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May 2010 

Return to Table of Contents May 2010

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Interview: Jay Baruchel
The Revolution Begins at Home

In The Trotsky, Jay Baruchel plays a Montreal kid who thinks he’s the reincarnation of socialist revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Best thing is, the movie takes place in the neighbourhood where the rising star grew up — and just bought his first house


By Marni Weisz

A year ago, Jay Baruchel was living in an apartment in the Anglophone end of Montreal’s Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood — NDG, for those in the know — with two roommates and a cat. Today, he’s still living in NDG, but things have changed a bit. Literally…a bit.

“Different house, same roommates and same cat,” says Baruchel. “Same neighbourhood. Still only about two or three blocks away from my mother.”

Leon Bronstein (Baruchel) is led
away by the cops in The Trotsky

After years of a successful acting career in both Canada (Real Time, Just Buried) and the States (Knocked Up, Tropic Thunder, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist), Baruchel, who turned 28 last month, decided to pony up the dough and invest in some property. But that didn’t mean leaving his two roommates —both of whom he’s known since he was 15 — behind. Especially since one of them, Jesse Chabot, has been Baruchel’s writing partner for more than a decade. “I’ve been writing with him since I was 16 or 17 and we did stand-up together back when we were 17,” says Baruchel.
So the three guys and their feline picked up shop and moved to a slightly less humble abode. “It’s f--king awesome,” says Baruchel. “There’s an oil painting of my cat up on the wall, there’s a bunch of bedrooms, it’s got a nice little backyard area, I’ve got a shuffleboard table that my roommate got for me for Christmas, so we spend a lot of time watching hockey and playing shuffleboard. It’s got a finished basement and a fireplace and not one, but two, solariums.”


The house is also proof (in addition to the maple leaf tattoo across Baruchel’s chest) that all the gushing he does about Canada, specifically Montreal, in interviews is more than hot air. “This is the first time I’ve ever bought a house, or anything,” the actor says of his Montreal property. “I’ll never leave, God no.”

Yet, on this day, Baruchel is far from the shuffleboard table and the solariums and the cheesy oil painting. He’s in L.A., doing the stuff he has to do to pay for those creature comforts. His rom-com She’s Out of My League — the first American movie with Baruchel in the lead — opened the previous weekend and he was in nearby Las Vegas for the premiere. “Tomorrow and Saturday I have the press junket for How to Train Your Dragon, and then the premiere for that thing on Sunday,” he says of his first animated feature, which came out at the end of March. “And a few meetings afterward and then I go home.”

Home to NDG, where, to the actor’s delight, he’s shot his last two movies — The Trotsky, which comes out this month, and the upcoming Notre Dame de Grâce, about three locals (Baruchel, Scott Speedman and Emily Hampshire) and the serial killer stalking their neighbourhood. Both movies were written and directed by Baruchel’s good friend and fellow NDG native, Jacob Tierney (Twist).

The Trotsky, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, stars Baruchel as an earnest high school student named Leon Bronstein who thinks he’s the reincarnation of socialist Leon Trotsky and is determined to live his life just as Trotsky did —start a revolution (at his father’s garment factory), motivate the masses (in this case, via his high school’s student union), marry an older woman named Alexandra (Hampshire), get exiled not once, but twice, and then die a violent death.

Baruchel with student union cohorts
Ricky Mabe and Kaniehtiio Horn

The look and feel of The Trotsky reminds one of movies based on Mordecai Richler books. Although the story takes place now, Leon, with his pressed white shirts, skinny ties and wire-rimmed glasses, is styled to look like he just stepped away from a union meeting in the Soviet Union of the 1930s. But he also looks like he’d be at home hanging out with Duddy Kravitz in the Montreal of the 1940s.

Baruchel says there’s a good reason for that association.

“Any time people see people speaking English, specifically Jews speaking English, in Montreal you think of Richler because he’s the only one who’s written about our way of life,” says Baruchel. Despite his blaring patriotism, the actor says Anglos from NDG have little in common with their fellow Canadians, whether those Canadians come from Toronto or other parts of Montreal. “That’s why Jacob and I were so psyched about doing this film,” he says. “Our culture is so rarely depicted in movies, so we’re happy that we’re finally getting to show that we exist.”

A few months after The Trotsky hits theatres in Canada, Baruchel will be out promoting another big American movie; he has the title role in Disney’s live-action version of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Nicolas Cage plays the sorcerer in the special-effects blockbuster that hits theatres around the world in July.

Although you can’t tell from the trailer, Baruchel says those familiar with Disney’s Fantasia — which features Mickey Mouse as a young wizard overwhelmed by an army of enchanted mops in a segment called “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” — will be able to see shades of the original in this dark thriller. “Not the least of which is the sequence in which we pay homage to the scene where the mops come to life,” he says. “I’m at the lab, have a big mess to clean up and try to use magic for selfish gains. I go take a shower, come out, and everything that can be cleaning up is cleaning up.”

Yes, it’s exciting to star in a pricey summer tent pole. But, for Baruchel, it’s not as exciting as the script he’s been working on with pal Chabot back at the house. Pig, he says, is a controversial, racially charged horror about a drug-addicted, psychotic, middle-aged white cop chasing four black kids through a ghetto.

“Everyone who works with me knows this is the thing,” he says. “If everything works out perfectly this will be my feature directorial debut. Directing horror movies is all I’ve really ever wanted to do. Acting is great, I have a great deal of respect for it, it’s given me a great life, but my passion has always been to direct, and specifically to direct horror movies.”

Guess where.

“Ideally,” he says, “I’d be able to shoot it in Montreal sometime in the next three years.”

Marni Weisz is the editor of Famous.

A Serious Man

This photo of the real Leon Trotsky was taken in 1897 when he was just 18. That year the youngster helped organize the South Russian Workers’ Union, and wrote and distributed revolutionary pamphlets promoting socialist ideals. The following year he was arrested along with more than 200 members of the union and began a two-year prison term, before being deported to Siberia in 1900.





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