Nirvanna the Band just isn’t the band Nirvana.
Most individuals are most likely accustomed to the latter, the enduring rock group fashioned by Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic. They might have much less consciousness of the previous, a fictional two-man band that includes comedians/filmmakers Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol that began as a parody net collection in 2007.
“The phrase Nirvanna has been such a thorn in our sides this complete time,” McCarrol admitted in an interview with TheWrap, tongue firmly in cheek. “It’s why now we have two ‘N’s, and even that isn’t getting us fully off the hook.”
They is probably not Nirvana, however because the Canadian duo excursions their new movie, “Nirvanna the Band the Present the Film,” in cities like Chicago, Portland and Nashville, Johnson feels just like the entrance man of a rock group all the identical.
“There’s one thing reside about it the place it appears uncontrolled,” he stated. “That’s one thing that I don’t assume we predicted was going to be the expertise as you watched it within the theater, as a result of ‘Nirvanna the Band,’ up so far, has been a tv collection. In some methods, it’s designed to be watched alone on a laptop computer the place you possibly can pause it everytime you need.”
Johnson and McCarrol are the most recent to draft off of their on-line success to attract in audiences, and observe creator Markiplier, whose YouTube fame helped get his ardour mission in theaters earlier this month. However whereas “Iron Lung” is a extra standard horror movie, “Nirvanna the Band the Present the Film” is a completely completely different beast, drawing from the chaotic, messy roots of their net collection to create a movie that’s been a authorized “copyright nightmare” because of the usage of a bevy of pre-existing media of their movie with out asking for permission, citing truthful use. It’s of venture, however one in step with the spirit of the TV present on which the movie relies.
“We don’t undergo copyright holders and ask them, ‘Hey, can we please do that?’ which is the way in which that 99% of films you’ve ever seen do it,” Johnson defined. “What we’re doing is completely different. We’re making a authorized argument for our inventive truthful use of every particular person copyright infringement. I take advantage of that phrase infringement to make clear what individuals assume we’re doing.”
For Johnson, making a “Nirvanna the Band the Present” film additionally meant taking the uncommon flip again to his roots, reasonably than capitalizing on his final profitable movie, the well-reviewed gadget biopic “BlackBerry,” and pursuing a much bigger, extra commercially interesting mission. The online collection “Nirvanna the Band” finally turned a two-season TV present on Viceland within the 2010s (neither is presently legally accessible within the U.S., although that can quickly change) and has a niche-but-dedicated fanbase.
The lifelong mates wrote and starred within the film and the collection collectively, enjoying fictionalized variations of themselves. Each episode of the present sees the doofus duo trying to get their band, Nirvanna the Band, booked to play the Canadian venue The Rivoli. They by no means succeed.
“Nirvanna the Band the Present the Film” marks the largest-scale model of a mission Johnson and McCarrol have developed for practically 20 years. The movie sees Matt and Jay touring again in time to 2008 and interacting with variations of themselves from the start of their net collection.
However no consciousness of “Nirvanna the Band the Present” is required to take pleasure in their big-screen journey. The movie introduced new eyes to their outdated duo, opening in 365 theaters over Presidents’ Day weekend to just about $1.5 million. Indie label Neon picked it up after it premiered at South by Southwest in March 2025.
Many would name this film, to place it bluntly, a danger. “Nirvanna the Band the Present the Film” mixes a mockumentary model with a “Again to the Future” parody, utilizing popular culture references, guerrilla filmmaking and in depth archive footage — involving Invoice Cosby, a taking pictures at Drake’s mansion and leaping off the highest of the CN Tower. Johnson owns as much as the authorized trickiness within the movie itself, wanting into digicam to inform the viewers they’re watching one thing so legally difficult that it could be pulled from theaters.
“Anyone can sue anyone for something,” Johnson stated. “So we’re attempting to create the very best authorized circumstances on our aspect to defend ourselves.”
“If and when that comes,” McCarrol interjected.
However whereas the scope could also be greater, the creators are nonetheless the identical scrappy crew they had been within the mid-2000s, assembling their movie by riffing, devised storytelling and authorized ingenuity. All through the movie, Johnson even wears the identical pair of denims he wore at the start of their net collection — though they’re just about falling aside after virtually 20 years.
“These ripped denims are an honest image of all of those selections,” Johnson additional said. “We made them, we caught with them and we refused to take them off, irrespective of how broken and ridiculous they started to look to different individuals.”
“They’re displaying Matt’s complete ankles,” McCarrol laughed.
“You’re watching the erosion of time on my pants,” Johnson added. “Nothing can cease it.”
From band to point out to film
After “BlackBerry,” Matt Johnson had a clean test.
Johnson, who directed the movie concerning the titular cell phone model (McCarrol composed the rating), remembers sitting for the premiere at 2023’s Berlin Movie Pageant. Sitting subsequent to “It’s At all times Sunny in Philadelphia” and “BlackBerry” star Glenn Howerton, Johnson anxiously awaited an viewers response — any response — to his greatest movie but.
