Hyfler/Rosner
2003-11-01 12:56:24 UTC
Key figure in our film history slips away
Paul Bradley's death recalls seminal role
GEOFF PEVERE Toronto Star
As Joey, the sweeter and dimmer of the two Maritime drifters in Donald
Shebib's touchstone film Goin' Down The Road, Paul Bradley came as close to
iconic as any Canadian movie character gets.
A beer-sodden, horny and boyishly naïve optimist who comes to Toronto with
his buddy Pete (Doug McGrath) in search of work and sex, Bradley's Joey was
the most lovable kind of loser: Not only someone who refused to let reality
interfere with his perennial pursuit of modest pleasures, but who was
oblivious to losing in the first place. In the scene where the boys'
custom-painted convertible junkheap first pulls into Toronto, Bradley's Joey
stands up in his seat and screams "Lock up your daughters!" As if.
Provided Joey had a cold one going, which was just about always, there was
reason for hope. In one of the movie's most touching and naturalistic
scenes, Bradley's clearly soused Joey publicly professes his love for his
pregnant bride Bets (Jayne Eastwood) at their Legion Hall wedding. Part of
what makes the scene so affecting is knowing that this marriage is probably
doomed. The other part is knowing Joey - whose hair is sticking up in a halo
of wayward abandon - believes everything's going to be okay.
(The final part is knowing the role Bradley played in making the scene
happen. As director Shebib recollected recently, the Legion Hall scene was
supposed to feature extras as the wedding guests, but not enough showed up.
Bradley went outside and quickly rustled up a gang of eager prostitutes and
street people to fill up the empty seats. Not only did the presence of these
unrehearsed recruits lend the sequence an air of documentary authenticity
that sold it that much more powerfully, these folk truly do seem like the
kind of people Joey might know. As Bradley indeed did.)
Bradley died of heart failure in September in Victoria, B.C. He hadn't acted
in years, and had fallen out of touch with most of the people with whom he
became briefly - and modestly - well-known following the 1970 release of
Shebib's low-budget Canadian road classic.
He left Toronto sometime in the early 1980s, and by all reports had worked
intermittently as a carnival barker and knife salesman on the West Coast. He
was, by Shebib's estimation, somewhere in his early 60s.
In an interview, Shebib called his old friend, "A charming hustler. Paul
would give you the shirt off his back, but it would be the same shirt he
stole from you."
Right after Goin' Down The Road, Shebib, who had first met the
Cabbagetown-reared Bradley when the inexperienced actor was auditioning for
his first feature, made a movie about him called Born Hustler. In it,
Bradley is seen tooling around early '70s Toronto in a rented limo, checking
out women in passing cars, imbibing liberally at gentlemen's establishments,
and wavering touchingly between cocky bravado and worrisome, bloodshot
insecurity.
There's a part of him that is digging on being even a local mini-celebrity
cruising the DVP.
But there's another part of him that seems reasonably convinced it probably
isn't going to last. If one ever wondered how much Joey there was in
Bradley, Born Hustler suggests there was much indeed.
Where the broody Pete - the instigator of the lads' exodus from Nova Scotia
to Toronto - grows increasingly resentful as he feels circumstances
foreclosing on his fantasy, Joey is the boy whose dreams are always bigger
than whatever situation he finds himself in. Shortly after he and Bets
marry, Joey stocks an unaffordable apartment on credit: TV, furniture,
appliances, the works.
When Pete insists on letting a little rude reality into the room, Joey
suggests they have another beer. Nothing's lost as long as the fridge is
stocked.
At once vulnerable and impervious, naive yet contagiously upbeat, Joey is
the guy in the movie your heart ultimately breaks for. If Pete at least
grows hip to social circumstances and his own delusions, Joey never does,
and watching his life collapse is like watching a kid learning his family
has abandoned him.
At the end of the film, Joey appears catatonic from systematic
disappointment, and I always wondered what lay beyond that movie's
brilliantly untidy ending. I could see Pete carrying on until the anger
finally consumed him, but Joey?
Joey was something of low-level Canadian pop-cultural archetype: You can see
traces of his foggy, resilient sweetness in Bob and Doug McKenzie and in
Wayne's recroom headbanger sidekick Garth, and he and Pete were indelibly
impersonated by Joe Flaherty and John Candy in a unforgettable SCTV parody.
In a way then, Bradley did get his legacy: Joey lived on through these
generations of lovable, maple-flavoured losers.
But it's a legacy perhaps too true to Joey's form, in that his offspring
became better-known than he was. Not that it would have bothered the guy
much, at least as long as the fridge wasn't empty.
