With winter closures, international bike races and commercial developments making headlines in Jasper, there’s more than enough news to fill the pages of the town’s papers.
The protagonist in the Jasper Film Club’s latest offering, Big News From Grand Rock, isn’t so lucky.
Leonard Crane is the editor of a struggling, small-town newspaper, who starts borrowing stories from B-reel movies to bolster his comically empty pages.
But after he’s busted—and subsequently shamed—by a big-city reporter, one of his tall tales turns out to be true, and he needs to convince the town he betrayed to trust him once again.
Director Daniel Perlmutter spent years in the town of Midland, Ont. writing the script, and his film is imbued with a humour that warmly draws from the absurdity of small-town life. When a tomato comes flying at Crane’s car after he’s exposed, for example, it turns out to have been thrown by an elderly resident he knows well.
Big News from Grand Rock played at film festivals across North America last year, and the comedic look at the journalistic world will balance the film club’s previous, more serious examination, Rosewater, from last month.
The club will screen the movie Feb. 5 at the Chaba Theatre at 7 p.m.
