Blackberry, the origin story of Canada’s iPhone, was the vehicle that vaulted director Matt Johnson into the mainstream—sweatband in tow. On the indie circuit, however, Johnson had already cemented his cred with mad-genius guerrilla films that made some wonder if his brain had formed without a fear centre. For 2013’s The Dirties, his debut feature, he went undercover as a high-schooler; for his moon-landing mockumentary Operation Avalanche, he infiltrated NASA (for real). Maybe the most beloved of Johnson’s run-and-gun projects is Nirvanna the Band the Show, a Borat-style buddy comedy in which Johnson and co-creator Jay McCarrol rope unsuspecting Torontonians into their stunts—3D-printing a (fake) gun at a library, for example. Now it’s received the big-screen treatment: Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie screens at the Toronto International Film Festival next month.

Now 39, and buoyed by BlackBerry’s success, Johnson is being lobbed directorial gigs an indie kid could only dream of: he’s in talks to helm Hasbro’s upcoming Magic: The Gathering movie and just wrapped Tony, the A24-backed biopic of Anthony Bourdain, a fellow outsider-turned-insider. Does the free-wheeling Canadian cult filmmaker feel hemmed in by Hollywood expectations? Johnson and I spoke about it over a long-distance breakfast. (He ate, I watched.)

Where are you right now? More importantly: how’s that breakfast you’re eating?

I wrapped Tony in Massachusetts a week ago, and now I’m at my family’s place in Thunder Bay. They immigrated here from Iceland a long, long time ago, and it’s where my dad grew up. I’m actually eating French toast he made me from bread he bought at Holland Bakery in town. I had to eat so much seafood in Cape Cod that just to be back eating things from Canadian grocery stores is great.

How was being a Canadian in America?

I need more distance from the Cape Cod experience before I’ll be able to synthesize my thoughts about it. I will say, I once heard a comedian describe Canadians as “aliens who were trying to trick Americans into thinking they were Americans by impersonating them.” Our cultures are 99 per cent the same, but that one per cent really does give you an…

…uncanny valley feeling?

Yeah. But after months there, you do sense a profound difference—right down to the bone—between whatever it is to be Canadian and whatever it is to be American. Have you ever been to an American airport? Everyone acts like they’re on TV. And I mean that in a good way—huge personalities, great voices.

Funny, because a lot of Nirvanna the Band the Show—the source material for your new movie—is shot in Toronto, in public, with people who have absolutely no clue they’re on TV. How would you describe the conceit to Canadians who’ve never seen it?

I’ve compared it to the Borat movie. Honestly, I’ve been working on Nirvanna for almost 20 years, and I still can’t describe it in a way that makes me sound like I made it. It’s like you’re watching a movie, but it’s shot in the real world and nobody knows they’re in that movie except the two main guys, played by Jay McCarrol and me. We didn’t intend to make the show that way. We were like, “We have no money or access to any real actors. We may as well lean into the things we’re stuck with.” What’s great about real people who don’t know they’re on camera is that they act so........

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