With “Nirvanna the Band,” Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol might have found the Holy Grail of comedy.
Their ongoing multimedia project, which began with a DIY webseries (“Nirvanna the Band”) in 2007 before the now-defunct Viceland aired two seasons of a full-fledged TV series (“Nirvanna the Band the Show”), and is now headed to the big screen (naturally titled “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie“), is built around one simple joke. Johnson and McCarrol play fictionalized versions of themselves who never found any success in entertainment, but structure their lives around pursuing a single dream: playing a concert at famed Toronto music venue The Rivoli.
But rather than take any of the logical steps toward that goal, like contacting the venue or finding an agent or releasing music or playing other shows to build a fanbase, they wake up each morning and concoct a new elaborate scheme to entice or trick the venue into letting them perform. Inevitably, they never even come close to succeeding.
It was a funny joke when Matt and Jay were in their early twenties, but it’s somehow more hilarious now that they’re in their forties. And as long as they keep coming up with ideas, there’s every reason to believe it will only get funnier, as the characters drift further and further away from the ages when such immaturity would have been remotely acceptable. It’s the comedic equivalent of a perpetual motion machine, a framework that can sustain itself forever with the evolution taking care of itself.
With “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie,” the two friends have their biggest canvas yet. The film, which was financed by the Canadian government with very few strings attached as what essentially amounts to a “thank you” for Johnson’s success directing “Blackberry,” sees Matt and Jay traveling back in time to interact with their younger selves in a riff on “Back to the Future” after their plan to parachute off the CN Tower to announce a nonexistent Rivoli show backfires. It offers some obligatory nostalgia for their two decades of onscreen friendship while setting up a third season of the show — and, it should never be considered a spoiler to say, leaves them no closer to playing their dream gig.
Speaking to IndieWire over Zoom, Johnson and McCarrol reflected on their 18 years of producing the alternative comedy franchise, which they never imagined would become a lifelong project when they started making their first videos in 2007.
“I think one of the whole reasons that it’s endured is ironically because we were just making it for ourselves. And that forbid us to think that anybody else would ever appreciate it the same way that we did. So there was no delusions whatsoever,” Johnson said. “I remember the stupidest we got was when VICE picked it up and we were going to finally make it as a real TV show. I would say that was the most hopeful we were, that people would be like, ‘Wow, people are really finally going to see this show. And they’re really going to like it!’ And VICE was out of business in a year and a half.”
Over the years, the fictional Matt and Jay have hatched every scheme you could imagine, with their adventures often parodying the plots of famous movies. On paper, the ongoing series is as unserialized as anything you’ll find on TV. But the lack of serialization is the overarching story, as the project is rooted in the simple joy of watching two clueless characters pursue a goal that you know they’ll never get any closer to reaching.
“‘Calvin and Hobbes’ was obviously a big, big reference for us, but then so was ‘Pinky and the Brain,’” Johnson said. “The pitch of both of those properties is that things happen, but there’s no progress. The characters have huge plans. And no matter how big the plan is, they can’t ever really get any further than they were before, but they need to act as though in some ways they have. Every plan fails, but is somehow framed as a success because of the egos of the characters.”
Making a “Nirvanna the Band” movie was never a goal for Johnson and McCarrol — they would have been perfectly content to jump into making another season of the show, but Telefilm Canada’s regulations prevent the organization from financing episodic series. Once it became clear that a movie was the only way forward, they jumped on the opportunity without changing their signature approach to filming: shooting in public, with as few crew members as possible, using unsuspecting civilians on the streets of Toronto as extras.
“There’s a lot of just opportunistic moving and weaving through what is actually just manifested in reality in front of us,” McCarrol said. “Very much akin to how we made the original, how even we write the show creatively.”
A future Season 3 of the show will include an episode that’s essentially “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie” without any of the time travel scenes, showing how insane it would be to observe those 30 minutes in real time if you weren’t going back and forth between the decades. It leaves the door open for plenty of new adventures, and Johnson and McCarrol made it clear that they could keep playing these characters forever. When it comes to the project’s eventual ending, should that day ever come, Johnson said that they’d once again look to their favorite newspaper comics for inspiration.
“The last [‘Calvin and Hobbes’] comic that Bill Watterson puts out is them just going down a hill in the snow on a toboggan,” he said. “And it doesn’t end. Calvin and Hobbes are still out playing right now, even though we can’t see them. And I think that Matt and Jay from ‘Nirvanna the Band’ are very much the same, that no matter what it is we do, those two are still going to be out there for better or worse.”
There’s something inherently surreal about spending so much of your life playing a fictional character who shares your name, especially when you’ve gone onto creative success and the character is built around failure. (Johnson has become a major filmmaker in his own right, following “Blackberry” with the upcoming Anthony Bourdain biopic “Tony”; while McCarrol is a successful composer who scores most of Johnson’s films.)
How much of the real Matt and Jay initially went into the fake Matt and Jay, and how much is left? The question sparked a surprisingly philosophical conversation, with both men suggesting that their ability to access these less mature versions of themselves provides the balance they need to pursue more adult endeavors.
“I think of this character as a shadow of the kid who lives inside me in an archetype way. It’s almost like, with no persona, if you could just erase me, my prepubescent self is this character. And I’m so grateful that he still exists in my subconscious and I can listen to him. And he can move me around like a puppeteer,” Johnson said, once again bringing the conversation back to his favorite comic strip. “What’s so brilliant about ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ and why Bill Watterson is such a genius is that he himself is a very modest, quiet adult man who lives in a very small town drawing these comics on his own.
And yet, he also has such a direct connection to this mischievous boy that lives inside him. I take so much from the idea that silencing that voice is a net negative for you. And that so much of what growing up is trying to get away from… maybe you’re being able to control your childish impulses. But not to the point that you strangle them and they no longer exist.”
“It’s like that last page of ‘The Polar Express’ when you can’t hear the bell anymore,” McCarrol added. “It’s heartbreaking.”
“Yeah, that’s a great point,” Johnson said. “And look, that’s a major part of growing up. If I lived my life the way that Matt, the character lives his life, it would be in shambles. Clearly, he’s not a serious person.
And yet, at the same time, that whatever is driving him is also driving me. How much of it is the real me? 100 percent of the character is the real me, but now I’ve been so socialized that he doesn’t exist the same way, but thank God he can still talk.”
Johnson and McCarrol are taking “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie” on a tour of North America for the rest of 2025. Dates and tickets for “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie the Tour” can be found here. NEON will release the film at a later date.