Deaner explores his heavy-metal, Indigenous roots in new origin film

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There are presumably a number of actorly challenges a 48-year-old thespian faces when playing a 17-year-old kid.

For Paul Spence, one of the most pressing was that he needed to fit into the fearfully tight trademark black jeans that his most famous character, headbanger Dean Murdoch, squeezes into for the new film Deaner ’89. Call it his Robert De Niro-Raging Bull moment in reverse. Spence, who grew up in Calgary but now lives outside of Montreal, estimates he was tipping the scales at more than 200 pounds prior to shooting the coming-of-age comedy last year. He needed to shed at least 50 to play the scrawny teen the film demands.

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So he began looking into ways to lose weight. The first 15 pounds weren’t that difficult. He stopped drinking and eating sugary snacks. Spence then decided to do the Hollywood thing and hire a trainer. Perhaps he was channelling the more slacker-ish traits of the Deaner at this point, but the actor soon realized he did not have the time nor self-discipline for the regimen most trainers were suggesting.

“What they were telling me was insane,” says Spence in a phone interview. “I was going to have to go into the gym six days a week. I was like, ‘That’s not going to work. I can’t go to a gym for three hours, six days a week. This is just something I’m going to have to do in my own little bubble. ‘It’s going to sound very 2024, but I did my own research and figured out the best way I could incorporate serious weight loss into the life I was already leading.”

So he changed his diet. Like Dean, he began riding his bike a lot. Unlike Dean, he eventually began intermittent fasting. He dropped 50 pounds in four-and-a-half months.

“You stop eating at 6 p.m. and you don’t eat again until 11 the next morning,” he says. “It’s just torture. But it worked.”

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For Canadian film buffs of a certain age, the idea that Spence would have to take such pains to transform into “the Deaner” seems incomprehensible. The actor has been inseparable from his most famous character ever since the 2002 mock documentary Fubar introduced the world to hard-drinking, sweary chums Dean and Terry. The low-budget film became a surprise cult hit at Sundance and led to a franchise that included two films (2002’s Fubar and 2010’s Fubar II: Balls to the Wall) and a television series (2017’s Fubar Age of Computer).

Spence created the character for improv bits he did as part of Calgary’s Loose Moose Theatre alongside his childhood friend, Dave Lawrence, who played an equally dim-bulbed, futureless headbanger in the Calgary suburbs named Terry Cahill. The team broke up a few years back. While the reasons for this are no doubt complex, the bottom line is that Lawrence purchased the rights to the brand from Spence and co-creator/director Michael Dowse a few years back. He has continued to play Terry as a solo act, exploring various avenues to keep the character alive which has included playing Terry as part of another beloved Canadian franchise in The Trailer Park Boys: Jail, which aired on the Boys’ own Swearnet.com streaming service.

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So while fans may immediately recognize the long-haired, mustachioed Deaner from Spence’s past projects, the producers and publicists of Deaner ’89 have stressed that it is a completely separate entity from Fubar and not part of the franchise. Journalists writing about the new film were even sent helpful suggestions of how to write about the Deaner’s return (i.e. “Dean Murdoch – your favourite headbanger – is back!”) without mentioning Fubar.

“Mike and I no longer have a connection to the Fubar franchise,” Spence says. “I own the character, so I am able to do whatever I please with the character itself. That’s pretty much it.”

Spence is currently on a cross-country preview tour for Deaner ’89, which will include a preview screening on Sept. 2 in Calgary at the Scotiabank Theatre Chinook and an afterparty at the Ship and Anchor. The film opens wide on Sept. 6.

The Dean Murdoch we see in Deaner ’89 is a much younger version, complete with braces. We meet him in small-town Manitoba in 1989, where he is a solid hockey player but otherwise drifting teenager who lives with his adoptive parents (Will Sasso, Lauren Cochrane) and sister Jen (Star Slade). He receives a mystery package from his birth father that introduces him to both heavy metal music and a Metis heritage he didn’t know he had. What follows is a funny, touching and at times oddly action-packed film — there are two elaborate car chases and a subplot involving some nasty bikers — that employs a who’s-who of veteran Canadian actors in supporting roles. That includes Sasso, a veteran of Mad TV, as Dean’s hockey-coach father, the Kids in the Hall’s Kevin MacDonald as an unhinged school principal, This Hour Has 22 Minutes’ alumni Mary Walsh as the rocking mother of Dean’s girlfriend, Calgary’s Julian Black Antelope as a biker and Seinfeld’s Stephen McHattie as a racist hockey recruiter.

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Dean becomes more curious about his background and his father’s obsession with heavy metal music, which eventually leads to a soul-searching road trip. Directed by Sam McGlynn and shot in Winnipeg and other parts of Manitoba, Deaner ’89 is told in flashback from the point of view of a much older narrator who has somehow managed to become a wealthy rock star. Spence’s screenplay mixes plenty of sight gags and slapstick with a tender story about identity and Dean’s relationship with his little sister, who also discovers she has Indigenous heritage. That angle allowed Spence to ask questions about Canada’s not-so-proud and not-particularly-funny history of adoption policies and Indigenous youth and to access financial support from the Indigenous Screen Office. It also allowed him to explore his own background. 

Spence’s paternal grandparents come from a line of Métis people who were displaced when the Canadian government resettled the Red River valley in the 1800s. Spence says his father did not discuss that part of his heritage and the details remained murky until a decade ago. Spence says he eventually traced his lineage back to Andrew Spence, a Metis leader in the late 1800s.

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“For the last couple of years, I focused a little bit more about what my dad’s history was and understanding where his Indigenous roots were and going to northern Saskatchewan, where he’s from,  and visiting my aunts and my nieces and nephews and cousins and getting more information,” Spence says. “My dad didn’t know much about (his Metis heritage) when he was growing up. He was told he wasn’t Indigenous. So it’s really the last decade that we started to figure out what it really was.”

That played into a more traditional, coming-of-age origin story that Spence thought would be fun to explore about The Deaner.

“I knew there was a lot of comedy to be mined there,” he says. “Where did he learn how to shotgun a beer? Where did playing the bass come from? All that stuff, like tight-back jeans. All the stuff that the character is, where did that come from? But it was never really a movie in my mind. It needed a story to lay all those funny bits on top of.”

Deaner ’89 opens in theatres on Sept. 6. There will be a preview screening Sept. 2 at 7 p.m. at the Scotiabank Theatre Chinook and an afterparty at the Ship and Anchor.

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