KUNG FOOL

Kung Fu Elliot

Directors: Matthew Bauckman, Jaret Belliveau

The Mayfair Theatre,

1074 Bank Street, Ottawa

November 14 – 17

There’s a very painful scene in the shooting of self professed karate / kung fu / kickboxing champion Elliot Scott in his [as of yet unfinished] latest movie Blood Fight. It’s painful because the atrocious set up has his crew of one [still-waiting-on-a-ring girlfriend Linda Lum] using a tiny point and shoot camera in a public park. The shoot is interrupted because some girls are playing too loudly nearby. This stinks of mockumentary grandness we haven’t witnessed since Fubar, and yet it is apparently not a put on. Elliot Scott does exist, and he has made movies [They Killed My Cat], and he does peddle them on the street in an excruciatingly awkward manner.

Following Canada’s Chuck Norris around as he films, seems innocuous enough of a proposition, but the directors get much more than they bargained for. Scott turns out to be quite a renaissance man, not only as a dubious martial arts champion, an action flick maverick [of east coast Canada], and a relentless optimist, but also a terrific actor who is playing a bizarre character in his real life. As most great documentaries, this one unravels into something much more interesting, the deeper we dig. Just who the hell is Elliot Scott?