CANADIAN BIOS showcases the lives of twelve of our nation’s most iconic, accomplished and revered artists, premiering Sunday, January 16 at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT on Bravo!
Kicking off with an insightful portrait of Canadian acting legend Gordon Pinsent, this year’s lineup features new and compelling biographies on Emily Carr, Ryan Larkin and Roy Kiyooka. Ensuring the season is packed full of Canada’s most celebrated cultural icons, Bravo! offers encore presentations profiling the extraordinary lives of Jann Arden, Yousuf Karsh, Des McAnuff, Mordecai Richler, Paul Quarrington, Ian Tyson, Denny Doherty and Glenn Gould, whose GREAT CANADIAN BIOS profile was recently shortlisted for an Academy® Award.
PAUL QUARRINGTON: LIFE IN MUSIC – Encore Presentation
Sunday, March 27 at 8 p.m. ET/ 5 p.m. PT
Saturday, April 2 at 7 p.m. ET/ 4 p.m. PT
PAUL QUARRINGTON: LIFE IN MUSIC is a documentary about an artist whose sudden diagnosis of terminal illness led him to embrace both life and art with a lifetime of creativity packed into all too brief few months. Loaded with intimate moments with Quarrington himself, this documentary features interviews with Quarrington’s family, friends, and members of the internationally renown arts community. The list includes writer Roddy Doyle, musician and writer Dave Bidini, author Wayson Choy, musicians Dan Hill and Joe Hall as well as Paul’s life-long friend and fellow musician Martin Worthy. The documentary also includes dynamic performances from Porkbelly Futures, and a touching performance by Paul’s brothers Joel and Tony Quarrington. PAUL QUARRINGTON: LIFE IN MUSIC is produced by BookShorts Inc. and directed by Bert Kish.
Quarrington concept launches comedy web series for Bite TV, Babelgum
January 8, 2011
GlassBOX Television’s Bite TV is in partnership with independent media creators Duopoly and Farmhouse Productions for a new original comedy web series, Papillon.
Based on a property originally developed by the series’ Executive Producer Catherine Tait and Paul Quarrington, Papillon (15 X 4 minute episodes) stars Kevin McDonald of the acclaimed TV show Kids in the Hall. The series is one of the few projects selected for the first Independent Production Fund supporting linear online content.
Papillon will be seen in Canada first online, at bite.ca and then broadcast on specialty channel Bite TV, as well as the popular international Internet platform Babelgum the US.
Papillon centers on the motley crew of misfits who operate a discount airline out of the working town of Windsor, Ontario. Papillon is the airline that promises to put the flutter back into flying. In other words – no unnecessary ‘perks’ such as in-flight drinks, meals, or pesky seatbelts. The web series is slated to begin production January 11, 2011.
“Papillon is both perfectly targeted to Bite’s audience and a wonderful fit with our commitment to develop fresh new programming that utilizes Canada’s tremendous depth of comedic talent,” said Jeffrey Elliott, Founder and Co-CEO GlassBOX Television.
Papillon is an original concept created by the late Paul Quarrington and written by Mark Steinberg, with three scripts by writing team Kevin McDonald and Paula Blair. Paul Quarrington was one of Canada’s most celebrated writing talents. As a screenwriter, he wrote or contributed to several produced screenplays, among them: Men with Brooms, Whale Music, Camilla and Perfectly Normal, winner of the Genie for Best Screenplay. His television writing credits included Due South, John Woo’s Once a Thief, Power Play, The Counsellors, Tom Stone, 1-800 Missing and Chilly Beach.
For the complete story, visit Mediacaster Magazine
Telegraph Journal says Cigar Box Banjo one of year’s best yarns
January 2, 2011
The new year doesn’t mean you have to say good-bye to 2010. Revisit the year’s best books, and take a peek into 2011,
with Salon’s regular reviewers.
Sean Flinn
* Cigar Box Banjo by Paul Quarrington, GreyStone
Quarrington died in the early days of 2010. It’ll take years to fully appreciate his contribution. Start now, with this excellent memoir on his musical life first, his approaching death second.
– from the St. John Telegraph Journal
Paul Quarrington — Living his way into dying (National Post)
December 31, 2010
Anne Marie Owens, National Post · Thursday, Dec. 30, 2010
Paul Quarrington was already dying by the time I met him, but all we talked about was how best to go about this business of living.
