Rock, Paper, Scissors: The Way of the Tosser Tim Doiron & April Mullen Canada 2007
“I’m a tosser”. With one misguidedly innocent speech about his passion, Gary Brewer and the film he stars in announces itself as the indie successor to three decades of North American character led comedy. Enfant-savant Brewer announces his raison d’etre – a compulsion with competitive Rock, Paper, Scissors - that may lead him to the big prize of ‘ten gees’ at the world championship. Rock, Paper, Scissors: The Way of the Tosser has thrown down the smackdown. What ya gonna toss back?
The trick is all in the characterisation. In this sense Rock, Paper, Scissors: The Way of the Tosser has much in common with the work of Christopher Guest. The film is a blend of documentary and mockumentary, blurring the minimal bounds Guest and the rest of the Spinal Tap crowd set and later toyed with further still in films like Best in Show, by straying even further into documentary styled reality. The focus is naturally an obsession – the competitive version of a barely recognised sport along the same level of humoured obscurity as professional tiddlywinks – Rock, Paper, Scissors. Canada hosts the annual world championship for this deceptively complicated game and director and acting team Tim Doiron and April Mullen use this outlandish backdrop as a springboard for their characters.
Garry Brewer, Holly Brewer (“No relation, yet!”) and their oddball housemate Trevor aren’t the bastard offspring of stage or television skits; they’ve evolved with a feature project in mind. By planting lovable caricatures upon such a rich canvas Doiron and Mullen give the succession of goofball gags a canvas upon which an emotional connection can be made in a similar way to the way the better Saturday Night Live or National Lampoon spin-offs did like The Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, National Lampoon’s Vacation or even Wayne’s World. Despite the differing creation the self-assured North American humour and empathy is shared with their more commercial predecessors. Certainly the UK version would descend into farcical and outright abuse along the lines of Fawlty Towers or The Office. Living their detailed little indie styled lives in a world dominated by a second-hand shop look; these seem like almost real people.
The magic wanes slightly throughout as the jokes give way to characterisation but Spinal Tap and all the others are just the same, to capture some comedic truth behind obsessives you can’t have joke after joke or else it devalues the concept. In this way Rock, Paper, Scissors: The Way of the Tosser makes an audience laugh whilst giving them deeply lovable characters, who for all their faults you want to win against all the odds. The same applies for the filmmakers.
