Doc keeps up with Dan
What Happens Next? looks at Vancouver singer- songwriter
When singer- songwriter Dan Mangan performed at the Orpheum Theatre last November, the importance of the moment was not lost on Brent Hodge.
“I walk by the Orpheum every single day to work, and it’s just this unbelievable Vancouver building,” Hodge, a CBC Radio 3 alumni, said. “It’s insane to think of the people that have stepped inside that building: Frank Sinatra, Neil Young, Bob Dylan. It’s this mystical thing you can never touch.”
Mangan himself echoes these feelings during a key sequence in Hodge’s new one- hour documentary about the bearded Vancity favourite, What Happens Next?, airing Saturday on CBC.
In the sequence, we see Mangan driving around in his van on a gloomy day, talking about the mystique of the venue while posters from bygone eras flash on the screen.
That he was standing at such a critical juncture — on the eve of playing the biggest show of his life in his hometown, touring an album, Oh Fortune, that had redefined him as a singersongwriter — wasn’t lost on the Juno- winning singer, either.
Considering everything that has happened to him since, including a headlining performance at this year’s Vancouver Folk Music Festival, does Mangan look at that moment any differently now than he did back then?
“I guess it’s slightly less magical now, if only because I’ve wandered the underbelly of the venue and I’ve seen the little office that looks as grimy as every other office in every other venue,” Mangan said. “It’s special to me now in a different way. I think it was always special to me as a kid in the way that being in a band and touring seemed special as a kid. So it used to have this kind of fantastical, pipe- dream quality to it. Now it’s important because of the memory of it.”
Hodges’ documentary was coproduced with Jon Sidall, the same team that gave us Said the Whale’s Winning America, a TV special that told the story of the Vancouver band’s trip to the South By Southwest festival in 2011 before it landed the Juno Award for New Group of the Year.
But rather than a tour travelogue, with What Happens Next? we get an introspective look at Mangan, his creative thinking, his anticipation of the concert, the shooting of the music video for About As Helpful As You Can Get …, his relationship with fiance Kirsten Slenning ( who plays a big part in the documentary), and his love of poker, which we witness in a scene where Mangan, Slenning and band members Gord Grdina and Kenton Loewen gather for a game and chat about life and music.
“When I was in university, I probably played an unhealthy amount of poker — I just played poker last night,” Mangan said with a chuckle.
“I say this in the doc: I appreciate it as a metaphor for life. We are always playing the hand that we are dealt the best that we can in relation to the hand that everybody else has also been dealt. Life presents issues and problems and anxieties but also opportunities and cool things. I think Brent knew that about me. And because the record is called Oh Fortune, it was a simple device to use to tie in the album and aspects of me.”
“Poker is a bigger thing to him than just a game,” Hodge said. “It’s another mystical element.
“Dan is a lovable guy, a presentable guy and a smart guy. It was an easy doc to make. Did I have to work on character development? No. It was almost the opposite: What’s Dan’s dilemma? How can we find something he’s challenged by? I think the biggest challenge is that it never stops for an artist like him. It’s constantly, ‘ What am I doing next?’”