Funkytown | |
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Directed by | Daniel Roby |
Written by | Steve Galluccio |
Produced by | Simon Trottier André Rouleau |
Starring | Patrick Huard Justin Chatwin Sarah Mutch Paul Doucet Raymond Bouchard François Létourneau Romina D'Ugo |
Cinematography | Ronald Plante |
Edited by | Yvann Thibaudeau |
Music by | Jean Robitaille |
Production companies |
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Distributed by | Remstar Films |
Release dates |
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Running time | 132 minutes |
Country | Canada |
Languages | English French |
Budget | CAD $7.2 million |
Funkytown is a 2011 Canadian drama film directed by Daniel Roby and written by Steve Galluccio. [1] starring Patrick Huard, Justin Chatwin, Paul Doucet, Sarah Mutch and Raymond Bouchard.
Set in Montreal during the disco era, the film revolves around the Starlight, a fictionalized version of Montreal's famed Lime Light discothèque. It depicts this world starting in 1976, when Montreal was considered one of the world's top nightclub destinations, through to 1980, when the fashion for disco was about to experience a sharp decline. By the early 1980s political issues such as Quebec's 1980 independence referendum had fractured and polarized the city, and Montreal had also begun to experience a decade of economic decline. By then, it had ceased to be the largest city in Canada, and had ceased as well to be Canada's financial and industrial centre. [2]
In June 2009, it was announced that Patrick Huard had been cast to play the lead role in the film, Justin Chatwin, Paul Doucet, Sarah Mutch, Raymond Bouchard, François Létourneau and Geneviève Brouillette being also cast in supporting roles, with Daniel Roby directing from a screenplay by Steve Galluccio. Principal photography took place between June 9, 2009, and August 8, 2009, in Montreal. [3] Some scenes of the film were in fact shot inside, outside and in the surroundings of the building which had housed the Lime Light, at 1258 Stanley Street. It now houses the premium strip club "Chez Parée" and the dance club "La Boom". [4]
Like the 2006 film Bon Cop, Bad Cop , the film features dialogue in both English and French. For French audiences the English dialogue is subtitled, while for English audiences the French dialogue is subtitled.
The film has faced some controversy for its mixture of languages, with one journalist for La Presse accusing it of being essentially an English film with only token dialogue in French, rather than a truly bilingual film. [5]
Funkytown opened in a limited release in Canada on March 4, 2011. [6] In the United States, the film was released straight-to-DVD on October 2, 2012. [7]
Justin Chatwin is a Canadian actor. He began his career in 2001 with a brief appearance in the musical comedy Josie and the Pussycats. Following his breakthrough role as Robbie Ferrier in the blockbuster War of the Worlds (2005), Chatwin headlined studio films such as The Invisible (2007) and Dragonball Evolution (2009), an action-adventure feature based on the manga series Dragon Ball. In the 2010s, Chatwin acted in small independent films. He starred as rock star idol Bobby Shore in the sci-fi musical Bang Bang Baby (2014), which earned him a Canadian Screen Awards nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and appeared in the romantic comedy Unleashed (2016), and drama Summer Night (2019).
CKMF-FM is a French-language Canadian radio station located in Montreal, Quebec, owned and operated by Bell Media. The station airs a mainstream rock format and is the flagship station of the "Énergie" network, which operates across Quebec. It offers personality DJs playing francophone and anglophone rock hits from the current charts to the 1980s.
Lilies is a 1996 Canadian film directed by John Greyson. It is an adaptation by Michel Marc Bouchard and Linda Gaboriau of Bouchard's own play Lilies. It depicts a play being performed in a prison by the inmates.
Bon Cop, Bad Cop is a 2006 Canadian black comedy-thriller buddy cop film about two police officers – one Ontarian and one Québécois – who reluctantly join forces to solve a murder. The dialogue is a mixture of English and French. The title is a translation word play on the phrase "Good cop/bad cop".
Patrick Huard is a Canadian actor, writer and comedian from Quebec.
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Steve Galluccio is a Canadian screenwriter and playwright, most noted for his play Mambo Italiano and its feature film adaptation Mambo Italiano.
Daniel Roby is a Canadian film director and cinematographer. An alumnus of the film programs at Concordia University and the University of Southern California, he worked as a camera operator and cinematographer on numerous film and television projects before releasing his own directorial debut, White Skin , in 2004.
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Bon Cop, Bad Cop 2 is a 2017 Canadian action comedy film directed by Alain DesRochers. A sequel to the 2006 film Bon Cop, Bad Cop, it stars Colm Feore and Patrick Huard in a reprisal of their original roles. Filmed in Montreal with a budget of $10 million, the film bombed, earning $7 million at the box office, but was also one of the highest-grossing Canadian films of 2017. The film was nominated for Achievement in Make-up at the 2018 Canadian Screen Awards.
Raymond Bouchard is a Canadian film, television and stage actor. He is most noted for his performances in the film Seducing Doctor Lewis , for which he received Genie Award and Prix Jutra nominations for Best Actor in 2004, and the television series L'Or et le Papier, for which he won the Prix Gémeaux for Best Actor in a Drama Series in 1990.
Jean-François Bouchard Jean-Francois Bouchard is a lens-based visual artist whose photographic work has been exhibited in Montreal, New York, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Miami, and Paris. He is also co-founder of Sid Lee, the creative services agency he launched with Philippe Meunier in 1993. He later founded C2, a global platform and series of events exploring the intersection between creativity and commerce.
Death Dive is a Canadian horror film, directed by Alain Vézina and released in 2015. The film centres on a zombie invasion in a small town in the Gaspésie region of Quebec, spawned after a journalist tries to investigate the appearance of a mysterious ghost ship in the St. Lawrence River.
Evil Words is a Canadian thriller film, directed by Éric Tessier and released in 2003. Adapted from the novel Sur le seuil by Patrick Senécal, the film stars Michel Côté as Paul Lacasse, a doctor who is treating famous horror novelist Thomas Roy following a suicide attempt, and begins to find evidence that Roy was in close proximity to every one of the last several dozen tragedies to occur anywhere in Canada.
File 13 is a Canadian crime comedy film, directed by Patrick Huard and released in 2010. The film centres on Thomas, Benoît and Jean-François, three bumbling police officers who unexpectedly stumble into an opportunity to try to capture Fecteau, a high-ranking figure in the sponsorship scandal who has managed to elude arrest for several years.