May 28, 1959, Kingston, Ontario


Bruce McDonald is best known as a film and television director – with a love of rock 'n' roll and popular culture, and a propensity for irreverence – but his many credits also include editor, actor and producer. He grew up in Rexdale, a suburb of Toronto, where he started making films with a Brownie 8mm camera. At 19, his work was being shown at the Toronto Super-8 Film Festival. He enrolled at Toronto’s Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (Ryerson University) to study film and photography. While at Ryerson, he made the short films Merge (1980) and Let Me See (...) (1982), a 30-minute, 16mm film about “the faith of graffiti.” Let Me See (...) won the Norman Jewison Award for best student film at the 1982 Canadian National Exhibition and screened at the Toronto Festival of Festivals and other film festivals.

Although he wouldn’t produce his own first feature until 1990, McDonald began making his mark on the Canadian film industry in the 1980s. He started out in 1980 as a production assistant and driver, becoming an assistant cameraperson and assistant editor before working as an editor on productions with Atom Egoyan, Ron Mann, Peter Mettler and Amnon Buchbinder. In 1983, he studied acting techniques at Triune Arts in Toronto and was a founding member of LIFT (Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto) and a member of its board of directors from 1983 to 1986. Around 1986, he began writing on film for Cinema Canada and Nerve — he was the guest editor for Cinema Canada’s “Outlaw Edition” (October 1988).

Norman Jewison was an early mentor for McDonald, and their relationship has continued over the years. McDonald was the (uncredited) assistant to the director on Jewison’s Agnes of God in 1985, and earlier that same year, Jewison had responded to McDonald’s request for an investment to complete Knock! Knock! (1985), a 60-minute, 16mm mock documentary.

Based in Toronto, where he established his company Shadow Shows, McDonald delivered his feature debut, Roadkill, in 1990. It was the first of a trilogy of road movies — including Highway 61 (1992) and Hard Core Logo (1996) — that launched his reputation as a maverick independent. Roadkill was an immediate success with audiences and critics alike. It won the Citytv Award for best Canadian feature at the 1989 Toronto Festival of Festivals. Highway 61 was named best Canadian feature at the 1991 Vancouver Film Festival and won awards at festivals in Brussels and San Sebastiàn, and in 1996, Hard Core Logo also won the Citytv Award for best Canadian feature at the Toronto International Film Festival. 

McDonald’s production of other films, including the feature Dance Me Outside (1994), produced by Norman Jewison, and the short Elimination Dance (1998), based on a Michael Ondaatje poem, was interspersed with extensive television work. Notably, he directed the made-for-television movies Platinum (1997), shot by cinematographer Guy Dufaux; Scandalous Me: The Jacqueline Susann Story (1998); and the series Twitch City (1998, 2000) for CBC as well as a number of music videos and commercials. Dance Me Outside won the best director award at the American Indian Film Festival.

McDonald continues to project a hard-living, poverty-with-attitude rebelliousness, perpetuating his image of struggling indie filmmaker at the foreground. But the filmmaker is also recognized for his acute business sense, gentle manner and nurturing, supportive attitude toward musicians, filmmakers and craftspeople as well as other emerging artists, in both the “above-” and underground scenes.

McDonald takes pleasure in playfully undermining “fact-based histories” and middle-class values. Using irony and black comedy, McDonald has reinvented Canadian imagery, spinning a new bizarre mythology that is still distinctively Canadian. His films have garnered a huge cult following and received much critical acclaim. However, despite his significant contribution to Canadian film and his success with critics, audiences and at film festivals, the Genies and other major awards have eluded him.

In 2001, he completed Picture Claire, produced by Robert Lantos and starring Juliette Lewis and Gina Gershon, with a cameo by Mickey Rourke. The film was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2001. After the screening McDonald recut the film, calling the first version a failure. Neither version has been commercially released.