TORONTO -- Not normally fussy, documentarian Ron Mann is startled when I show up at his office, photog in tow.
"Do you mind if I shave?" he says. "We can talk while I do it."
Let the record show that Mann uses hemp-oil shave gel, as befits the maker of Go Further -- the hilarious, thought-provoking docu about environmentalist Woody Harrelson's West Coast trip by bike and hemp-fuelled bus with like-minded friends and family.
Across town, Mann's friend Harrelson hangs at the Distillery District on a break from rehearsals for his stage directing debut, Kenneth Lonergan's This Is Our Youth. Clad in hemp shirt, shorts and hat, Harrelson chows down on a plate of "live" vegan food -- a mess of greens, sprouts, a hummus-like pate and a brown bread so seedy and dense, it looks mummified (but is, in fact, delicious).
MERRY HEMPSTERS
"I love Ron," Harrelson says 'twixt bites. "I think he's a true artist. I've never been so proud of a movie. He took something that could have been boring and pedantic and preachy, and made it into something fun."
The two Merry Hempsters -- the nickname given to their confreres by the late Merry Prankster Ken Kesey -- have become quite the couple. They first became pals after Harrelson narrated Grass, Mann's film about the dubious history of marijuana prohibition. It bought them plenty of time together at film festivals.
Go Further, however, has amped the relationship. A smash at the recent South By Southwest fest in Austin, it has been dubbed "the next Bowling For Columbine" for its combination of subversive commentary and humour.
Distributors are jostling for the rights. If it flies like Columbine, watch for TV-orchestrated debates, with neo-con talking heads who'll want to know what they have against processed food and free enterprise. "The timing has been unbelievable!" says Mann. "There was that scandal with the meat packing plant (Aylmer Meat Packers) and the power blackout." (Harrelson lives with his wife and daughters in a solar-powered home in Hawaii).
In fact, Go Further is, in part, about making friends -- including forest workers in Washington who at least become less hostile after some smooth talk by Harrelson. Years back, Harrelson says, he even found common ground with famed meat-eater/rocker Ted Nugent. "He told me, 'I love being up to my elbows in blood and guts,' and I said, 'Well, I don't necessarily agree with that side of it.' But hunters are very into the environment. And we should look for our allegiances anywhere we can get them at this stage of the game."
A key figure in Go Further is Steve, a.k.a. Jedi, a surfer-dude production assistant on Will & Grace who begins the film chowing down on a Fatburger (an L.A. fast food) and has an epiphany when Woody gives him the lowdown on bovine growth hormone use in the U.S. and the presence of "blood and pus" in dairy.
Grossed-out, Jedi becomes St. Paul on the road to Damascus, even using the blood and pus line on a college girl named Linda who agrees to join the bus (as a pickup line, it turns out to be remarkably successful).
"The good thing about the film is it's not judgmental," says Mann. "It's not us and them. We need to work with corporations. It's not about rich hippies. It's about parents concerned about what to feed their children."
'DAYGLOW MEETING'
But, speaking of hippies, the film includes the last footage of Kesey before his death a few months later. "Recently, Hank Ballard died, and I thought, 'I'm really glad I made (Twist). And it's the same way I feel about Ken Kesey. There's some record that these people were alive."
As for the impromptu meeting with Kesey, the part off-camera apparently involved some kind of spiked meat loaf (and we're not talking bovine growth hormone).
"Because so many people were vegetarian, there were not that many who ate it. But the ones who did, well, let's say it was basically a dayglow meeting."
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