Bruce McDonald

Bruce McDonald

Birth : 1959-05-28, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

History

Bruce McDonald (born May 28, 1959) is a Canadian film and television director, writer and producer. He is known for his award-winning cult films Roadkill (1989) and Hard Core Logo (1996). He was part of a loosely-affiliated group of filmmakers to emerge from Toronto known as the Toronto New Wave.

Profile

Bruce McDonald

Movies

Dreamland
Director
On the night of the strangest wedding in cinema history, a grotesque gang boss hires a stonecold killer to bring him the finger of a fading, drug-addicted jazz legend.
Weirdos
Director
It's July 1976, and two Nova Scotian teens, Kit and Alice, are hitting the road with their sights on Sydney and their minds on the future. With them is Kit's new imaginary friend, who looks conspicuously like Andy Warhol, but who assures Kit that he is a spirit animal. Kit and Alice have big dreams, but do they really want the same things?
The Hexecutioners
Old Bugger (uncredited)
Two disparate young women working for a company that conducts euthanasia are dispatched to a remote estate to perform a custom assisted-suicide ritual, but unwittingly summon the wraiths of a Death Cult that once inhabited the property.
Hellions
Director
A teen faces a night of terror when three malevolent trick-or-treaters come knocking at her door.
The Husband
Director
A darkly comic drama about a man left to care for his infant son when his wife is imprisoned for cheating on him with a minor.
My Babysitter's a Vampire
Director
Geeky 14-year old Ethan is left to babysit his younger sister, Jane, with his best friend Benny but after Ethan inadvertently puts Jane in harm's way, his parents hire a professional babysitter, the beautiful yet mysterious 17-year-old Sarah who, unbeknownst to them, is actually a fledgling vampire.
Music from the Big House
Director
Rita Chiarelli, an award-winning recording artist, has decided to take a pilgrimage to the birthplace of the blues—Louisiana State Maximum Security Penitentiary a.k.a Angola Prison. She never imagined that her love of the blues would lead her to play with inmates serving life sentences for murder, rape and armed robbery. In what was once the bloodiest prison in America, inmates relatives will be invited to listen alongside other prisoners, to hear remarkable voices singing stories of hope and redemption. Let yourself be swept away by one of Blues’ most soulful pilgrim daughters who is finding out if music really is an escape.
Trigger
Director
Ten years after ending their partnership as rock musicians, two women become re-acquainted in the course of one night.
This Movie Is Broken
Idea
Bruno wakes up in bed next to Caroline, his long time crush. But tomorrow she's off for school in France, and maybe she only granted this miracle as a parting gift for her long time friend. So tonight is Bruno's last chance. And tonight, as it happens, Broken Social Scene, her favourite band, is throwing a big outdoor bash. Maybe if Bruno, with the help of his best pal Blake, can score tickets and give Caroline a night to remember, he can keep this miracle alive.
This Movie Is Broken
Director
Bruno wakes up in bed next to Caroline, his long time crush. But tomorrow she's off for school in France, and maybe she only granted this miracle as a parting gift for her long time friend. So tonight is Bruno's last chance. And tonight, as it happens, Broken Social Scene, her favourite band, is throwing a big outdoor bash. Maybe if Bruno, with the help of his best pal Blake, can score tickets and give Caroline a night to remember, he can keep this miracle alive.
Hard Core Logo 2
Himself
Bruce McDonald’s long-awaited follow-up to his cult classic mock-doc stars McDonald himself as "Bruce," the director of Hard Core Logo, who has relocated to L.A. and scored a profitable gig as a TV director. When the show he’s been working on is suddenly put on hiatus, Bruce is at loose ends. When he hears that punk rocker Care Failure (played by real-life musician Care Failure) has claimed that she channelled the spirit of Hard Core Logo’s late singer Joe Dick while writing songs for her new album, Bruce hies to Saskatchewan, where Failure and her band Die Mannequin are recording the album under the tutelage of Dick’s idol and former mentor Bucky Haight (Julian Richings, who played the same role in the original film).
Hard Core Logo 2
Director
Bruce McDonald’s long-awaited follow-up to his cult classic mock-doc stars McDonald himself as "Bruce," the director of Hard Core Logo, who has relocated to L.A. and scored a profitable gig as a TV director. When the show he’s been working on is suddenly put on hiatus, Bruce is at loose ends. When he hears that punk rocker Care Failure (played by real-life musician Care Failure) has claimed that she channelled the spirit of Hard Core Logo’s late singer Joe Dick while writing songs for her new album, Bruce hies to Saskatchewan, where Failure and her band Die Mannequin are recording the album under the tutelage of Dick’s idol and former mentor Bucky Haight (Julian Richings, who played the same role in the original film).
Pontypool
Director
When disc jockey Grant Mazzy reports to his basement radio station in the Canadian town of Pontypool, he thinks it's just another day at work. But when he hears reports of a virus that turns people into zombies, Mazzy barricades himself in the radio booth and tries to figure out a way to warn his listeners about the virus and its unlikely mode of transmission.
The Tracey Fragments
Director
Tracey Berkowitz, 15, a self-described normal girl, loses her 9-year old brother, Sonny. In flashbacks and fragments, we meet her overbearing parents and the sweet, clueless Sonny. We watch Tracey navigate high school, friendless, picked on and teased. She develops a thing for Billy Zero, a new student, imagining he's her boyfriend. We see the day she loses Sonny and we watch her try to find him.
The Love Crimes of Gillian Guess
Director
A woman becomes romantically involved with a murder defendant while she is a juror in his trial.
Edge Codes.com: The Art of Motion Picture Editing
Self
