When Steve Galluccio sat down to write a screenplay about the glory days of Montreal’s disco scene, he had no idea the film would ultimately ignite more bickering about Quebec’s language divide.
But since Funkytown had its Quebec premiere in January – while taking in $1.4-million at the box office – it has aggravated some cultural commentators, raising questions about its bilingual status. After the film’s premiere, La Presse columnist Nathalie Petrowski grumbled about the high level of English in the film, arguing that it wasn’t so much a 50-50 split as 60-40, with the majority of dialogue being in English.
“She was probably right,” Galluccio says now, sitting in a chic diner in Montreal’s Plateau neighbourhood. “We never really counted, nor did we ever claim it was perfectly 50-50. But you know what? Anglophones who see the film comment on how much French there is in it. And francophones comment on how much English there is.”
(For the record, the original screenplay was written entirely in English, with Galluccio then choosing several scenes throughout that would be translated into French.)
Galluccio says Funkytown began when executive producer Simon Trottier approached him more than two years ago with the idea for a film about Montreal’s glory days of disco and the ultimate transition into new wave during the seventies and eighties.
In particular, Trottier was fascinated by two late legendary figures of the scene: TV personality Alain Montpetit, a radio DJ who hosted a local version of American Bandstand for a Montreal station, and Douglas (Coco) Leopold, a gay publicist and socialite. Montpetit would die in 1987 of a heart attack after a drug overdose (police concluded that he had actually murdered a woman in 1982); Leopold would die of AIDS in 1993. Given their colourful lives and horrific ends – worthy of any of the characters in Boogie Nights – Trottier felt that their stories were feature-film-worthy. After a meeting with director Daniel Roby, Galluccio was convinced that the project would make for a winning collaboration.
“I’ve known so many people involved with this scene, and spent so much time in it myself, I felt like my research had been done just by the life I’ve led,” says Galluccio, now 50 and still ludicrously baby-faced. “I spent a lot of time at places like Shed [a now-defunct, popular café on St. Laurent] and at Business [a hugely popular, now-defunct nightclub also on St. Laurent], and I was always sober enough to take in what was going on around me, unlike so many others in Montreal.”
The result is a sprawling ensemble piece, featuring a cast of characters navigating their way through drugs, sex and disco, often with very messy results. The film is drenched in nostalgia, complete with excessive, garish wardrobes and catchy tunes. Notably, Funkytown has fared much better with francophone filmgoers in Quebec, undoubtedly in large part because of the presence of one of Quebec’s biggest stars, Patrick Huard, who plays the character based on Montpetit. (Huard also starred in Quebec’s other bilingual hit, Bon Cop Bad Cop, Canada’s all-time homegrown box-office champ.)
Galluccio even met Leopold when Galluccio was a 22-year-old star-struck club kid. “One day, I saw an ad in this underground magazine that said, ‘MEDIA PERSONALITY NEEDS ASSISTANT.’ There was a phone number, and I called it, and Douglas answered. He said he was getting a pedicure at the Four Seasons the next day and wanted to meet with me then. We chatted for a while. I never really knew what the job was about, but it was exciting to meet him, because he was this huge star. For our second meeting, he suggested we go swimming. I sort of lost interest at that point.”
Galluccio’s writing career began in the nineties, when he penned a series of frothy one-acts for the Montreal Fringe Festival featuring his favourite TV characters, including the Brady Bunch and Batman and Robin. His breakthrough came in 2000 when the Centaur produced Mambo Italiano, his comedy about a young gay Italian man trying to come out in a staunchly conservative ethnic community. The play took off, becoming the longest-running play ever in the Centaur’s history (overtaking David Fennario’s landmark Balconville). A French production, translated by Quebec literary godfather Michel Tremblay, also proved a huge hit. The screen adaptation was released in 2003, starring the dream cast of Luke Kirby, Paul Sorvino, Mary Walsh, Ginette Reno and Tim Post, and was among the top-grossing Canadian films of the decade.
“There’s been a production of Mambo staged every year since,” Galluccio notes. “Some gay Italians thank me for having written it, saying it really helped them to deal with their situations.” (Another production of Mambo will open in Kelowna, B.C., in late March and then move to Vancouver.)
During the filming of Funkytown, Galluccio found himself a consultant of sorts. “When we were shooting the new-wave scenes, I told Daniel that the kids weren’t dancing properly. He said, ‘Go show them!’ They put the music on, and I told them they needed to jump up, high. You know what? Kids don’t dance any more. It was weird – this 49-year-old showing 20-year-olds how to dance. Some of them were out of breath. I was like, ‘What ... is wrong with you?’
“I showed them how to do it right.”
Special to The Globe and Mail
