Boobs, beer, and Sasquatch

Truth and beauty have no place in our world, but a movie based on a beer commercial does. And so it was that I was shuttled deep into Golden Ears Provincial Park one hot morning last week to visit the set of Big Hairy Movie—a full-length feature based on the last 12 or so years of Kokanee beer commercials.

Alliance Film and the advertising firm Grip Ltd have partnered up to produce this pioneering exercise in multi-platform “branded entertainment”, which is the fancy name, in this case, for a buddy comedy featuring Sasquatch and a bunch of naked chicks.

I can reliably report this information since the first thing we saw after being dropped off on the side of spectacular Alouette Lake was a scene involving two topless Glacier girls, a beer-snatching cryptid with oversize feet, and a fat guy suffering from diarrhea.

I could relate to the fat guy after a nauseating two hour ride in a vehicle that was hotter than high noon in Calcutta and smelled like ass-finger. All the same, my cynicism about this whole exercise was beginning to melt away, partly because I saw some boobs, and partly because director David Hicks said the magic word.

“It dawned on me this last couple of weeks that if there’s ever a movie that we’re in the realm of, it’s a modern day Caddyshack,” Hicks told the Straight. Bingo!

“It’s very similar in a sense that Caddyshack had a minor plot to it, and really the essence of what made it so special were these amazing characters and cameos around it. That’s kind of where we are. We have a story that’s very simple, and around it we have these really funny, bizarre, and hopefully quite memorable moments.”

If you've been keeping up, you’ll remember that John Novak’s Kokanee Ranger was killed off in an epic TV spot a few years ago (also directed by Hicks, who helmed most of the Ranger ads). He’s back, speaking of cameos.

“As potentially a ghost, or a memory, or—we’re not even sure,” Hicks chuckled. “We’re gonna leave it quite ambiguous in the movie. Without giving too much away.”

Fair enough, but what I saw and spoke to wasn’t a ghost or a memory. John Novak’s voice alone must be the closest thing in nature to the brown note. Maybe that’s why the fat kid had diarrhea. “It’s like being possessed. Once the mustache goes on, and the glasses—boom!” he boomed. Later, Novak gave me his read on the character.

“He envisions himself as the Sherriff in the old west,” he said. “There’s this tradition. Remember the way we used to think about the Mounties? Dudley Do-Right, and all that? There’s that kind of ethic; to be the man, and to do the right thing, but with the weakness and the frailty of every man twinkling in the eyes whenever confronted with gorgeous girls in bikinis, for instance, or the love of a man for his beer.”

Now imagine what he could do with Hamlet.

We’ll keep you updated on this exercise in high weirdness, which also stars Robin Nielson (who talked about living in the Hollywood hills with his great uncle, Leslie Nielsen), Viv Leacock (Hot Tub Time Machine), and Katharine Isabelle, fresh from her best actor win at FantasyFest for the Vancouver-made American Mary.

Also—that Sasquatch is fucking enormous.

You can follow Adrian Mack's contribution to the lobotomizing techno-nightmare known as Twitter at @AdrianMacked.