Staff Pick Premiere: “The Chaperone” — A Tale of Biker Gangs, Blaxploitation, and Blue Wolves

My grandfather once told me that as a teenager in 1940’s Boston that one of the first jobs he got was as a chaperone at a local ballroom. His mandate was noble, if slightly puritanical. He would stand along the perimeter of the room, observing the young couples as they danced the foxtrot and in the event that a couple allowed anything less than a forearm’s length of daylight between them, my grandfather would intervene and separate the young lovers for the sake of modesty. I can’t imagine the pay was very good, but a job is a job, right?

In popular lore, the chaperone is the quintessential wet blanket. They are the school-appointed buzzkills, narcs and snitches that generations of hormonal adolescents have evaded and undermined as a rite of passage. Rarely, though, do we celebrate these well-intentioned souls with whom we entrust with the safety and well-being of our children. Perhaps this is because chaperones are seldom called upon to address anything more urgent than backpack full of beer.

Then you have the tale of Ralph Whims, a chaperone who found himself staring down a 20-member biker gang that sauntered into his local middle school’s dance. Ralph’s ensuing heroics are immortalized in the stylish and equally hilarious documentary, “The Chaperone,” which premieres online today on Vimeo, capping off a wildly successful festival run.

We had a chat with the film’s director, Fraser Munden, to discuss the film’s influences, the best way to blow up a piñata and a host of other hard-hitting topics.

Vimeo: “The Chaperone” is a story more than forty years in the making! Tell us the origins of the production. How did you meet Ralph and Stefan? Where did you first hear about this story?

Fraser Munden: My father Gary is a consummate people person. He had Ralph as a teacher when he was in elementary school. In fact, the school miniature you see at the very beginning of the film is based on Lorne School in Montreal, where their initial meeting would have taken place. Ralph was such a hero in my dad’s eyes that as a kid he’d comfort himself with the idea that if anything were to happen to his own parents he’d be okay because Ralph would be there to take care of him.

Later, Ralph started throwing dance parties and my dad’s best friend Stefan acted as the DJ. When I was growing up I heard the story of the biker fight about a million times since Ralph and Stefan were still a part of my father’s life. It was this legendary violent anecdote from my childhood.

I started making animated documentaries in university with Neil and Chris, and when we graduated I really wanted to put a feature film’s amount of work into a short, and Ralph’s story was so conducive to making something really wild. Since Ralph is such a vivid storyteller, it gives you license to go all over the place.

Could you tell us about some of the film’s stylistic influences? “Hawaii Five-O” and “Shaft” are a couple of references that come to mind.

The things that were referenced the most would have to have been the posters and music of 70s Blaxploitation films. There’s a book by Quentin Tarantino’s publishing house called “What It Is… What It Was!” that’s a collection of all the best Blaxploitation posters and it was like the bible on this project. The crayon look came from posters I was making for parties I’d throw with my friends Danny and Joey called “Pop the Trunk,” and that crayon look was later adapted for the short preceding this one called “Vaseline & Pepper” (about my high school friend making a fake beard to get into a strip club at 12-years-old).

Neil was influenced by the amazing miniature artist Alan Wolfson and some outsider artists for the miniatures, and he employed the classic Henson technique for the puppets. I thought piñatas would work well as a colourful way to convey extreme violence. Neil and I freestyled the papier mâché construction of those without referencing anything other than what the other was doing.

Above all though it was supposed to have the feel of a colorful kid’s TV show. It’s essentially a very violent story that needed to be packaged in a very bright, colorful way.

There are many different ways to tell any given story. How does one decide to tell a story via a blend of rotoscoped interviews, 2D animation, stop-motion, puppets and exploding piñatas?

While we wanted to cram a lot in there, if a stylistic choice is done without intention it doesn’t land with the right impact. So the rule when storyboarding was to have consistency.

I think if you watch the previous two shorts leading up to this one (“Why Was I Out There?” and “Vaseline & Pepper”) you can see the evolution of the integration of lots of styles. Part of the fun was seeing how far you could push things while never distracting from the story itself. As disparate as the styles are, I don’t think any of them feel out of place. So short answer, when you storyboard the hell out of things you can figure out a way to get away with anything.

Filmmaking is highly collaborative and judging by the credits, “The Chaperone” was no exception to this general rule. There’s a title card at the end that thanks Carolyn, Gary, and Julia Munden for feeding you and letting you take over their house for two years. Care to elaborate?