Editing is more than just assembling shots in a certain order, it's an art form, and this documentary celebrates the craft and how it has grown and evolved through the history of the cinema. Edge Codes.com: The Art of Motion Picture Editing traces this story from the world of pioneering silent auteurs such as Georges Méliès and D.W. Griffith through the bold stylings of the masters of the French New Wave to the technical and creative innovations of films like The Matrix, Memento, and The Sixth Sense. Edge Codes.com includes interviews with noted directors George Lucas and Norman Jewison, as well as top editors Thelma Schoonmaker, Zach Staenberg, Dody Dorn, Andrew Mondshein, and many more.
Picture Claire
Director
Quebec native Claire Beaucage has a one-night stand with a photographer of some renown. Despite the language barrier between them, he invites her to visit him in Toronto. She shows up on his doorstep after an arson attack leaves her homeless, but soon finds herself caught up in a case of murder and mistaken identity.
Scandalous Me: The Jacqueline Susann Story
Director
Drugs, alcohol and controversy mark the author's life.
Last Night
Wild Guy #3
Various citizens of Toronto anxiously await the end of the world, which is occurring at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Day.
Elimination Dance
Writer
Ever more bizarre criteria are used to eliminate couples from a secret dance event.
Elimination Dance
Director
Ever more bizarre criteria are used to eliminate couples from a secret dance event.
Platinum
Director
An up-and-coming indie band consider signing a record deal.
Hard Core Logo
Director
Bruce Macdonald follows punk bank Hard Core Logo on a harrowing last-gasp reunion tour throughout Western Canada. As magnetic lead-singer Joe Dick holds the whole magilla together through sheer force of will, all the tensions and pitfalls of life on the road come bubbling to the surface.
Dance Me Outside
Producer
Explores the sensitive, and tense, relationship between life on an First Nations reservation and life in the outside world. When Native Canadian Silas Crow is forced to write a personal essay in order to get a much-desired job, he tells the story of the rape and murder of an Indian girl by a drunken thug. When the killer received a lenient two-year sentence for manslaughter, the First Nations community felt shock and anger -- and tried desperately to deal with the after-effects of this lack of justice.
Dance Me Outside
Writer
Explores the sensitive, and tense, relationship between life on an First Nations reservation and life in the outside world. When Native Canadian Silas Crow is forced to write a personal essay in order to get a much-desired job, he tells the story of the rape and murder of an Indian girl by a drunken thug. When the killer received a lenient two-year sentence for manslaughter, the First Nations community felt shock and anger -- and tried desperately to deal with the after-effects of this lack of justice.
Dance Me Outside
Director
Explores the sensitive, and tense, relationship between life on an First Nations reservation and life in the outside world. When Native Canadian Silas Crow is forced to write a personal essay in order to get a much-desired job, he tells the story of the rape and murder of an Indian girl by a drunken thug. When the killer received a lenient two-year sentence for manslaughter, the First Nations community felt shock and anger -- and tried desperately to deal with the after-effects of this lack of justice.
The Mysterious Moon Men of Canada
Editor
A filmmaker searches for two Canadians who flew to the moon in 1959, but because they were Canadian, were too modest to tell anybody about it.
Blue
Producer
New carpet factory footage intercut with old porn creates a brief but telling glimpse into the human psyche.
Highway 61
Story
A naive Canadian barber who knows US popular culture inside and out meets a flamboyant roadie who needs someone to drive her and her "brother's" corpse from Thunder Bay, Ontario to New Orleans. Chaos ensues after the barber agrees to drive her, the corpse, and the drugs stashed within all the way.
Highway 61
Producer
A naive Canadian barber who knows US popular culture inside and out meets a flamboyant roadie who needs someone to drive her and her "brother's" corpse from Thunder Bay, Ontario to New Orleans. Chaos ensues after the barber agrees to drive her, the corpse, and the drugs stashed within all the way.
Highway 61
Director
A naive Canadian barber who knows US popular culture inside and out meets a flamboyant roadie who needs someone to drive her and her "brother's" corpse from Thunder Bay, Ontario to New Orleans. Chaos ensues after the barber agrees to drive her, the corpse, and the drugs stashed within all the way.
Speaking Parts
Editor
A struggling actor's job as a hotel custodian is a front for his real job: being rented out as a gigolo by his supervisor. A co-worker is obsessed with him, but he ignores and avoids her. He leaves his acting resume in the hotel room of a screenwriter, who is casting for a TV movie based on the true story of her deceased brother. She hires him to play the lead and the two begin an affair.
Roadkill
Story
A music promoter sends a young woman on a road trip in search of a band who hasn't been showing up for their gigs.
Roadkill
Bruce Shack, the Director
A music promoter sends a young woman on a road trip in search of a band who hasn't been showing up for their gigs.
Roadkill
Producer
A music promoter sends a young woman on a road trip in search of a band who hasn't been showing up for their gigs.
Roadkill
Director
A music promoter sends a young woman on a road trip in search of a band who hasn't been showing up for their gigs.
Family Viewing
Editor
An emotionally constrained view of the displacement of human feelings in our video saturated society. Van regularly visits his grandmother in a run-down nursing home. His father depends on phone sex for guidance meanwhile erasing family homevideos of happier times with homemade pornography. Will Van rescue his grandmother and memories of his mother in time?
Next of Kin
Editorial Production Assistant
Twenty-three-year old Peter Foster is an only child who lives at home, where he constantly hears his parents arguing. Because Peter does nothing all day, the family goes to a clinic where a therapist videotapes them. After Peter watches his tape, he views the tape of a troubled Armenian family, who gave their only son away for adoption when they arrived in Canada. Peter decides to visit this family, and he pretends to be their son, Bedros Deryan. The Deryan family welcomes him with open arms, and Peter tries to patch up the poor relationship between George Deryan and his daughter Azah.
Pontypool Changes
Director