This Saturday night at The Project Lodge, filmmaker Spenser Simrill is screening his new documentary about Athens, Ga. art-pop band of Montreal for only the second time since its debut last week at the Chicago International Movies and Music Festival.

"Family Nouveau" is a 45-minute glimpse into the backstage and onstage antics of the band on a European tour last winter -- macho push-up competitions, karaoke with the townies, wardrobe malfunctions -- spliced with footage of frontman Kevin Barnes' philosophical musings.

Watch the trailer here.

Simrill, 34, is an English professor at the University of Georgia-Athens, but is teaching this semester primarily in the school's study abroad outpost in Costa Rica. His younger brother Stephen, who tagged along on the of Montreal tour last year, is a student at UW-Madison.

Spenser Simrill answered a few questions Friday afternoon from his car, en route to Madison for tomorrow night's screening.

How did you hook up with the band?

You know, Athens is a small town, and pretty much everybody knows everybody. My roommate played some trumpet work on (the of Montreal albums) "The Sunlandic Twins" and "Satanic Panic." I was able to go on tour with them because they needed someone to sell t-shirts.

Why did you call it "Family Nouveau"?

It's a reference to this rare of Montreal song that Kevin sings about finding his wife, Nina, and being able to start a new family with her and their daughter, Alabee. So much of their music is so personal. The title refers to Kevin's family with Nina and with (his brother) David, and also the family that of Montreal has become. I feel the film is a testament to our artistic perseverance. Here's a band who didn't really receive any commercial success and had very mixed critical reviews for its first seven years. They didn't make any money. And yet, because of the friendships formed together, because of the support and network that sustained them, they were able to stay true to their artistic vision and become commercially successful.

Was the band putting on for the camera or is that just the way they are?

That's just the way they are. The only thing that was really put on are the (interviews) with Kevin on the beach. I was friendly with him before, but I think we're able to bond in two ways. We both had our little brothers on tour. Kevin's brother is the art director and the lead choreographer of the band. The band is very much like a family endeavor. My brother Stephen was also on tour. The band loved him. (Kevin and I) both shared a love of sports and literature. Kevin is an amazing athlete. He could do 40 push-ups.

One quote in the film that struck me is when Kevin Barnes says, after a show in front of a unresponsive audience, "If someone looks like they're unhappy, it's part of the whole circus." How does that fit into the band's aesthetic and the film?

I cut directly from that quote to this (onstage) pig sacrifice as a way of dramatizing that idea. I think it's cool, people don't know what the f---'s going on. Their whole aesthetic is based on the Apollonian-Dionysian duality. This is in Nietzsche's first book in 1872. Apollo is the god of light and individuality. Dionysus is more fluid. He's the god of drunkenness and chaos. In all their music and art, it crosses that line between order and chaos, between confusion and intelligibility.

I'm working on an article right now called, "Of Montreal and the History of the English Language." I noticed this pattern in Kevin's lyrics. You know he has several personaes, right? One is Georgie Fruit, this pangendered black she-male who just got out of prison and is trying to make a new life for himself. And the other personae is someone called List Christie -- she's elusive, but I think she's a little bit critical of Georgie and concerned by what Georgie might do to others. Georgie definitely represents Dionysus, and List Christie definitely represents Apollo.

What I noticed in the lyrics is that whenever Georgie's character emerges, he uses words that have Scandinavian and Old English origins, whereas the lexicon of List Christie's is highly Latinate.

Kevin's mythological references are so deep. I just want to go and get footage of his bookshelf, because he's totally self-educated. He went to community college for, like, maybe a semester. And yet over the years he's been an avid reader and he's created this new mythology. It's very dense.

[In a message to me after this blog posted, Simrill said he wanted to amend his assessment of Barnes as "totally self-educated": "Dude is a self-educated genius. Tell them that he beat me in tennis, too. He should be celebrated, not me."]

Where will your article on of Montreal be published?

You know Paste Magazine? Yeah, they're pretty cool. I think I could get it in there. Their interview with Kevin is about three hours long. It's amazing. I've also thought of putting something longer together for that 33 1/3 series.

What's up with this University of Georgia program in Costa Rica, where you teach?

I've had a pretty sweet situation in that over the last eight years I've taught about half the time in Athens, and about half the time in Cortona, Italy, for the University of Georgia's art school. Now I'm doing the same thing in Costa Rica. It's study abroad. It's a combination of nature writing and documentary filmmaking.

What do your colleagues think of you traipsing around Europe with a band?

I think they think it's pretty cool. If you look at the English Department website, there's this banner image: in the far left you have script made by the Tunisians and then it goes on to a handwritten scroll and then you have an early Gutenberg Bible and then at the far right you have 1's and 0's, like the digital form of communication. So, basically what I'm doing is still steeped in the narrative tradition, just using a new form to tell stories.

The same principles that apply to creative writing also apply to documentary filmmaking -- the importance of showing versus telling, to make the audience a participant in the story. What I like about documentaries, they can be a very ego-less endeavor. Anyone who's ever filmed cringes whenever they hear their voice, you know, coming from behind the mic. You're violating that wall. It's not about you when you make documentaries. You make documentaries to tell other people's stories. A huge part of that is making people feel comfortable in front of the camera. When I'm filming, I don't say a word. I just smile, try to make people feel as comfortable as possible. You hope they forget about you.

What courses do you teach?

Right now I'm teaching a course in multicultural literature. It's American literature, and we're studying comedians -- Sacha Baron Cohen, Dave Chappelle, Russell Peters, Gabriel Iglesias -- as a way of understanding cultural diversity. It's weird, scientists and psychologists have started to look at humor and they have these theories on why people laugh and what makes jokes funny. Only humans laugh, really. So, laughter is one of the main things that sets us apart from other animals. We're also one of the only species that knows we're going to die and knows the role that sexuality plays in continuing the species. Humor, in a lot of ways, is a way of dealing with tension regarding death and sexuality and xenophobia.

I read that you're working on academic research related to "Brer Rabbit."

I'm doing some stuff on "Song of the South," the Joel Chandler Harris "Uncle Remus" tales. I'm looking at Walt Disney's adaptation of it. It's the only movie that Disney hasn't rereleased on DVD, for what some people consider racial stereotypes. You have to get a bootleg copy, basically.

Do you think Disney should rerelease it on DVD?

They should re-release it with an accompanying documentary that I hope to make.

Have you talked to Disney about that?

(Laughs.) My star needs to shine a little brighter for that to happen.

 

"Family Nouveau" screening, with All Tiny Creatures, Jivas

7:30 p.m., Saturday, March 13 at The Project Lodge, 817 E. Johnson St.

$5