''The Making of Monsters'' is a 1991 Canadian

short film A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...

, directed by

John Greyson John Greyson (born March 13, 1960) is a Canadian director, writer, video artist, producer, and political activist, whose work frequently deals with queer characters and themes. He was part of a loosely-affiliated group of filmmakers to emerge in ...

. Matthew Hays
"Legends: The Making of Monsters"
''POV'', February 1, 2009. Made while Greyson was a student at the

Canadian Film Centre The Canadian Film Centre (CFC) is a charitable organization founded by filmmaker Norman Jewison in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 1988. Originally launched as film school, today it provides training, development and advancement opportunities for pr ...

, the film's premise is that playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht is alive and living in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

, and actively interfering with the production of "Monsters", a heavily sanitized

movie of the week A television film, alternatively known as a television movie, made-for-TV film/movie or TV film/movie, is a feature-length film that is produced and originally distributed by or to a television network, in contrast to theatrical films made for ...

about the 1985 death of Kenneth Zeller in a gaybashing attack. The film premiered at the 1991 Berlin International Film Festival, and was later screened at the 1991 Toronto International Film Festival and other selected LGBT film festivals, including

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

's Out on Screen,

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple ...

Image+Nation Image Nation, formerly known as Imagenation Abu Dhabi, is an Emirati film production and media company that acts as a subsidiary of the governmental Media Zone Authority Abu Dhabi (MZA), which in turn is based at twofour54 in Abu Dhabi, the Uni ...

and

Edmonton Edmonton ( ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Alberta. Edmonton is situated on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, which is surrounded by Alberta's central region. The city ancho ...

's The Voice and the Vision.

Cast

The film's cast includes Lee MacDougall as the

film within a film A story within a story, also referred to as an embedded narrative, is a literary device in which a character within a story becomes the narrator of a second story (within the first one). Multiple layers of stories within stories are sometimes c ...

's version of Zeller, while the roles of Brecht and Kurt Weill are played by talking fish. The cast also includes Christopher Anderson and Stewart Arnott.

Controversy

Following its initial run on the film festival circuit, the film remained unavailable for many years due to

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...

issues, as Warner-Chappell, the holder of the rights to Weill's songs, obtained a court injunction against the use of a "

Mack the Knife "Mack the Knife" or "The Ballad of Mack the Knife" (german: "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer", italic=no, link=no) is a song composed by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht for their 1928 music drama ''The Threepenny Opera'' (german: Die Dreig ...

" parody with different lyrics in the film even though parodies are fully legal under

fair use Fair use is a doctrine in United States law that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair use is one of the limitations to copyright intended to balance the interests ...

provisions."The censoring of Monsters"
''

Daily Xtra ''Xtra Magazine'' (formerly ''DailyXtra'' and ''Xtra!'') is an LGBTQ-focused digital publication and former print newspaper published by Pink Triangle Press in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The publication is a continuation of the company's former ...

'', April 2, 2012. Warner-Chappell had originally approved the use, but changed their mind after learning that the film contained gay content; even after Weill's songs passed into the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired, ...

in 2001, Warner-Chappell continued to use legal threats to block public screenings of the film, even preventing it from being included in the 2012 Greyson retrospective at the

Art Gallery of Ontario The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO; french: Musée des beaux-arts de l'Ontario) is an art museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The museum is located in the Grange Park neighbourhood of downtown Toronto, on Dundas Street West between McCaul and Bev ...

. The film has, however, been screened in some university

film studies Film studies is an academic discipline that deals with various theoretical, historical, and critical approaches to cinema as an art form and a medium. It is sometimes subsumed within media studies and is often compared to television studies. ...

courses without incident. The issue also influenced the copyright-related themes of Greyson's later feature film ''

Uncut Uncut may refer to: * ''Uncut'' (film), a 1997 Canadian docudrama film by John Greyson about censorship * ''Uncut'' (magazine), a monthly British magazine with a focus on music, which began publishing in May 1997 * '' BET: Uncut'', a Black Enter ...

''.

Accolades

At Berlin, the film won a Jury Prize from the

Teddy Award The Teddy Award is an international film award for films with LGBT topics, presented by an independent jury as an official award of the Berlin International Film Festival (the Berlinale). In the most part, the jury consists of organisers of gay ...

program. The film won the

Toronto International Film Festival Award for Best Canadian Short Film The Toronto International Film Festival Award for Best Canadian Short Film, formerly also known as the NFB John Spotton Award, is an annual film award, presented by the Toronto International Film Festival to a film judged to be the best Canadian s ...

at the 1991 Toronto International Film Festival."Film festival gives cash to promising director". ''

Toronto Star The ''Toronto Star'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper. The newspaper is the country's largest daily newspaper by circulation. It is owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation and pa ...

'', September 16, 1991.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Making of Monsters, The 1991 LGBT-related films 1991 films Canadian LGBT-related films Canadian musical films Films directed by John Greyson LGBT-related musical films LGBT-related comedy films LGBT-related short films 1990s English-language films Canadian comedy short films 1990s Canadian films