Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol – Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie the Interview
- PopEntertainment
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Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol
Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie the Interview
By Jay S. Jacobs
It’s a tale as old as time. Two guys start a band. They are enthusiastic about the project and sure that stardom lurks ahead. They even set a goal of their ideal venue – the storied Toronto rock club The Rivoli.
Unfortunately, they are a little naïve in the ways of the music business. For example, they don’t realize that there may be an issue with taking a band name which has already been used by a classic grunge rock group. (They differentiate it by adding an extra “n” into the spelling of the band’s name and adding “the Band” to their moniker.)
Also, they are somewhat unsure of how to make their Rivoli dreams come true. Instead of going the traditional route – like doing other club gigs, building a body of work and an audience, maybe hiring an agent or a manager – they start to perform a series of increasingly fantastic stunts to get the Rivoli to give them a gig.
This is Nirvanna the Band. They were created in 2007 for the comic web series Nirvana the Band the Show (yes, the original series used the correct spelling of Nirvana) by two Canadian friends, recently-graduated film student Matt Johnson and music student Jay McCarrol. They played the band members – who shared names with the stars. The show became a cult-favorite and ran for two years. After that, Johnson directed two indie films The Dirties (2013) and Operation Avalanche (2016), with McCarrol providing the music.
They returned to Nirvanna in 2017 with Nirvanna the Band the Show, which was not exactly a sequel of the original series, just had a variation on the idea. That show ran for two seasons on the Viceland cable network. However, before a third season could be filmed, Viceland went out of business, so Nirvanna had still not reached its nirvana.
In 2023, Johnson directed the acclaimed film BlackBerry (about the invention of the BlackBerry mobile phones) which Johnson also co-starred in, and for which McCarrol again contributed the score. The popularity of that film allowed the two to return to their old series, creating the wildly funny Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, which is currently on the film festival circuit and due to be released by Neon in 2026. Like the two series before it, The Movie adds pop culture references – specifically Back to the Future and more – to the quest to play the Rivoli.
We caught up with the two Canadian funny men behind the show and now the movie on the red carpet of the Philadelphia Film Festival as their movie was playing. Their casual banter really kept us on our toes. Here’s what they had to say.
Nirvanna The Band has been a web series, then a TV series, and now it’s a movie. What is it about this project that you keep wanting to go back to it?
Matt Johnson: The money.
Jay McCarrol: The money. It's also very personal. It's something that has grown organically since we were children. It's a way for us to be in touch with our inner child.
What are some things that you are able to do in a movie which you couldn’t do in other formats?
Matt Johnson: Presumably, he means video games, board games, poems…
Tweets, whatever.
Matt Johnson: I think movies let you do things that you can only ever do in… there is a relationship between live magic and movies, because the audience watches them happen. While they're watching, they're also wondering, how do they do it? And only movies can do that. I guess TV as well.
How did you come up with the idea of Nirvanna originally?
Jay McCarrol: We were in a Jumbo Video, which is a…
Matt Johnson: … It's like Blockbuster in Canada.
Jay McCarrol: … Like a local type of place where you can get popcorn in the store. We were just joking around about these two characters that are so naive they named themselves a band that's already a band. But to double down just how stupid, it's Nirvana the Band. Just that it couldn't mean anything else.
You’ve been working together for decades now. Why do you feel you work together so well?
Jay McCarrol: Well, it begets better work together the more years you stack on because you’ve got a shorthand. Though, you also start to get on each other's nerves a bit.
Matt Johnson: I would say we get so annoyed that you that you don't want to work together anymore.
Jay McCarrol: That’s questionable.
You are playing “fictionalized” versions of yourselves. In what ways are they similar to the two of you, and how are they different?
Matt Johnson: Know what? The secret is they're both extremely similar. I would say the truth is, the characters we play in the show are more like the real us than the people we pretend to be in public.
Jay McCarrol: That’s such a dumb answer. But that'll read really well.
Matt Johnson: I think it's the truth.
I hear you do create a crazy scene at the top of the CN Tower.
Matt Johnson: You haven't even seen the movie yet?
I was able to see like the first 20 minutes of it before coming out. What was it like at the top of the CN Tower?
Jay McCarrol: Freezing cold. Very windy. Bugs…
Matt Johnson: … But also serene, beautiful…
Jay McCarrol: … More quiet than you think…
Matt Johnson: We got to see our own city with a view that we'd never seen before. There’s something about not having the glass between you when you're actually just like…
Jay McCarrol: … Looking over…
Matt Johnson: … In the sky, looking amongst the skyscrapers. It was quite special.
Jay McCarrol: … And windy…
Matt Johnson: … And windy…
Jay McCarrol: … Very windy.
I personally feel that time travel is a sort of foolproof storyline.
Jay McCarrol: Me too.
Why do you think it works with Nirvanna?
Jay McCarrol: I've always loved the idea of Nirvanna, our Nirvanna universe, going into anything sci fi or something that has a tried, tested and true, foolproof thing. Where you buy the ticket just to see the attention.
Matt Johnson: Yes, but you use the word foolproof here. You said foolproof? Well, it's so easy for things to go wrong.
Jay McCarrol: I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt here. I think you mean foolproof as a concept.
Right, that is what I meant.
Jay McCarrol: A time travel movie, that's what just like, “Okay, let's see how they do a time travel movie.”
Matt Johnson: How two fools, ironically, so to speak, do a time travel movie.
Jay McCarrol: That’s true.
Matt Johnson: Two fools, and that's fool proof. Well, it wasn't because two fools got into it and mucked up with it. You understand what I'm saying?
Why did you decide to make this film as a Back to the Future tribute?
Jay McCarrol: We love Back to the Future.
Matt Johnson: And I think because it's the sui generis of time travel movies. Had we made it as TV show, we probably would have done something like Primer, or maybe even… there's this really great Japanese film called My Time Travel Summer that we also, even though I don't think we talked about it, deeply ripped off, almost exclusively. It's a friendship. They break up. The one person becomes famous. It's like, basically, it's more of a direct rip off in some ways than Back to the Future. But we picked it because it was the broadest…
Jay McCarrol: 12 Monkeys.
Matt Johnson: 12 Monkeys would be awesome because of what we could do with the black and white photographs, like in La Jetée [a 1962 French sci-fi film], of us seeing ourselves.
Jay McCarrol: Anything specific like that, you get to do some really fun parody, specific moments.
Matt Johnson: And we love the era. The era is right in the pocket of what Nirvanna the Band is based on.
Jay McCarrol: It lends itself to a nice adventure, campy, evergreen type of story.
Do you think that Nirvanna the Band will ever figure out a way to play at the Rivoli?
Jay McCarrol: Well, I hope not, because then it would mean that our journey has come to an end.
Matt Johnson: They do figure out ways to do it, but bad luck always gets in the way.
Jay McCarrol: If it ever does happen. It'll happen ironically. Our wishes come true like a monkey paw wish.
So is this it for Nirvanna, or do you see another film or future seasons of the show coming?
Jay McCarrol: Yes. Yes, to all the above.
Matt Johnson: Neon is releasing the TV show season one and two, sometime in 2026.
Jay McCarrol: Where’s season three?
Matt Johnson: Hopefully, they decide to release that too.
Jay McCarrol: Hopefully.
Copyright ©2025 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: October 27, 2025.
Photos by Jay S. Jacobs © 2025. All rights reserved.
