It sounds like a cliché, but Canadian director Jeremy Schaulin-Rioux is so fucking punk. He got his start in filmmaking in the early 2000s, co-creating two mixtape videos of Vancouver streetball crew The Notic that became cult classics. Then, in 2013, he co-directed the music video of ‘Reservoir’, the debut single of punk band PUP. The video is a blast of raucous, anarchic energy and marks the start of an ongoing partnership that remains raucous and anarchic (and remarkably bloody).
His work isn’t just raw energy though: there’s joyful creativity in videos like ‘Gina Works at Hearts’ by DZ Deathrays or ‘Phenom’ by Thao & The Get Down Stay Down (a beautiful relic of lockdown days), truly moving storytelling in videos like ‘Guilt Trip’ and ‘Sleep in the Heat’, and incredible honesty in videos like ‘Dark Days’ and ‘If This Tour Doesn’t Kill You, I Will’. There’s such power in finding the right people to collaborate with and convincing yourself you can make something interesting. And I don’t think if ever seen a band so willing to go along for the ride as PUP seems to be.
How did you get started as a music video director? What drew you to the medium?
I remember being a pretty little kid and reading the original (and not totally safe for kids, mom!) Peter Pan novel multiple times, always crying at the end. Same with any time I watched The Land Before Time. And it wasn’t the sad parts of the stories that got me, it was having them end and realizing that they were fiction and I couldn’t go on those same adventures. Then, growing up I found out that telling the story – or making the movie – was about as close as I could come to having the adventure myself. That was how I got into movies in general: a kind of vicarious adventure.
In the same way, I think filmmaking, because it’s technical and collaborative in a way that many older arts are not, seemed like a world I could sneak my way into? If I had my artistic druthers, I would probably try and write novels; that’s a pure storytelling form, I think. And if I was trying to make my life the adventures I dreamed of as a kid, I would probably have tried to go all the way with my teenage (very bad) punk band; music is a more visceral art! So making music videos (with my friends who are actually the heroes of some great adventures and art) is my way of getting to be close to those dreams and being at peace with my childhood self.
You’ve been directing music videos for PUP for more than 10 years now, with the band often referring to you as their fifth member. How did the collaboration with PUP initially come about?
I hope that the answer to your last question makes clear how much this project (and friendship) with the four guys in PUP means to me. They are the best band and best people and getting to be a small part of their ongoing adventure is one of the great joys of my life.
But it started (like a lot of things) with an email. They were putting out the first single off their debut record (‘Reservoir’) and were looking for someone to do a music video. They contacted my friend Chandler Levack (who had interviewed them years before in her earlier life as a music journalist), asking if she knew any good music video directors. She showed me the song and it was so good and evocative it gave us an idea to do ourselves. We pretended we were music video directors and met with them. They liked the concept (they later told me that they didn’t really think we could pull if off, but didn’t have any better ideas) and we didn’t know enough to realize we didn’t know what we were doing!
Over those years, with the band and your music videos growing in popularity, how has your collaboration changed and developed? What are the differences between now and those early days?
I think even with that first video, we found a real common ground in how we liked to tell stories and show music onscreen, plus a rare degree of trust. Thankfully, a decade in, that hasn’t really changed much. That first video was also pretty wild on-set, with way too many stunts and broken instruments and fake (and real!) blood everywhere. For better or worse, that hasn’t changed much either.
But I can’t think of many other artist-director relationships that have grown over so many years and so many projects, and I think the biggest change has been in the onscreen storytelling muscles that Zack, Stefan, Nestor and Steve developed. As our working relationship has deepened, they’re taking more ownership of how they want to tell their story. Now they’re often bringing me fully formed concepts that organically fit their songs and I’m just helping to figure out how to best make them happen. Or I’ll go to them with a kernel of an idea and we’ll flesh out all the specifics together. It’s a pretty rare thing to find a working connection like this, and I try not to take it for granted.
Through your music videos for PUP, there’s now this amazing PUP Cinematic Universe, showing a fictionalized biography of the band in its many different stages. Are there already plans or thoughts about which stages of the band’s life you still want to explore?
There are lots of stages/stories in the band’s life we still want to explore! Also, none of the videos are fictionalized!
We’ve also been teaming up with a really exciting new director, Clem Hoener, to help with making new PUP videos. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to fully hand over the torch, but I do have a little family now, and it’s nice to have someone wildly talented (and just plain wild) like Clem bringing extra time and care to the PCU*!
*lol the PCU! Shout out Spencer Irwin, who wrote a really fun story outlining a PUP video history – already 6 years ago, we’ve done a half dozen videos since then – and I think coined the PUP Cinematic Universe.
You were the creative partner of Lights for all the music videos from her 2017 album Skin&Earth, all of which are set in the world of the comic book she made alongside this album. These videos feel pretty different from your other work. What were the challenges of collaborating in this way and creating such different videos?
Lights is amazing. She taught herself how to write, draw and ink comics to make Skin&Earth. For me it was about adapting the comics into short videos that still had a strong performance aspect. With PUP we’re kind of building the truth/myth of the band together as we go, so it was a fun new challenge to work with Lights on something with a pre-existing story.
Also a more pop aesthetic (even if it’s dark and interesting) meant cutting loose with more full frontal performing to camera, more dancing etc. It was fun to help set the stage and then just let Lights rip.
Together with Kirk Thomas, you made the two iconic mixtapes of The Notic in the early 2000s. Are there any lessons you learned from filming and editing those mixtapes that you still apply as a filmmaker now?
Making The Notic was before film school or any kind of professional practice. We just thought that we could make something cool, based on no evidence. I think that was the first and most important lesson that all filmmakers need to learn: just start making things! In my experience, if you simply put everything you have into something it’ll turn out. And you learn a lot more by making something and then studying, researching, shadowing etc. Then you can go ahead and make something again!
20 years later we decided (with the help of producer Ryan Sidhoo and our DP Hunter Wood) to make a documentary about that community and that experience (Handle With Care: The Legend of The Notic Streetball Crew), despite having no idea how to make a feature documentary. The irony of a documentary about some old videos that were made by teenagers with no idea what they were doing, made by those same people – who still have no idea what they’re doing… and it turned out really well! That’s the old lesson being put into practice.
Thank you so much for this interview! Final question: which artists or directors have been inspiring to you lately? Any work you’d like to recommend?
I mentioned Clem Hoener. His work, especially in documentary, deserves to be seen more! Hiro Murai, of course. Ryan Sidhoo’s documentary The Track is on the festival circuit now. I love the band Martha. And ‘eastside w my dogs’ by WHATMORE is my favourite video this year.
Thanks very much for the insightful questions, Thomas, and for all the great work you do on your site!
More Jeremy Schaulin-Rioux
Interview about Handle With Care
Interview with Alicia Atout
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