Nirvanna the Band the Show: The Movie is the hilariously unhinged, long-awaited return of Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol’s chaotic antics. Nirvana the Band the Show began as a web series back in 2006 before advancing to TV on Viceland in 2017. The show stars Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol as fictional versions of themselves, playing two guys in a band called Nirvanna the Band with one singular mission: to book a show at The Rivoli, a relatively underwhelming Toronto music venue. Each episode follows their over-the-top schemes to land the gig, which always spiral into chaos. Shot in a mockumentary style in real public spaces, the show thrives on the duo’s interactions with unsuspecting bystanders who have no idea they’re part of a TV show, leading to some hilariously unpredictable moments.

For those unfamiliar with the show, an example of the premise is portrayed in the second season when Matt and Jay head to a museum to steal a map. Matt smashes a glass case, grabs the map, and bolts as alarms blare and horrified onlookers watch. He’s chased by a security guard (who’s completely real and clueless) and barely makes it out. The exhibit was staged by the production, but the reactions? Totally genuine. This seamless mix of reality and fiction is part of the show’s magic—it’s always thrilling to watch. Additionally, something that sets Nirvanna the Band the Show apart is its genius use of copyright law and fair use. They manage to feature famous movies and songs without paying a cent, which is just one layer of its wild creativity. It’s an endlessly funny show that I’ve rewatched more times than I can count. My pitch to others is that it’s like Curb Your Enthusiasm meets Nathan for You, but about two lovable idiots in a band. These examples barely scratch the surface of what makes this show so uniquely brilliant; I consider it a must-watch for many.

It’s been seven years since the show ended, and now Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol are back with an absolutely spectacular feature film. This time, in another elaborate attempt to book The Rivoli, Matt and Jay get transported back to 2008, and, well, lets just say that hijinks ensue. If you’re a fan of the show, it’s a fantastic escalation of the kind of chaos these two usually find themselves in. If you’re new to the world of Nirvanna the Band the Show, it’s a perfect entry point. Matt and Jay were kind enough to sit down with me the morning after the film’s premiere at SXSW to chat all about it.

Matt Johnson: Well, it's a kind of endless supply of energy from them. I remember somebody once described the show to me as “these characters do plans, they tell one another they're going to work, and when they don't work, they say that they did work”, and that is a great amount of fuel to just tell stories about anything you want over and over and over again. And the fact that Jay and I were getting older when we decided to make the movie, we thought, oh, this could actually be a benefit that now Jay and I are much older than we were when we started because it contains within it the theme of what the whole piece is. It's also quite fun to shoot.

Jay McCarrol: We didn't know what we were doing in the web series until it started to get some runway, and then we just sort of whittled it down to the kind of archetypical storyline, cyclical line of the pinky and the brain type of revolving door, and as soon as we realized we had that we could just consider any number of story ideas.

Matt Johnson: So it's, yeah, infinite energy.

Jay McCarrol: We like the production model too. There's something unique about being able to shoot like a documentary, and we've worked with the same people so long. It's very familiar.

What was it like to see the film with everybody at the world premiere was last night?

Matt Johnson: It was very different than watching it just by ourselves over the last few months so it was really fun.

Jay McCarrol: A lot of different reactions than we expected, some were great.

This started as a web show, then a TV show, and now a movie: What is it that made you keep coming back to this story and these characters?:

How long have you been working on Nirvanna the Band? 17 years?

Matt Johnson: More than that, we actually started in 2006. it's just that we picked 2008 because there were a lot of things that integrated well with things we wanted to put in the movie and when the footage we had the most of kind of fit, but it's about 20 years

How did you approach this differently than when you did the show back in 2017 to make it feel more cinematic?

Matt Johnson: I don't even know that we were thinking about trying to make things look cinematic. I think our standards have just risen with our age. When we shot the web show, we would shoot an entire episode in one day, and we would never do reshoots. We kind of had a very different philosophy of production, which is: we'll get what we get and then try to make it work. Now it's the opposite, where we will shoot a ton, edit it, then reshoot anything we didn't like. I think the major change from our approach is that our standards have gone way beyond what they were when we were kids, and that's become a blessing and a curse.

Image: IMDb

Matt Johnson: I don’t want to seem cagey, It's just that it's so out of my control. I get asked about season three once a week, and I have been for years, almost a decade now. The only answer I can give is that we finally have the rights back to the show and have the ability to sell it to whoever we want. We made this movie so that we could try to spark enough interest in the idea of a show. it's like a Nirvana of the Band plan in a way, where it's like, we'll make a movie, and that will get people to watch the Nirvana of the Band show. So we're hoping that the movie spurs enough interest that then we can then release season three on whatever platform buys the film.