The vast majority of the film came together in my family home. For the longest time the basement was maxed out with people animating, sleeping, and recording foley, and the living room had expansive miniatures filling it up. If we were shooting one of those miniatures, we’d have to board up all the windows and my parents would be relegated to their room. I don’t think anyone has had their parents ask them “can we come out now?” as much as me. While “The Chaperone” didn’t have big studio funding, everyone was well fed at my house. Never underestimate how appealing and essential food is to a crew. That title card was a small token of appreciation for how my family allowed their home to be completely invaded and uprooted and to have their privacy peeled away.

From watching the film, you get the sense that this was a fun film to produce. Care to share any fun anecdotes from the making of the film?

There are so many ridiculous things that happened making this that we should probably do an oral history with the crew just to get it all down… but the piñata explosion night was outrageous by any metric, and also horribly, unforgivably dangerous.

That night was like a religious experience for me and I’m sure for everyone else who was present. To have so many things go wrong and for things to look so bleak and for everything to work out and be blowing up the word “End” just as 18-wheeler trucks were pulling in at dawn (someone lent us a warehouse) was awesome.

But that’s just one story, there’s the tiny alligator story, the actors we found off Craigslist, discovering Joey is the most gifted natural puppeteer, our connection with Montreal serial killer Luka Magnotta, Mike Pinsonneault being an absolute machine… endless stories. You can see a lot of behind the scenes stuff in the self-profile I uploaded to my Vimeo page called Attaboy, Fraser!.

Here’s the question I have to ask, although I sort of don’t want to know the answer: Is this really a true story? Or perhaps the better question is how true is this story?

The story checks out! In fact we toned down some of the details to make it seem more palatable, as crazy as that sounds. We could have included stuff like all the bikers being admitted to the hospital and Peter getting married to the ticket girl (which is an awesome detail and I kind of regret not including that thinking about it right now). Early in the process we went with Ralph and Stefan to the real church basement as it stands today and they were super consistent with their recollections. And there were other witnesses that could corroborate what happened as well.

There is one dissenting voice though. There’s a guy I talked with who claims he was the unheralded fourth member of the biker fight. Stefan and Ralph adamantly maintain that he was there for another fight that took place at another dance.

But the fun of the story is interpreting their words. Their narration is unscripted but everything that happens onscreen is our interpretation, while sticking as closely to all the details that were revealed to us through research. It’s up to the viewer to decide what’s real or even if that matters.

Watching “The Chaperone”, I can’t help but shake the thought that this is a distinctly Canadian story. What I mean by that is, had this taken place somewhere in the US, it would’ve ended with one of the bikers pulling a gun and something tragic happening. Do you think there’s any truth to that?

The most Canadian thing about it is the way Ralph and Stefan tell the story. They’re both English Montrealers from St-Henri, and there’s a style to that just as any region is given to particular turns of phrase. If you grew up in Canada and are around my age you’re familiar with these things called “Canadian Heritage” commercials, and I consider this an honorary one. So many efforts were made to make it as enduringly Canadian as possible, but from an English Montreal slant, from the beer the bikers are drinking to the city landmarks to the way Ralph and Stefan seamlessly break into French.

This is the sort of stuff that local legends are made of. Is this story well-known in Montreal East? If so, what was the community’s reaction to the film?

It’s not particularly well-known outside of the family and friends of people who were present. But we’ve been super well-received in Montreal, particularly by festivals like Fantasia Fest (which has the best audiences of any film festival in the world) and organizations like Prends Ça Court, which highlights Quebec short films. French Canadians in particular seem to really go for it, and that’s awesome because more than anything I wanted it to resonate with people who would appreciate it out of shared experience.

While few schools have to grapple with the issue of biker gangs, most schools grapple with bullying. Ralph even offers some advice on dealing with bullies at the end. Did you intend for “The Chaperone” to address the concept of bullying or did this arise organically?

I did intend for “The Chaperone” to address bullying and how to deal with situations when the odds are stacked up against you. Ralph has a matter-of-fact way of saying things that I think is appealing because it’s so impossibly confident. Beyond that, I think the entire story addresses bullying with a refreshingly old-school approach. You can’t let people mess with you or steal from you or violate your person. I think there’s a real disconnect between how schools mandate to deal with bullying versus what is actually effective in dealing with a bully. And I think that’s why Ralph is so appealing, because he’s saying don’t take shit from anyone and is able to demonstrably back that up.

Lastly, what’s up with the blue wolves?

The blue wolves are part of the whole sheepdog metaphor the movie really leans on. Ralph is like a sheepdog with all these sheep entrusted to him, it’s his job to protect them at all costs, and the bikers are the wolves who endanger them. The blue wolves are mob mentality… and adorable puppets. Throughout the movie you can see several direct biblical references that speak to this. I’m not really religious, but it’s a convincing metaphor!

Watch “The Chaperone” exclusively on Vimeo.

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Originally published at Vimeo.com