Michael Turner | |
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Born | 1962 (age 61–62) North Vancouver, British Columbia |
Occupation | Musician, and writer of poetry, prose and opera librettos |
Nationality | Canadian |
Michael Turner (born 1962 in North Vancouver, British Columbia) is a Canadian musician, and writer of poetry, prose and opera librettos. His writing is noted for including detailed and purposeful examination of ordinary things.
Turner was an original member of the Vancouver band Hard Rock Miners, formed in 1987, singing and playing guitar and banjo. [1] The band toured across Canada and released four albums of rockabilly music. [2] His 1993 book Hard Core Logo is about his experiences while fronting the band. [3]
Turner wrote Company Town in 1991, and followed it with Hard Core Logo in 1993 and Kingsway in 1995. Turner employed multi-format and intertextual approaches in his works American Whiskey Bar (1997), and The Pornographer's Poem (1999). [4]
In 1996, Bruce McDonald directed a film based on Hard Core Logo ; [5] he also directed a live telecast dramatizing Turner's novel American Whiskey Bar in 1998, which Citytv produced and aired. [6] That year he founded the literary/visual art imprint Advance Editions, with Arsenal Pulp Press. [2] In 1998, he appeared as the dance MC and announcer in the short film Elimination Dance , directed by McDonald with Don McKellar and Michael Ondaatje. [7]
Turner's work was adapted to radio, stage, television and feature film, and he has been translated into French, German, Russian, and Korean. He won the Genie Award in 1996 for Music/Original Song, the 2000 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and was also a finalist for the 1992 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. [8]
Turner collaborated with artist Stan Douglas on two experimental-video screenplays, titled Journey into Fear (Istanbul Biennial, 2001) and Suspiria (Documenta XI, 2002) and on a screenplay with filmmaker Bruce LaBruce, titled Untitled Von Gloeden Project, based on the life and work of photographer Wilhelm Von Gloeden. He was commissioned to write a libretto for the Modern Baroque Opera Company, based on Wilhelm Busch's Max & Moritz.
Turner lives in Vancouver, writes art essays and edits Advance Editions.
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Hard Core Logo is a 1996 Canadian music mockumentary film directed by Bruce McDonald, adapted by Noel S. Baker from the novel of the same name by Michael Turner. The film illustrates the self-destruction of punk rock, documenting a once-popular band, the titular Hard Core Logo, comprising lead singer Joe Dick, fame-tempted guitarist Billy Tallent, schizophrenic bass player John Oxenberger, and drummer Pipefitter. Julian Richings plays Bucky Haight, Dick's idol. Several notable punk musicians, including Art Bergmann, Joey Shithead and Joey Ramone, play themselves in cameos. Canadian television personality Terry David Mulligan also has a cameo, playing a fictionalized version of himself.
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The Hard Rock Miners are a Canadian rockabilly/hillbilly/country/folk band based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
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Hard Core Logo 2 is a 2010 Canadian drama film written and directed by Bruce McDonald. It is a sequel to McDonald's 1996 film, Hard Core Logo. Hard Core Logo 2 assumes the same filmmaking style as McDonald’s latter-mentioned cult classic Hard Core Logo. It is a faux-documentary that follows Bruce the filmmaker as he investigates a claim made by Care Failure of the band Die Mannequin. She claims to be possessed by the spirit of rock star Joe Dick, a principal character in the original movie, who was shown to commit suicide near the close of the film. This sequel follows tensions between the principal characters, and the progression of Bruce the filmmaker's investigation into Care Failure’s channeling of the deceased rocker's spirit.
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Elimination Dance is a 1998 Canadian short drama film. Directed by Bruce McDonald, Don McKellar and Michael Ondaatje based on Ondaatje's poem of the same name, the film stars McKellar and Tracy Wright as a couple in a jazz dance competition, in which various couples are eliminated as the announcer calls out various elimination criteria drawn from Ondaatje's poem.
American Whiskey Bar is a Canadian television film, which was broadcast by Citytv in 1998. The film was directed by Bruce McDonald as an adaptation of the novel by Michael Turner.
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