As one of the core Canadian filmmakers of the past three decades, Bruce McDonald has refused to be pigeonholed in terms of style or content. In the past 15 years alone, he has riffled impatiently from rock ’n’ roll anarchy (Hard Core Logo) to media spoof (The Love Crimes of Gillian Guess) to out-there zombie flick (Pontypool), in addition to a zillion TV-show episodes.

His newest effort—not counting an upcoming Logo sequel—is a concert film with a modest tale wrapped around it. Opening Friday (June 25), This Movie Is Broken centres on Broken Social Scene, the loose aggregation of mostly Toronto talents that has at times included Feist and Metric’s Emily Haines, both of whom feature prominently in the big, colourful Harbourfront reunion show on offer here.

Once he took on the job, McDonald threw in his lot with frequent screenwriting collaborator Don McKellar and the band’s two founding members, Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning.

“We had a group conversation, between the four of us,” Canning explains by phone from Toronto’s venerable Drake Hotel—most appropriately, since the band essentially grew out of rehearsals in the place’s funky basement. “We knew that it would be a depiction of Toronto, although I remember that one early version of the script had robots.”

Instead, the quartet settled on a simple romance concerning a hirsute young scenester attempting to seal the deal with his long-time crush backstage at a BSS concert. As it happened, the whole band hadn’t joined forces on-stage since 2006, but it had a gig coming up in 2009.

“The show was booked for July 11,” Canning says. “So we had a few months to look at audition tapes. You have to go with what feels right, and we were entrusting this team to put the narrative part together with what we do. The visual area is something we haven’t previously invaded. It’s very hard to pin down what makes the band tick, considering how many of us there are. I mean, we’re known as the guest-list hogs, as in ”˜Please put us down for nine.’ So we wanted to get that amorphous quality across in a movie, and we knew it would be made on the fly, and with a few curve balls.”

In the end, McDonald and company went with newcomer Greg Calderone and U.K.–born Georgina Reilly (who was also in Pontypool) as the would-be love bunnies, and Capote’s Kerr Hewitt as a potential date spoiler. That meant shooting a story that climaxes, as it were, during an actual stage performance.

“There is a long history of relationships in and around this band,” admits the songwriting guitarist and bass-thumper, who usually sports wild hair and a mountain-man beard. In fact, there’s probably enough back story for three Fleetwood Macs.

“Oh, yeah,” he concurs with a laugh, “there are a few tales to tell. But I’ll remain silent about that for now.”

Canning does confess, however, that he is clean-shaven for the first time in ages.

“Yeah, but unfortunately, that meant we couldn’t go with our alternate title: The Beards of Toronto.”