Fucked Up frontman Damian Abraham has hard-launched the Toronto production company, Cut & Paste Pictures, that he founded last year with former CBC executive Zach Feldberg, Deadline reports. Leading an initial slate of developments is a feature-length documentary, directed by Scott Barber, chronicling the lifelong friendship between Rise Against guitarist Zach Blair and wrestler Hassan “MVP” Assad. Assad will also front an unscripted series, Exit Strategy, about life after prison.
Elsewhere on the docket: a feature film, I Just Want to Talk to You, based on the Sleepy Creek musician Charles K Brown, who fell for his bandmate during the band’s 1970s ascent and made an album about it—recently unearthed and heralded as a time capsule of unrequited gay romance. Kelly McCormack wrote and directed the film, with co-writing by Tess Degenstein.
Cut & Paste is also developing a half-hour comedy series, Hoser—created by Abraham and the Halluci Nation’s Ehren Thomas—about a disgraced American podcaster who accidentally relocates to Canada. Another Halluci Nation member, Tim Hill, will present “a genre-bending factual/lifestyle series,” and director Caitlin Starowicz is working up a feature-length documentary about the legacy of southern Ontario’s 1990s suburban punk rock scene.
Named for its DIY ethos and supported by Canada’s Bell Fund, Cut & Paste says it will focus on “culture-shaping stories that are raw, uncommon, and often overlooked,” focusing on “music, counterculture, and outsider voices.” The company’s initial output included a music video and documentary for the hardcore punk band SNFU; watch Cut and Paste’s short documentary on the band below.
Abraham has previous in media production, having hosted and produced series such as Vice’s The Wrestlers and MuchMusic’s The Wedge, as well as creating and hosting the podcast Turned Out a Punk. He said in a press release, “After two decades leading a band with a swear word for a name, and years spent working across podcasting and television chasing era-defining moments, I’ve learned that the culture you want to see in the world doesn’t just happen.”
