“I believe, as a sane person, that I should prevent you guys from doing shit like this.”
In a Canadian Tire at Yonge and Davenport, a manager is helping two customers shop for plier cutters. The pair have just asked whether the tool is strong enough to cut through a safety harness — the kind that a person wears while doing the CN Tower’s EdgeWalk.
“I seriously don’t think it’s worth it,” the manager warns.
In this moment, the well-meaning employee is unaware that the two men he’s speaking to are Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol, the creators of the cult-favourite series Nirvanna the Band the Show. Nor is he aware that he’s just become part of their new film, the aptly titled Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie (NTBTSTM).
The most challenging aspect of being a Nirvanna fan is trying to describe the show to someone who’s never seen it. The first wave of confusion typically hits when you reveal that the series has nothing to do with Kurt Cobain. Instead, the unscripted mockumentary centres on a fictional “Nirvanna the Band,” consisting of Johnson and McCarrol, whose sole mission is to book a show at The Rivoli nightclub in Toronto. Almost zero rehearsing takes place — the pair instead try to secure the venue through a series of elaborate, ill-fated stunts taking place across the city.
By the time you explain to these prospective viewers that Nirvanna is spelled with an extra n, you’ve either lost your audience or grown the fandom.
Nirvanna the Band the Show started in 2008 as a web series, filmed guerilla-style from Johnson and McCarrol’s apartment at Queen and Spadina.
“We didn’t want to emulate the function of all the people our age in film school being told to do things a certain way,” McCarroll tells The Grind in an interview ahead of the film’s theatrical release on Feb. 13.
“We were pretty much driven by our rejection of a lot of those things … It was almost anti-scope.”
Had you told the then 20-somethings that 17 years later, Nirvanna would be getting the full movie treatment, they would’ve been shocked.
“We probably would think that we were failure losers because we’d be like: we didn’t move on?” Johnson quips. “That is what we would think,” McCarrol agrees.
And within the Nirvanna universe, they might be right. In NTBTSTM, the character versions of Johnson and McCarrol still live in the same house, wear the same outfits and are chasing the same elusive goal of playing The Rivoli. But in reality, it was precisely their success as filmmakers beyond Nirvanna that paved the way for the film. Johnson, who is currently directing the Anthony Bourdain biopic Tony, also directed and starred in 2023’s Blackberry, on which McCarrol served as both executive producer and composer. The film received international praise, set a record for the most-ever wins at the 2024 Canadian Screen Awards, and earned enough good faith within the industry to get NTBTSTM greenlit by Telefilm.
While fans of the Nirvanna series have seen the pair stage bank robberies, museum heists and run amok through the city’s abandoned subway tunnels, the scope of NTBTSTM is maximized to hilarious effect. Following a Back to the Future storyline, the duo accidentally travels to 2008, an era signaled by old CLRV streetcars, Jian Ghomeshi billboards, and print versions of NOW Magazine. In a scheme that would podium for most Toronto-centric of all time, the film opens with the pair sky diving off the CN Tower, hoping to land in the middle of a Blue Jays game and announce a (still unsecured) show at The Rivoli.
“We’ve never done anything harder than that,” Johnson says of the stunt.
Like many of Nirvanna’s stunts, you know that what you’re seeing on screen is impossible. But the visual effects are masterful enough that you allow yourself, if only momentarily, to believe. It’s more thrilling when you don’t know how the rabbit is pulled from the hat, and over the years, McCarrol and Johnson have remained tight-lipped about how they pull their stunts off. Transparency would not only ruin the magic, it would reveal a painstaking process.
“Any time we even got close to the CN Tower, it was completely surrounded by security,” McCarrol says. “We had to shoot in 30-second increments and then bail. They were kicking us out and throwing us away all the time. It all happened, just barely.”
This “no permit, no permission” approach explains why a 95-minute movie took 200 days to shoot. It also underscores how miraculous it is that the project made it past the finish line.