Paul Bradley's death recalls seminal role
GEOFF PEVERE Toronto Star
As Joey, the sweeter and dimmer of the two Maritime drifters in Donald
Shebib's touchstone film Goin' Down The Road, Paul Bradley came as close to
iconic as any Canadian movie character gets.
A beer-sodden, horny and boyishly naïve optimist who comes to Toronto with
his buddy Pete (Doug McGrath) in search of work and sex, Bradley's Joey was
the most lovable kind of loser: Not only someone who refused to let reality
interfere with his perennial pursuit of modest pleasures, but who was
oblivious to losing in the first place. In the scene where the boys'
custom-painted convertible junkheap first pulls into Toronto, Bradley's Joey
stands up in his seat and screams "Lock up your daughters!" As if.
Provided Joey had a cold one going, which was just about always, there was
reason for hope. In one of the movie's most touching and naturalistic
scenes, Bradley's clearly soused Joey publicly professes his love for his
pregnant bride Bets (Jayne Eastwood) at their Legion Hall wedding. Part of
what makes the scene so affecting is knowing that this marriage is probably
doomed. The other part is knowing Joey - whose hair is sticking up in a halo
of wayward abandon - believes everything's going to be okay.
(The final part is knowing the role Bradley played in making the scene
happen. As director Shebib recollected recently, the Legion Hall scene was
supposed to feature extras as the wedding guests, but not enough showed up.
Bradley went outside and quickly rustled up a gang of eager prostitutes and
street people to fill up the empty seats. Not only did the presence of these
unrehearsed recruits lend the sequence an air of documentary authenticity
that sold it that much more powerfully, these folk truly do seem like the
kind of people Joey might know. As Bradley indeed did.)
Bradley died of heart failure in September in Victoria, B.C. He hadn't acted
in years, and had fallen out of touch with most of the people with whom he
became briefly - and modestly - well-known following the 1970 release of
Shebib's low-budget Canadian road classic.
He left Toronto sometime in the early 1980s, and by all reports had worked
intermittently as a carnival barker and knife salesman on the West Coast. He
was, by Shebib's estimation, somewhere in his early 60s.
In an interview, Shebib called his old friend, "A charming hustler. Paul
would give you the shirt off his back, but it would be the same shirt he
stole from you."
Right after Goin' Down The Road, Shebib, who had first met the
Cabbagetown-reared Bradley when the inexperienced actor was auditioning for
his first feature, made a movie about him called Born Hustler. In it,
Bradley is seen tooling around early '70s Toronto in a rented limo, checking
out women in passing cars, imbibing liberally at gentlemen's establishments,
and wavering touchingly between cocky bravado and worrisome, bloodshot
insecurity.
There's a part of him that is digging on being even a local mini-celebrity
cruising the DVP.
But there's another part of him that seems reasonably convinced it probably
isn't going to last. If one ever wondered how much Joey there was in
Bradley, Born Hustler suggests there was much indeed.
Where the broody Pete - the instigator of the lads' exodus from Nova Scotia
to Toronto - grows increasingly resentful as he feels circumstances
foreclosing on his fantasy, Joey is the boy whose dreams are always bigger
than whatever situation he finds himself in. Shortly after he and Bets
marry, Joey stocks an unaffordable apartment on credit: TV, furniture,
appliances, the works.
When Pete insists on letting a little rude reality into the room, Joey
suggests they have another beer. Nothing's lost as long as the fridge is
stocked.
At once vulnerable and impervious, naive yet contagiously upbeat, Joey is
the guy in the movie your heart ultimately breaks for. If Pete at least
grows hip to social circumstances and his own delusions, Joey never does,
and watching his life collapse is like watching a kid learning his family
has abandoned him.
At the end of the film, Joey appears catatonic from systematic
disappointment, and I always wondered what lay beyond that movie's
brilliantly untidy ending. I could see Pete carrying on until the anger
finally consumed him, but Joey?
Joey was something of low-level Canadian pop-cultural archetype: You can see
traces of his foggy, resilient sweetness in Bob and Doug McKenzie and in
Wayne's recroom headbanger sidekick Garth, and he and Pete were indelibly
impersonated by Joe Flaherty and John Candy in a unforgettable SCTV parody.
In a way then, Bradley did get his legacy: Joey lived on through these
generations of lovable, maple-flavoured losers.
But it's a legacy perhaps too true to Joey's form, in that his offspring
became better-known than he was. Not that it would have bothered the guy
much, at least as long as the fridge wasn't empty.