In the 1980s, while making the comedy film “The Adventure of Faustus Bidgood,” director Mike Jones needed to shoot a scene in a liquor store, so he and his crew walked into one and started filming. “Mike called that smash and grab,” said Justin Simms. “It speaks to Mike’s ethos.” Simms, a fellow director from Newfoundland, has made a new documentary that explores Jones’s life, career and cultural impact that will debut at the Atlantic International Film Festival later this month. It’s titled “Smash and Grab: The Rebel Lens of Mike Jones.” “As a title it represents Mike and that era,” Simms said. “No rules, break the glass in case of emergency.” Jones – along with members of the famed CODCO troupe in Newfoundland – started making waves in the 1970s, helping redefine the province’s cultural identity. “That was a critical juncture in terms of Newfoundland’s understanding of itself,” Simms said. “Once (Premier Joey) Smallwood was out of power, the robust Newfoundland art scene had the freedom to celebrate the past again and its rural identity. “This stuff was born out of rebellion and pushing back on the Canadian idea of what Newfoundland is. The era that Mike worked in and the films he made in that era turned out to be hugely important.” Simms cites “Faustus Bidgood” as Jones’s biggest cinematic achievement. The film follows a Newfoundland clerk who harbours a desire to become president of the province. “The first time I saw ‘Faustus Bidgood,’ I was struck by its uniqueness,” he said. “There’s really nothing else out there like it. You recognize the symbolism in there and the allegory. You realize just how layered it is.” Simms, who went to film school in Ontario before returning to Newfoundland, helped start up the Nickel Film Festival in the province in the early 2000s, which is how he first met Jones. “We convinced Mike to record some of the ‘welcome the audience to the show’ voiceovers,” he said. “We chatted and a group of us went out to have pints. “All these years later I made this film about him. Some random dude you had a pint with made a movie about you.” Jones passed away in 2018. Simms put the documentary together through archival footage and interviews with Jones’s friends and family. “You really want to be able to get into their heads and know what they’re thinking and if they’re not around, you have to do it piecemeal,” Simms said. “You’re talking to the people he was closest to. Making a mural, if you will. “It can be tremendously freeing and limiting. Every documentary is going to strike a balance in that regard.” The film went through a three-year production cycle as Simms assembled the necessary pieces. He credits Jones’s brother Andy for helping bring the documentary to life. “He knew Mike had these old film cans,” he said. “Andy was an archival detective.” Simms says the documentary serves as a celebration of Jones and a reminder of his impact on the newer generation of Newfoundland artists. “Mike deserves to be remembered,” he said. “A lot of the new generation of Newfoundland filmmakers don’t know who Mike is. If nobody remembers something, if we collectively let it go, has it existed? “It’s trying to engage the act of remembering. Let filmmakers understand they’re part of a continuum and think about what that heritage is built on.” “Smash and Grab” will screen at the Atlantic International Film Festival in Halifax at 7 p.m. on Sept. 21.