That’s, till the viewers erupted in laughter to a line from Howerton.
“He reached over and simply grabbed my thigh more durable than I’ve ever been grabbed in my life,” Johnson stated. “We had been simply holding one another for the following 10 minutes being like, ‘Oh my God, this labored. These individuals prefer it.’ That was sort of the leaping off second of all of these items.”
After the screening concluded, Telefilm Canada (a government-run Crown company that helps Canadian filmmaking) approached Johnson with a easy query: What do you wish to do subsequent?
“I stated, ‘In the event you let me simply do no matter I need, I’ll make a Nirvanna the Band film,’” Johnson recalled. “However you possibly can’t ask any questions, and I would like infinite time to do it.”
Everybody round him steered that he use this chance to do one thing completely different, one thing greater.
“Everybody apart from me, in fact, who’s telling Matt, ‘Matt, I feel one of the best factor to do to your profession is to make a Nirvanna the Band film,” McCarrol laughed. “Fortunate me!”
“It was an actual Nirvanna the Band plan,” Johnson agreed. “You had been principally adopting the Matt character in that second. You had been the satan on my shoulder.”
A film marked the pure subsequent step within the decades-long evolution of “Nirvanna the Band.” Johnson and McCarrol, who first turned mates throughout highschool in Mississauga, Ontario, lengthy wished to make one thing collectively, whether or not that be brief movies or one thing grander. Within the meantime, they settled on making one another snort with solely their comedian intuition and a piano.
“Not realizing we had been creating characters, we’d be form of shadow variations of ourselves, the place Jay would play the piano and I might goof round attempting to take part verbally,” Johnson stated.
When the 2 moved in collectively post-university at Queen and Spadina in Toronto, they started utilizing these Matt and Jay personas for an online collection: “Nirvana the Band the Present” (which initially used the identical identify because the well-known rock band). Their residence turned the setting for the present, which used a mockumentary lens to depict the fictional band hatching absurd plans to play The Rivoli, an iconic Toronto bar down the road.
“Whenever you’re a child, you assume, ‘Oh my God, if I used to be an grownup, I may stroll proper into the hospital and I might be a physician,’” Johnson stated. “You step into these roles as a child, since you don’t perceive what adults are. You solely see them as archetypes. I feel that’s what Matt and Jay do always: They step into the archetypes.”
Johnson likened their comedian course of to a recording of “October within the Railroad Earth” by Jack Kerouac, the place the poet speaks by seven minutes of spontaneous prose whereas a jazzy piano participant offers accompaniment.
“That is what Nirvanna the Band thinks they’re,” Johnson defined. “For the longest time, it was the unique opening credit tune of the film.”
Years after the net collection’ 2007 to 2010 run, Johnson and McCarrol created a full tv present titled “Nirvanna the Band the Present” (now with a further n) on Viceland.
Then got here the itch to make a movie.
The pair labored by a couple of “Nirvanna the Band the Present the Film” concepts. They initially started filming the mission as a free adaptation of “A Confederacy of Dunces” and “The Proficient Mr. Ripley,” making an RV highway journey movie that took them throughout America and, finally, to New Orleans. It wasn’t till they received residence and assessed footage from their editors that the filmmakers realized they had been “not enthusiastic about this concept” in what McCarrol known as a very “susceptible second.”
So Johnson and McCarrol took inventory of what they did have: a brand new RV, an archive of unused net collection materials and as a lot ingenuity as their fictional band. Why not put the three collectively and make their massive film an prolonged “Again to the Future” riff?
“All of it in a short time got here collectively, all these items, and we received on an actual roll writing it,” McCarrol stated. “We had been sort of simply amending our story, however then we had been like, ‘Why don’t we take this RV and switch it into our personal form of DeLorean?’”
‘A copyright nightmare’
Within the third act of “Nirvanna the Band the Present the Film,” Matt appears into the digicam to say what everybody within the viewers is considering: this should be a copyright nightmare.
The film is a patchwork of well-known media, utilizing popular culture references to inform a back-to-2008 time journey story. “Again to the Future” is evoked endlessly. Scenes from the “Hangover” are integral to the story (regardless of being launched in 2009). Photos of Invoice Cosby and Jared Fogel let audiences know that they’re certainly previously. In a single scene, a mega-famous McCarrol takes the place of Chris Rock in a digitally altered depiction of Will Smith’s Oscars slap.
However when requested what particular little bit of mental property was the hardest to clear, Johnson’s reply was easy: “Nothing is cleared.”
Earlier than filming something, Johnson and McCarrol wanted to make sure they wouldn’t hit any copyright snags. The director labored alongside his lawyer on a collection of essays that justified every use of copywritten materials lengthy earlier than the eventual shoots.
