Givin’ ‘er again: Deaner ’89 an origin story for character made famous in Canadian cult classic Fubar

The Deaner is making a return to the screen, with a shot-in-Manitoba movie that explores the cult-hero character’s past.

Dean Murdoch, a.k.a. The Deaner — the mullet-haired, hard-rocking headbanger who crashed his way into the Canadian comedy firmament with the cult films Fubar (2002) and Fubar 2 (2010) — returns in spectacular form in Deaner ’89, a new origin story for the character invented and played by Paul Spence. 

The film, arriving in theatres across Canada on Sept. 6 (with special advance screenings on Sept. 5) was shot in Manitoba in the spring of 2023 over an intense month-long shooting schedule.

But there is a proviso for talking about Deaner ’89 before discussing the movie. From the press kit: “For clarity, Deaner ’89 is not a Fubar movie, nor is it connected to the Fubar franchise. It should not be promoted or portrayed as such.”

Spence, on a Zoom call from Toronto, explained.

“Me and [Fubar director] Mike Dowse and [co-star] Dave Lawrence owned the company that made Fubar, and some years after we made the TV show (2017’s Fubar: Age of Computer), me and the director sold the rights to the other guy, and he holds them currently.

“But I created the character [of Dean] before we made any of the films,” Spence said. “So I retained the rights to him, and I could do whatever I wanted with Dean.

“And I thought it would be fun to do an origin story … and so that’s what Deaner ’89 is about.”

In reality, it’s about a lot more. If you accept 48-year-old actor Spence playing a teen version of Deaner — and that’s a hilarious stretch — you may more easily accept that the film is a reflection of Spence’s life, and specifically, his discovery of his Métis roots.

Much of the story was inspired by Spence’s father.

Finding Métis roots

“My dad is very Indigenous-looking,” Spence said. “But he was told his whole life that he wasn’t an Indian by his parents to try and safeguard him from a lot of troubles that would come from being an Indian in northern Saskatchewan in the ’50s and ’60s.”

When Spence’s family started investigating, they discovered “both his parents and his grandparents, on both sides, were 100 per cent Métis, and you could trace it back to the Red River Valley where they got pushed out during the Métis scrip era,” said Spence, referring to the system implemented by the Canadian government in the aftermath of the Red River Resistance (1869-70) that promised, but ultimately failed, to deliver land to the Métis people of the region.

“No longer was it vague,” Spence said. “We knew we had an Indigenous heritage, but it was a very specific people with its own history.”

His dad grew up in Prince Albert, Sask.

“We would go visit the gravesites of his parents, and there were also gravesites of participants — maybe not in the Battle of Batoche, but in the [Red River] Resistance, and there were people in our family that were part of that community as well.”

The film addresses that question of discovering your identity in the context of a raucous comedy, which sees Deaner educated on the finer points of hockey, riding a BMX, girlfriends and how to properly shotgun a beer.

The latter is a lesson he gets from a character played by Mary Walsh of This Hour Has 22 Minutes fame, of all people. The movie also features two other veteran sketch comedians — Will Sasso of Mad TV and Kevin McDonald of Kids In the Hall.

Spence found a partner in getting the film made with Winnipeg-based producer Kyle Irving of the film company Eagle Vision, which has underwritten projects with strong Indigenous themes (Night Raiders, We Were Children) for years.

“That story of identity being taken or hidden or lost is something we’ve been doing at Eagle Vision for decades,” Irving said in a phone interview from Halifax, on a Canada-wide Deaner ’89 promotional tour.

“To find such an interesting approach to the storytelling and have someone like Paul and his own personal experience relating to that story — it appealed to us,” he said.

Spence was confident he “could make a funny story about a teenage boy.”

In addition to pulling from his own experience (“I was a hockey jock when I was a kid”), Spence drew inspiration by going for drives with his father to hear some of his stories growing up.

“I think my dad kind of understood what was taken away from him by his parents, not wanting to tell him who he was because it was safer to not be Indigenous in that in those days,” Spence said.

“I think he was upset about it. But at the same time, we were a cool family. That’s something that I wanted to inject into the script.”

What Spence and director Sam McGlynn did not want was a lot of improvised scenes, a hallmark of the first Fubar movie in particular.

“This was a scripted film,” Spence stressed. “That was my challenge. I grew up as a writer. I studied writing in university. I got a degree in it.”

The fact Spence filmed the movie in Manitoba, the homeland of the Red River Métis, was no coincidence, he asserted.

“When you see Spence Street in Winnipeg, and you know it is named after your great-great-grandfather … I really wanted to shoot it in Manitoba.”