My job, in overseeing a series in which he would spin out his story in writing and video, was essentially to engage him in conversation, ask him questions, talk with him so much that he would forget there was a video camera trained on him, distract him from the inevitable self-consciousness that awaits anyone asked to expound on the prospect of facing the great hereafter, or the great whatever, that lay ahead.
A natural storyteller, the acclaimed Canadian musician, novelist, screenwriter and filmmaker would hold court in his Toronto kitchen, where we sat for hours at a time talking about what it means to live, while facing certain death.
Months before, Paul had received what he called “The Diagnosis”: Stage Four lung cancer. There was no Stage Five.
He approached the news in the spirit of the bon vivant, rushing headlong into a great sensory overloading of life’s experiences. He drank, he partied, he stayed up late and misbehaved.
It was a visceral, utterly human approach, and, to me, felt like such an antidote to all the usual worthy and earnest tales of people delivering their 10 great lessons or their last lectures that aim to make sense of life before leaving it.
And yet he made such sense of life along the way to living each day like it was his last. (That was a phrase that came up in the kitchen conversations and stuck — it became the headline for the first story he wrote for the National Post; it was the tagline that accompanied each of his stories and the video segments online.)
“It’s a life and death struggle I’ve got going on here,” he wrote in that first piece. “Except that, you know, I wouldn’t put any significant money on life raising the final flag.
“But having decided that life is beautiful — not a decision I laboured over, by the way, more a certainty that seemed unassailable — one year should seem as full of beauty and grace as 40.”
This is how he described it in one of the conversations: “The big secret is to … squeeze all the juice out of things before you go. So that’s what I set out to do.”
In the next kitchen conversation, that desire to keep on living his way into dying was tempered by the reality of lugging around an oxygen tank — which he did, by the way, to bars, to his publisher while he finished a book, to music studios while he was composing and recording with his band, to his favoured venue, where he was performing.
“It’s not that I want to become a more boring person, but there are certain practicalities that you kind of have to deal with. … It’s sort of like I’ve got Cinderella shoes. … You’ve got to be home at a certain hour or you’re gonna run out of air.”
Paul Quarrington kept up his Cinderella act until Jan. 21 — eight months after he received The Diagnosis. He died at home, surrounded by family and friends. He was 56.
National Post
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Videos: Paul Quarrington’s cancer diary
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The Afterword: Dave Bidini pays tribute to Paul Quarrington
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Gallery: Author and Musician Paul Quarrington
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Photo Gallery: Remembering Paul Quarrington
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Video: Each Day Like It’s My Last (Complete Version)
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Canada’s writing community remembers Paul Quarrington
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Dave Bidini announces the Paul Quarrington Memorial Award for Best North American Sports Books of the Year
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A farewell tribute to Paul Quarrington
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Paul Quarrington remembered in essays, videos and more
Related Topics
Books of the Year: CBB Cover Award
December 7, 2010
Perhaps it’s the economy, with its dour sermons of doom, but when I go into a bookstore these days, I’m far more attracted to colourful, flirty covers than to sombre, emotional ones. (I bought Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom in hardcover because I loved the juicy life in the design.) The liveliness of this particular cover is so fitting for Paul Quarrington’s final book, about music, memory, and living life to the fullest while facing death head-on. It enticed me the moment I saw it: it’s assured, lively, and highly polished. As the design clearly attests, the book is a celebration, not a dirge. – Ingrid Paulson, a freelance book designer
December issue of our publishing trade magazine, Quill and Quire, included it in their “Covers of the Year” section –http://www.quillandquire.com/blog/index.php/2010/11/25/books-of-the-year-2010-covers-of-the-year/2/
Globe & Mail Top 100 for Cigar Box Banjo
December 7, 2010
The book Paul Quarrington produced as a last gift to his many fans is in a category of its own, a layered, rambling, deceptively casual mixture of music history, coming-of-age narrative and reflection on mortality. There’s even a CD – it includes versions of the last two songs Quarrington wrote, both about dying. Sad, funny and wise – the writer’s trifecta. Mark Kingwell
The November 27th issue of the Globe and Mail included Cigar Box Banjo in their annual Top 100 Books selection…read the whole article here ….
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/the-2010-globe-100-non-fiction/article1813452/
CIGAR BOX BANJO: Notes on Music and Life
By Paul Quarrington (GreyStone)
