Famous Filmmaker Checks In

Here’s a note I received from our old friend, and now famous filmmaker, Mikey Johnston:

It’s a funny thing when someone finally gets around to google searching their own name and finds articles like yours. Your readers may want to know that I could only put $2 down on the car and had to wait until my January student loan came in before paying off the $33 balance. I think car was crushed after performing its fence duties. By the way, my father is in the movie.

Here’s what the HotDocs film festival says about Mike’s film:

After graduating from Trent University, Mike Johnston found himself unemployed, crushed by his student loan and plagued by collection agencies. He decided to make a film about his student loan to pay it off. Begging and borrowing cameras, Johnston launched on a hilarious and horrifying ride through debt-ridden student life. Students working at the local pizzeria tally up their combined debt on the cash register – a total of $90,000 in one stop. In fact, Trent students have run up a combined debt of $54 million in the last four years, at interest rates of 12 per cent and up! But the absurdity doesn’t stop there. The university itself is wallowing deeper in debt as a strategy to get out of debt. With dogged determination and acidic deadpan irony, Johnston follows the money and takes politicians to task to expose the dangerous lunacy of the ‘new economics of education.’ Funny, insightful, essential viewing.

I’ve emailed Mike back to ask about the possibility of screening his film here in Charlottetown.