A brothers' bond: Mike Downie chronicles the history and impact of the Tragically Hip in documentary series

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When Mike Downie and his team set out to make the four-part documentary series about the Tragically Hip, they took what he calls a “no-small-finds” approach.

As the older brother of the act’s lyricist and frontman, the late Gord Downie, the filmmaker was obviously in a good position when it came to doing a deep dive into the Hip’s history, band dynamics and cultural impact. But he also knew there was a treasure trove of material out there that he had not seen before.

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“If somebody has got a photograph, if somebody has something-or-another then, yeah, we want to see it,” says Downie. “You have to be that way because you don’t know what it is. We kept that up through production. Some stuff came in late. I never got tired of the thrill of the chase, let me put it that way.”

It is that combination of the big and small that makes The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal such a compelling experience for both fans of the band and students of Canadian culture in general. Downie mixes intimate details and memories of the band’s early days,  its rise to fame in its home country and unparalleled power as a live act with musings from cultural icons and even Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about the larger impact the band had on Canadian identity and the wide-spread grief that overcame the nation when it was announced in 2016 that Downie had incurable brain cancer.

Friends of Gord Downie and the band such as Kids in the Hall’s Bruce McCulloch and Dan Ackroyd join admirers like actors Jay Baruchel and Will Arnett and commentators George Stroumboulopoulos and Trudeau to discuss the bigger picture, while family and the four surviving members of the band give details of the Hip’s makeup, creative process and personal lives. 

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What emerges is a story not only about a Canadian institution but one that seems distinctly Canadian in tone and nature. The five members of the band all grew up in Kingston, Ont., and met in high school. No core member of the group – which also includes guitarists Rob Baker and Paul Langlois, bassist Gord Sinclair and drummer Johnny Fay – ever came close to quitting and the lineup was stable for their entire career. Downie chronicles the early years in Kingston and Canada’s eventual discovery of the band. While some early family tragedies are covered, parents and other family members are shown to be unconditionally supportive. Downie does eventually delve into the friction and mild resentment that inevitably bubbles up between five people who spent more than 30 years together. While no doubt difficult for the band members, these episodes still seem pretty tame compared to the well-publicized hissy fits, lawsuits and meltdowns of other acts.

Still, Downie and co-producer Jake Gold – who was a longtime manager of the act – wanted to ensure the story was told with as much nuance and detail as possible.

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“Going into it, we were very aware – the band and I and the manager Jake Gold – that this couldn’t be a puff piece in any way,” says Downie, who will join Gold on Sept. 18 for a Calgary International Film Festival screening of the four-part series at the Globe Cinema. “It had to be straight. It had to be the real story. We all knew that going in. Gord is my brother. Whether it was tensions that were developing in the band, I knew a lot of it although I didn’t know all of it. But I knew enough of it, that it was there. I knew Gord’s side of it more than I knew the other guys’ side of it. But it all made perfect sense to me. The fact that they had been in this band for all those years, you just think of any individual and any relationship, especially one that asks you to give of yourself creatively and bare your soul, shit has got to build up over time and that’s exactly what happened.”

One of the biggest questions that followed the Tragically Hip its entire career, was why an act that was so devoutly followed in Canada never made comparable waves in the U.S. The documentary, which starts streaming on Prime Video on Sept. 20, also approaches the subject with nuance, essentially revealing that the act was ultimately more bothered by the Canadian media’s obsession with the question than the fact they weren’t household names south of the border. In fact, the band’s success in the U.S. and Europe would be enviable for any Canadian act. Nevertheless, the film does ask questions about what it was about the Hip that made them so Canadian. Never a flag-waving, nationalistic band, the Hip’s contributions to Canadian identity and ability to tell our story in songs such as Wheat Kings and Fifty-Mission Cap is what sets it apart, the film argues. It’s one of the reasons why Gord Downie’s lyrics continue to be studied academically in universities.

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“They had a confidence not to worry that these songs from these stories might fall flat on American ears, they believed in doing what they were doing, which was telling our stories, and God love them for doing it,” Downie says. “A lot has changed. (In the 1980s and 1990s) there was a real sense that ‘Oh, wow, this is a great Canadian artist in whatever the discipline is who we love, but what do the Americans think of them? How are they doing in the States?’ That still exists, but that’s because it’s one of the biggest common markets in the world, but it’s not the same as it was then. We really had some identity issues. I think it’s changed quite a bit. We had self-identity issues, national-identity issues and I think this band, in part, helped us break out of those chains.”

The last episode in the series is also the hardest to watch as family, band members, friends and the nation grieve Gord Downie’s illness and are devastated by his 2017 death. This was also understandably hard for Downie to chronicle behind the camera, although he says he made discoveries about his brother through the interviews.

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“I got to know how much he meant to so many people, starting with his bandmates,” he says. “That breaks your heart a little bit. You have your own grief and, I guess in many cases. I was sharing grief with my interview subjects. They had grief, I had grief and it was all on the table. You lose a family member, somebody you love, it’s very hard to express what you’re going through and it keeps changing, too. Even today, I could talk to you about my brother all afternoon. I wouldn’t get bored, I wouldn’t get tired. I feel emotion talking to you right now and I wouldn’t tire of that feeling. I have so much pride in my brother and he is such a fascinating character and so were the other four guys in the band. He was their brother.”

Mike Downie and Jake Gold will attend the sold-out screening of The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal on Wednesday, Sept. 18 at the Globe Cinema at 6 p.m. at the upstairs screen. There will also be a screening at 6:30 p.m. on the downstairs screen.

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