During the 27th Cambridge Film Festival in 2007, I was fortunate to be able to interview Canadian filmmakers April Mullen and Tim Doiron for the Cambridge community radio station 209radio’s Bums on Seats film programme. They had brought Rock, Paper, Scissors: The Way of the Tosser to the festival for its world premiere and were extremely enthusiastic about it. On the back of my interview I wrote a short piece for the printed ‘Film Festival Daily’, continuing the mockumentary conceit, but it was not used. Perhaps it had one too many double entendres.
April and Tim were a delightful pair, spending part of their time in Cambridge running up and down Regent Street in costume, challenging all-comers to play RPS. They tried to make me believe that the game was under consideration as an Olympic “Demonstration Sport”, whatever that is, for 2010 (a choice of date which perhaps should have given the game away).
They are both actors as well as writers/directors/producers, and I only recently discovered that April had a small part in David Cronenberg's A History of Violence (2005). Rather a contrast to RPS, which I have to say is a whole lot funnier. The Cambridge crowd loved it so much they gave it the Audience Favourite Award for best film in the festival.
Rock, Paper, Scissors gets its world premiere in Cambridge!
You might suspect that Canada is a dull kind of place, but not a bit of it. There is one activity at which they excel: Rock, Paper, Scissors (RPS). They turn out world RPS champions on a regular basis (yes, there are such things), and now what might once have been considered merely a trivial pre-adolescent game has gone mainstream. After the exposure given it by April Mullen and Tim Doiron’s new film, Rock, Paper, Scissors: The Way of the Tosser, it may never be the same again. It’s going to be really big!
Found across a wide range of cultures, RPS speaks to some deep part of us, which is perhaps why an alternative name for it is “The Well.” Our guides to the intricacies of this zen-like pursuit are Gary (the one with the gay moustache), Holly and Trevor. Gary is good with his hands (though with an aversion to throwing paper, which is a bit of a disadvantage) and his dream is to beat off all-comers - including creepy arch-rival Baxter Pound - to seize the crown at the RPS World Championships. This is not just about winning against the other entrants though, it’s about self-knowledge and rigorous discipline, and the transcendent wisdom that comes from a life dedicated to RPS.
It’s unfortunate that the gravitas of this important tool, which could easily be used as a way to attain world peace, is slightly undermined by the connotations of the word ‘tosser’ of which Gary and his colleagues are surely unaware, being Canadian. Never mind. After watching him train, and compete at the highest level, this hymn to the pleasures of tossing is bound to be a boost for RPS. Expect it to go global on the back of their documentary, with Gary a kind of secular patron saint. Not so much a way to pass the time, more a philosophy of life, and who knows, one in which Canada may one day have to cede the tight grip it currently enjoys.
April and Tim were a delightful pair, spending part of their time in Cambridge running up and down Regent Street in costume, challenging all-comers to play RPS. They tried to make me believe that the game was under consideration as an Olympic “Demonstration Sport”, whatever that is, for 2010 (a choice of date which perhaps should have given the game away).
They are both actors as well as writers/directors/producers, and I only recently discovered that April had a small part in David Cronenberg's A History of Violence (2005). Rather a contrast to RPS, which I have to say is a whole lot funnier. The Cambridge crowd loved it so much they gave it the Audience Favourite Award for best film in the festival.
Rock, Paper, Scissors gets its world premiere in Cambridge!
You might suspect that Canada is a dull kind of place, but not a bit of it. There is one activity at which they excel: Rock, Paper, Scissors (RPS). They turn out world RPS champions on a regular basis (yes, there are such things), and now what might once have been considered merely a trivial pre-adolescent game has gone mainstream. After the exposure given it by April Mullen and Tim Doiron’s new film, Rock, Paper, Scissors: The Way of the Tosser, it may never be the same again. It’s going to be really big!
Found across a wide range of cultures, RPS speaks to some deep part of us, which is perhaps why an alternative name for it is “The Well.” Our guides to the intricacies of this zen-like pursuit are Gary (the one with the gay moustache), Holly and Trevor. Gary is good with his hands (though with an aversion to throwing paper, which is a bit of a disadvantage) and his dream is to beat off all-comers - including creepy arch-rival Baxter Pound - to seize the crown at the RPS World Championships. This is not just about winning against the other entrants though, it’s about self-knowledge and rigorous discipline, and the transcendent wisdom that comes from a life dedicated to RPS.
It’s unfortunate that the gravitas of this important tool, which could easily be used as a way to attain world peace, is slightly undermined by the connotations of the word ‘tosser’ of which Gary and his colleagues are surely unaware, being Canadian. Never mind. After watching him train, and compete at the highest level, this hymn to the pleasures of tossing is bound to be a boost for RPS. Expect it to go global on the back of their documentary, with Gary a kind of secular patron saint. Not so much a way to pass the time, more a philosophy of life, and who knows, one in which Canada may one day have to cede the tight grip it currently enjoys.
