Faustus Bidgood: How a cult classic about a daydreaming bureaucrat kick-started a film industry
Andy and Mike Jones spent years — and very little money — to make a film now deemed a cult classic
In 1986, The Adventure of Faustus Bidgood, a surreal comedy about a lowly bureaucrat and his fantasies of becoming president of an independent Newfoundland, was released.
A cult classic in Canadian cinema, the film is well known for the marathon it took to even get made.
Principal photography on the film, after all, started eight years earlier, in 1978. Written and directed by comedy legend Andy Jones and his brother, Mike Jones, The Adventure of Faustus Bidgood was made on a shoestring budget, is packed with familiar faces and helped pave the way for Newfoundland and Labrador's vibrant film industry.
On Saturday, the Resource Centre for the Arts is having a fundraiser for the LSPU Hall in downtown St. John's, with a screening of the film, followed by a conversation with Andy Jones.
I'm a graduate student at Concordia University in Montreal, and I grew up in St. John's hearing about this legendary film. I am thrilled to see the film returning for this special event. For my film history class, I researched Faustus, and over the course of my work I learned that the story of how the film was made is as noteworthy as the finished product, one of the most distinctive and original films to come out of Newfoundland and Labrador.
The movie revolves around the title character. Played by Andy Jones, Faustus Bidgood works as a functionary in the provincial Education Department and has secret dreams of becoming president of Newfoundland and leading the province to secede from Canada. His fantasies are absurd adventures, and he escapes into elaborate daydreams to relieve the monotony of his life.
Codco members among large cast
The cast includes both the Jones brothers, Robert Joy, Greg Malone, Mary Walsh, Cathy Jones, Tommy Sexton, Dyan Olsen, Jane Dingle, Ron Hynes, Francis Colbert, Brian Downey, Bryan Henessey and Charlie Tomlinson. The film satirizes and comments on Newfoundland politics and culture, and sends up traditional religious and historical expectations. It is celebrated for its unique visual style, originality and storytelling.
As I collected stories about the making of the film, I was struck by how challenging the creative process was, from start to belated finish.
"At every stage of the production, we were challenged by a lack of money," Andy Jones told me in a recent interview.
During our conversation, he spoke about the various stages and elements involved in the process and how each stage had its own set of tasks and responsibilities. They were constantly challenged by lack of resources.
When I asked Jones if he worried the film would never be made, he said, "many times."
He also spoke, though, of a critical conversation he had with Mike, who told him many films just don't get completed. The brothers knew they didn't want that with this film.
In fact, Andy credits his late brother — Mike Jones died in 2018 — with being the driving force that kept the film going. A founder of NIFCO — the Newfoundland Independent Filmmakers Co-operative, which operates to this day in downtown St. John's, providing critical production services to many film projects — Mike Jones was, in his brother's eyes,the pivotal reason The Adventure of Faustus Bidgood happened.
"Mike was so determined — he drove me crazy," Jones said.
"He wouldn't let me off the hook. He kept trying to get me to rewrite, go back and go back and go back and go back. But I have to say it was his drive — he was the filmmaker."
Money was always hard to come by
Andy Jones started working on the script about a year and a half before production began. The script initially was expansive, and after two brief test shoots in the spring and in the fall of 1977, a series of writers' workshops were held to mould the script. The Faustus Bidgood Script Workshop included Mary Walsh, Robert Joy, Rick Boland, Neil Murray and Mack Furlong, and the group brought the epic script down to a workable size.
The cast was assembled, and the principal shoot began in July 1978.
And then the Jones brothers had to figure out how to finish the film, a hard thing for any independent film to do. Editing began in 1982, and there were three additional shoots along the way. (You can see some of the actors age before your eyes.)
The film finally premiered in August 1986 at the LSPU Hall.
Post-production is a crucial phase in filmmaking. Faustus Bidgood was shot on physical film, long before the digital era, and this marked a big expense.
One of my favourite stories involves the editing process. Andy and Mike Jones knew that to get post-production work done, they could find help in Montreal, where there were more resources than St. John's had at the time. It was also the headquarters of the National Film Board.
The Jones brothers, though, needed to meet a programming head at the NFB, and all their attempts had been unsuccessful — the man's secretary had told him he was simply too busy.
Mike Jones evidently decided, "Well, he's got to go the bathroom at some point," and so the brothers waited outside a washroom for the executive to use the facilities. When he emerged, the brothers pounced — and made their case well enough for some financial support.
With the help of producer Giles Walker, the NFB helped in a major way to complete the entire post-production process.
Another story I love involves the storage of the film. Not the finished movie, but the actual film stock that was shot. On major movies in the celluloid era, the "rushes" would be regularly screened to see how the production was going. A big problem for the Faustus Bidgood team: they couldn't afford to get the film processed, so — in order to preserve the film — reels sat quietly in someone's freezer for quite a long time. In some cases, for a few years.
What happened to the costume?
In the film, Andy Jones wears a distinctive mustard-green suit, which he would put on over the many years of shooting. A worry during the time was that it might get lost or damaged, as they wouldn't have been able to find another one like it.
The suit, now an important artifact of our film heritage, is housed in the Archives and Special Collections of Memorial University in St. John's.
When I interviewed Mark David Turner, a cultural historian who adapted the film for the stage as part of his doctoral work, he described Faustus as "a transitional event in contemporary Newfoundland performance, not only because of the various traditions Andy drew upon in developing the original script, but also because most of the cast, up until the time production began, were predominantly stage actors."
The performers include the 1970s membership of the Codco comedy troupe, as well as other young performers then finding their way in local productions. Turner suggests what gives the film its unique feel is "the meeting of those traditions, those performers, and the late Michael Jones's cinematography and editing."
Production of the film came during what has often been called the "Newfoundland cultural renaissance" — a period of great creative activity in the late 1960s and through the '70s, involving visual, literary and performing arts.
During that period, and often for the first time, the local population saw some of their stories, dialects and customs reflected back to them. As the movement explored the province's culture, it also helped to validate it.
The people who made Faustus were a part of the first generation to grow up after Confederation with Canada when the province was trying to find its place in that union.
I am intrigued that in the film Newfoundland is just introduced as "Newfoundland" — there's no explanation of what or where it is. Andy Jones said that was on purpose, in the same way that when a well-known place like New York is introduced in a movie, the assumption is that everyone already knows where and what it is.
During our interview, Andy Jones talked about the "young romantic Newfoundlander." The independence that Faustus Bidgood dreamed of found a parallel in the need to complete a film independently.
"No doubt at the time of making the movie, there was still a sense of having to prove our worth in Canada," Jones said.
The romance of getting the film finished is also fascinating, of defying the odds. The Jones brothers stopped at nothing to find ways to get each bit of work completed.
The Adventure of Faustus Bidgood was nominated for a number of Genie awards, including best original screenplay (for Mike and Andy Jones), film editing (Mike Jones) and best original song (Robert Joy and Andy Jones).
As I worked on my project, I loved hearing about the many behind-the-scenes stories. I was fascinated by their drive. I was proud to present it at Concordia, and even prouder when my professor said he felt some of Canada's best media talent comes from Newfoundland and Labrador.
The film captures the feel of the late 1970s and early '80s, and is a great snapshot into that burgeoning St. John's cultural scene. There are many familiar faces, and it's great to see them captured. I love hearing the accents, which seem more pronounced than you hear now.
It's significant we are still talking about the film years later, and maybe just beginning to realize its impact.
Our province is now home to a blossoming film and television industry. The Adventure of Faustus Bidgood helped pave the way.
Download our free CBC News app to sign up for push alerts for CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. Click here to visit our landing page.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
