Jonny Bones, cancer, and John Carpenter's The Fog

Jonny Bones with the Still Spirits

The Vancouver music scene is reeling to learn that Jonny Bones -- Jon Aaron, of the Bone Daddies, the Still Spirits, Rad Radio, and long-time host and organizer of the Hollywood Horrorshow out in Pitt Meadows -- has an aggressive stage-4 cancer that started in his vocal cords and has spread to his lungs and elsewhere. He talks about it himself here; there's a GoFundMe here. I know firsthand how terrifying cancer can be, and  he's got it way way worse than I ever did -- from what I'm gathering, it's bad enough that he may not even bother with treatment (it would only buy him time -- and not much, and it would come at a cost, since chemo is a miserable experience unto itself). Jon has done soooo much for his community, and he's such a vibrant fella, full of exuberance and wit, that this is a real blow, a real injustice -- it's a good thing I don't believe in God, because I'd be pretty pissed off at Him! But Bones seems determined to keep the show going on for as long as he can....

...Which we have the opportunity to participate in this Friday, when he hosts the 45th anniversary screening of The Fog out at the Hollywood 3 in Pitt Meadows!

Bones admits that he does not have "anything particularly profound to say about The Fog" -- he just likes it, and hasn't played it before, and it's a chance to do an anniversary screening of it. His own all-time favourite Carpenter is problably In the Mouth of Madness, for "that blend of Lovecraft and King mixed with tinges of cosmic horror and madness," which hits "just the right spot of strange that I love." (Of course he and I agree that The Thing is a phenomenal film -- it's almost like you have to frame the question that way: "What's your favourite Carpenter after The Thing?"). I'm also a fan of In the Mouth of Madness, mind you, but allow me to argue for The Fog in Jonny's place -- because it's a Carpenter that is near and dear to me, being the first John Carpenter movie I saw, probably with my Dad, when I was a mere 12 years old, back in 1980, when it was fresh in the theatres, and it remains one of my favourite of Carpenter's films -- one of his moodier, creepier, most visually appealing, and more thought-provoking works. 

The film has tons of good things going for it, including one of Carpenter's best scores; it's gorgeously shot by Dean Cundey; it has a great role for Hal Holbrook (who didn't do much horror, but is in one of my all-time favourite Canadian outdoor ordeal horror movie, Rituals, second only to Clearcut); it also has a host of Carpenter regulars like Tom Atkins, George Buck Flower, and Charles Cyphers -- to say nothing of a cameo from Carpenter himself, and a lead role for his then-wife, Adrienne Barbeau, making her big-screen debut. There's also a rare chance to see Jamie Lee Curtis acting in the same movie with her Mom, Janet Leigh (of Psycho shower-scene fame!).

But what really makes the film interesting and satisfying is the subtext. On the surface, it's a pretty silly, straightforward thing -- a movie about a town, Antonio Bay, that is the target of the vengeance of a group of, uh, pirate-like ghost lepers (if a ghost can have leprosy) who were, years ago, betrayed by the town's fathers and robbed of their riches, which they were intending to use to found a leper colony on the coast. Holbrook's role is small but central: he plays an alcoholic priest who discovers a book that reveals, on the anniversary of Antonio Bay's founding, the dread truth of his forbears' crimes, and realizes that the town DESERVES the vengeance that is being wrought upon them; he has to summon the courage to confront the fact that the stories he has been told all his life are all lies, and in fact, the place where he lives was born of MURDER and DECEIT. 

Remind you of anything? Maybe of how, as Peter Rugh writes, "We committed a genocide not so long ago that we tend to overlook in favor of neatly rhyming nursery narratives about how 'Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492'”...? Even though the lepers are, we presume, as white as anyone in the film, The Fog is on some level a white-guilt horror movie, about what to do with the knowledge that your history is steeped in blood. 

So that's one good way to appreciate Jonny's craft, coming up on Friday; if you've never seen him host a horror movie, you might not have that many more chances! But there is also a plan afoot for a benefit concert on Friday, June 20th at the Rickshaw (yep, the date of Dan Scum's return with Powerclown, which I already have a ticket for -- I might have to zip back and forth between venues for this one). We'll have more on that closer to the date: Jon is still finalizing the lineup, he says, but adds that "Still Spirits will likely be playing our final gig there (or at least the likely the last one with me in the line up, but if I know those boys they likely won't go on without me around... I do book everything after all)." 

Jonny says that any financial support is welcome and appreciated but adds that "I mostly just care that people come and watch the movie, or come to hear the music, that's the important part. The money is just, well... Money." (I'm going to give him a wad of cash regardless, and maybe a couple of horror movies to boot). He's said that no one will be turned away from the Rickshaw show for lack of funds. That's the kind of guy he is.

By the way, anyone planning to drive from Vancouver to Pitt Meadows for The Fog who wants company in the car and some gas money, feel free to find me on Facebook. Otherwise, I'll see you at the Hollywood 3 Pitt Meadows this Friday night for John Carpenter's The Fog, as hosted by Jonny Bones...