Johnson and McCarrol don’t script “Nirvanna the Band the Present the Film” the identical method most filmmakers would. The duo labored with their editors to sequence an entire story down the road after filming largely improvised scenes shot on actual places. The footage informs the story as a lot because the story informs the footage, if no more.
“It occurred precisely as it’s, simply as soon as,” McCarrol stated. “Nothing is ever scripted.”
Flexibility defines Johnson and McCarrol’s inventive model. In 2024, the duo wrapped up a shoot once they overheard that there was a taking pictures outdoors Drake’s Toronto mansion. The pair then rushed to the scene of the crime, figuring out how they might match it into their story on the way in which. After they arrived, they filmed Jay working away from the scene. Within the closing movie, footage of the Toronto police talking to the press performs as if it’s Jay who dedicated the crime.
However some sequences needed to be deliberate upfront. One of many greatest set items sees Jay and Matt soar off of Toronto’s CN Tower, explaining to actual safety guards and ironmongery shop workers why they should convey a pair of sharp pliers with them to the highest.
“What you’re seeing is actually what’s occurring, other than us on the final second leaping off the tower,” Johnson stated. “Every thing else — us going by safety, us placing on this clothes — you’re watching a hidden digicam present.”
Nirvanna the Band couldn’t get each reference they wished to incorporate, nevertheless. McCarrol famous that, whereas direct scenes from “Again to the Future” seem within the movie, the tune “The Energy of Love” by Huey Lewis & the Information turned, “for various causes, un-gettable” for his or her opening credit sequence.
The references they did get away with, Johnson argued, are integral to the movie and the story.
“We’re attempting to make the inventive case for why it’s so very important that these guys, these characters, work together with media in the way in which that they do,” he stated. “They’re made by media. These influences, these references — that’s the language that they converse in.”
This parody extends to the advertising and marketing of the movie itself. Again in January, followers had been shocked by the similarity between a “Nirvanna the Band the Present the Film” poster and an Imax poster for “Marty Supreme” that launched solely three hours earlier. The “Nirvanna” poster asks audiences to “Dream greater,” enjoying off of the “Marty Supreme” tagline, “Dream massive.”
“It was so simple as getting by accident CC’d on an A24 e mail after which doing the whole lot we may to launch our poster on the similar time,” Johnson admitted. “We combined up the EST/PST, so we had been three hours later reasonably than being at the very same time, however we had been attempting to do a Nirvanna the Band-style, like, ‘That’s inconceivable? How may anyone do this?’”
Nirvanna the Band the Present the long run
As Johnson wandered round Larchmont Avenue, the actor/filmmaker informed TheWrap that the week of his movie’s launch has been an identical to the previous a number of months of his life.
“This has been a nonstop press tour since October,” he stated.
Whereas “Nirvanna the Band the Present the Film” stands as a testomony to Johnson and McCarrol’s lifelong friendship, it additionally comes with a little bit of ennui. Jay’s disillusionment with their band’s limitless antics drives the story of the movie. Whereas Johnson and McCarrol love their decades-long franchise, they each admitted to sharing these emotions.
“Jay is the protagonist of the film as a result of he represents the fact that’s true, and it’s true for each of us,” Johnson stated. “We’re not attempting to make enjoyable of Jay’s character and say, ‘Oh, doesn’t he have it so mistaken? Doesn’t he notice that this life is wonderful?’ Oftentimes, each emotions are true: You do wish to simply screw round and attempt to do the inconceivable factor on a regular basis, whereas on the similar time acknowledging, ‘, we sort of look pathetic, the truth that we’re nonetheless doing this.’”
“Proper after ‘BlackBerry,’ everyone on the planet was telling me, ‘Don’t do that, as a result of it’s pathetic,’” he continued. “Studying between the strains, that actually was the message.”
After “Nirvanna the Band the Present the Film,” Johnson will return to the biopic world post-“BlackBerry” to direct “Tony,” a biographical drama starring Dominic Sessa as famed foodie Anthony Bourdain.
“I’m actually fortunate that I’m signed on to do the rating for ‘Tony,’ so we’re going to have the ability to proceed working collectively,” McCarrol assured.
However the band received’t avoid the world of Nirvanna for lengthy. Johnson and McCarrol each shared their intentions to make a 3rd season of the present sooner or later sooner or later (that ennui didn’t final lengthy). In addition they revealed that Neon intends to re-release the unique run of the collection — not presently accessible to view legally within the U.S.
“Neon is doing a full launch on bodily media and on streaming of our total collection the place you’re going to have the ability to watch — possibly even in 4K — all of the episodes with director’s commentary. We’re doing a full, gigantic bodily launch,” Johnson stated. “I feel that Season 3 is a precedence, in as a lot because the film was a precedence, which is we all know it’s going to be painful, however after we do it, it’ll be one of the best work we’ve ever achieved.”
