Ron Mann Film: Know Your Mushrooms
CTV's Seamus O’Regan Interviews Legendary Documentary Filmmaker
May 25, 2009
Early on in his career, a misguided executive told Ron Mann that his films aren't commercial enough. That person is probably unemployed right now while Mann has gone on to create some of the most dynamic, original, and creative documentaries in the last quarter century.
Filmmaker Ron Mann
His credits include: Grass about the history of marijuana prohibition (the 1999 film raised some six figures for decriminalization); Go Further chronicling actor Woody Harrelson's eco-tour; Comic Book Confidential; and Poetry in Motion, which profiled Ginsberg and Burroughs.
His 2009 offering is Know Your Mushrooms and although Mann is a Canadian child of the 1960s the film is not about acid trips and magic fungi of any kind. In fact it's a compelling and witty look at the importance of the mushroom world.
Mann sat down with Seamus O'Regan, co-host of CTV's Canada AM who helms his new series, The O'Regan Files, on Bravo! (Regan is plumbing the Canadian artistic world - other interview subjects include songstress Diana Krall, thespian Christopher Plummer, and film star Paul Gross.)
The O'Regan Files are hardly flash but offer a decent helping of substance from a Spartan red-and-black set (which appears to share the same airspace as eTalk at 299 Queen in downtown Toronto).
O'Regan Files Chat with Mann About Mushrooms
There are no film clips (although a trailer of Know Your Mushrooms would have been welcome and useful) or gushing anecdotes from Mann's contemporaries. It's just two dudes riffing knee-to-knee so close they can almost taste each other's breath. O'Regan doesn't prod Mann but allows him to ramble and the filmmaker reveals some interesting tidbits.
Mann explains that he became interested in the world of mushrooms after discovering a longtime friend is a fungophile. "I'd pick them off my pizza and kick them on the lawn when a kid," Mann says.
Apart from a cult of fungophiles Mann discovered:
- Telluride, Colorado has hosted an international mushroom festival for 29 years.
- Oyster mushrooms have been used to mop up oil spills. "The mushroom sucks up the toxins and there's no residue of oil. They restore habitat," says Mann.
- The single largest living organism on the planet is a giant mushroom in Oregon. It measures 3.5 miles across and takes up 1,665 football fields. The majority of the fungus is underground.
- Humans share more DNA with mushrooms than the fungus does with plants.
It's no wonder Mann gushes to O'Regan at one point, "mushrooms are magical."
The Mann interview on The O'Regan Files airs May 27 at 8:30 p.m. ET on BRAVO!
