One of the greatest and yet most perversely overlooked debuts in English Canadian movie history, writer-director John Paizs’s Crime Wave announced the birth of a new genre in Canuck cinema. The film centres around an awkward loner, Steven Penny, who turns out bizarre scenarios for colour crime movies. Steven wants to turn in the best colour crime movie ever, but he has a problem – he can only write beginnings and ends to his scripts. No middles! Living above a family garage in suburbia and befriended by the landlord’s ten-year-old daughter, we see excerpts from a number of Steven’s scripts, zany ideas based on get-rich-quick schemes. Finally frustrated by his creative block, he sets out for Kansas to meet Dr Jolly, the script doctor.
Crime Wave
Directed by John Paizs