Nirvanna has always adopted a “shoot now, figure it out later” ethos. If there’s a fire, police siren or commotion nearby, longtime collaborator Jared Raab will instinctively turn on the camera and pan to Johnson and McCarrol. The duo will improvise a scene, unaware how or if that footage might eventually be used.
“We’re always ready to grab some reality and reverse engineer it, if we can,” McCarrol explains.
In 2024, the duo were filming on The Roz & Mocha Show — a Toronto morning radio program — when news broke of a shooting outside Drake’s mansion. They immediately drove to the scene and started filming McCarrol running around the premises. In the movie, the actual press conference is repurposed and woven into the storyline with McCarrol as the sought-after shooter. (If you go back and watch official news reports from that day, you can easily spot the Nirvanna crew in the background.)
With many films shot in Toronto, the city is used as a blank slate on which to superimpose American identity. But in NTBTSTM, its distinctiveness is central to the plot.
“There was a real responsibility that at some level, this movie was going to represent English Canada to the people outside this province, whether we like it or not,” Johnson says.
The CN Tower, the Rogers Centre and Queen Street are all featured prominently, leaning into a regional specificity that Torontonians aren’t used to seeing on the big screen.
“If you live in Toronto, those things are almost lame,” Johnson continues. “People in Toronto don’t even go up the CN Tower — ever. If you did, it would be in some ways embarrassing. But we leaned into those things almost as stupidly as we possibly could, because we knew that most of the people who see this movie are going to be Americans and people outside of our country, and it might be the first time they ever see Toronto. The movie is trying to give Toronto the best possible postcard image.”
Another reason why Johnson and McCarrol maintain the perceptual gulf between what is real and what is not is that it upholds a certain fantasy-like image of Toronto as a city where anything is possible.
“That just seemed like good advertising for our country,” says Johnson.
The series and film are also great advertising for the people who live here. One of the most enduringly charming aspects of Nirvanna is that Johnson and McCarrol are its only actors. Everyone else that you see are real Torontonians who happen to cross paths with the duo on their misadventures. Cameras are often concealed, with the reveal and release forms coming after the scenes have been filmed.
We’ve seen this format from the likes of Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat, Da Ali G Show) and Nathan Fielder (Nathan For You, The Rehearsal), but while these shows can lean towards the exploitative, often making a mockery of unknowing participants, Nirvanna is intent on doing the opposite.
“We’re really just trying to create a movie where everybody is real,” Johnson says. “We actually go to everybody with the intention of having them be their best and most authentic self in that moment, because the only time we’re ever talking to somebody is when we need their help. Because we’re on such an asinine mission, anybody who comes to our aid is going to look pretty good.”
Whether it’s a Canadian Tire manager trying to save two men from plummeting to their death, passersby helping with directions or a giggling woman on Queen Street holding a walkie-talkie while Johnson attempts to troubleshoot a makeshift time machine, the result is a consistently flattering snapshot of the kind-hearted, colourful characters in this city.
“All the antagonism with us is either physics or ourselves,” Johnson says.
In one of several iterations of the movie, Johnson and McCarrol tried filming these on-the-street scenes in the U.S. Both the footage and concept ended up being scrapped. Torontonians, it turns out, make for the ultimate castmates.
“I don’t want to say that we don’t have pride, but there’s not that American pride or self-awareness of their characteristics,” says McCaroll. “When we were in the States, everyone was very ‘samey’ in whatever city we were in. But in Toronto, we’re all very chameleon-like, yet very normal as a calibration zero, so it’s a perfect spot to do this.”
NTBTSTM opened TIFF’s Midnight Madness last year, where it won the People’s Choice Award. That night, the audience was filled with fans and friends. Mayor Olivia Chow was also in attendance, but it was a different VIP guest that the crowd went wild for: the kind-hearted manager from the Canadian Tire. During the Q & A portion of the evening, McCarrol and Johnson invited him onto the stage to take a bow, simultaneously highlighting the singular nature of their series and this city — one where praise can be shared, eccentricity can be nurtured and everyone can be in on the joke.
This article appeared in the 2026 Feb/Mar issue.