In the Q&A last night, you said “We reshot over half the movie”. I thought you were exaggerating, but I was going back and listening to an old interview where you talked about this whole sequence in New Orleans that was inspired by Confederacy of Dunces. That scene isn't in the film anymore, what happened?

Matt Johnson: Jay and I get ideas that we really like and get excited by. And sometimes they're production ideas, like, wouldn't it be fun to go here and do this? And sometimes they're story ideas, and we follow whatever we're excited about that week.

Jay McCarrol: It's kind of meeting halfway with our production model being able to be so opportunistic as to what we can maybe seize upon to sort of grab the production value of something that's happening, the realness on the street. We see that all as valuable puzzle pieces that we'll always work backwards from, that we're always talking about working backwards from what we get, so that it seems like the punchline is valuable to the storyline, but working backwards, that's how you make it happen.

Matt Johnson: Originally we had written a Confederacy of Dunces story, and we pursued it, but like every part of the movie, we then kind of discovered these pieces in Toronto that led us towards this time travel story. Kind of not even necessarily by top-down design, we wound up following that time travel story and slowly moving away from this Confederacy of Dunce’s New Orleans story, and it just kind of happened as we were shooting it.

Can you elaborate on future plans? It seems like you're a little cagey about it, but is there anything you want to say about season three?

Will we ever see that footage?

Matt Johnson: There’s a good chance. We’re very proud of it.

Jay McCarrol: There is so much footage and so many storylines and arcs that go out and are shot, and then we pivot. But there is an ideal plan that we have to put them all into an episodic way of presentation.

Matt Johnson & Jay McCarrol at the SXSW premiere of Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie

One of the things I love most about your work is there's a real excitement to it; It feels like you like bending the rules in regards to fair use and filming in public or private spaces where maybe you don't exactly have permission, and that's really exciting to watch. What motivates that mindset, and do you ever worry about going too far with it or getting in trouble?

Matt Johnson: No, because we work so closely with Chris Perez, our lawyer, who works at Donaldson Califf Perez, and have for so long that we don't ever shoot anything that we won't be able to release theatrically. It just seems like it's dangerous, but we've spent so much time. I have to write essays for our legal team about what the fair use approach is, and we take that really seriously.

I don’t want to spoil it, but one of my hardest laughs of the movie is how you discover you're in 2008. It’s just so funny, but it involves copyrighted material. Is that something where you worry about distribution or getting in trouble because of it?

Matt Johnson: Well, we actually get in trouble all the time, so I don't think we're worried about it. It's very nerve-wracking in the moment where you feel just like anybody would, like “oh, I hope we don't get in trouble”, just because it's so embarrassing. We've gotten in really big trouble before. I can't tell you, but we did things in this movie that got us in huge trouble.

Jay McCarrol: We're not trying to get in trouble. We find it really funny that these characters that are ultimately very innocent at heart will find themselves in these situations that they're not supposed to be in, and then you get real people and their real reactions, and that is just so interesting to see. And you find that, and then when we get that, no matter what it is, maybe that's another piece that we'll work backwards from because something will happen. Somebody will look a certain way, and say something that will then become a major point in the narrative.

Matt Johnson: I use a metaphor when I talk to film students about this, which is that there are a set of rules that all filmmakers have to follow, and those rules are pretty strict. And what I always say is those rules, if you turn them over, are a map, because everybody's following those rules. And so if you decide to not follow those rules, they actually show you where to go that nobody's been before. Us shooting in public or shooting quote-unquote illegally or bending the rules, or doing things that nobody else is allowed to do, means that by definition, we're doing things that nobody else has done. And so I think that's very motivating for all of us, that the rules provide a pathway, as opposed to a wall.

These characters of yours have a lot of enthusiasm for 80s, and 90s culture. This movie is very Back to the Future inspired, but It also feels very modern. What are some of the influences for the filmmaking in this?

Jay McCarrol: We've been getting the milk from the same place for a long time, and so it's built into that sort of cyclical thing that we're doing. It's funny, there was a comment on one of our recent boards that said satirically “I hear their friendship will be tested in this one”. And that's what we've just been doing over and over again. We've had a lot of practice pitting these guys together and making their friendship sort of hang on a thread. I think that even if you haven't been with us on the journey, when we keep doing that, it's kind of evident still in just one movie that you feel the history with these guys. We have so much reverence for the sort of, like, not let you in on the inside joke, and you'll just kind of feel the power of it. And so that helps, I think, with the sort of emotional tearing of, like, will they stay together?

Matt Johnson: I think it helps that Jay and I really do know each other very well. And so when you're watching the performances between us, we are never trying to be nice to one another. And I think that in real life, friends are not actually nice to one another.

Jay McCarrol: No, it's more sibling-like.

Matt Johnson: We really do know how to hurt one another's feelings, even on camera when we’re playing. All the flashbacks in the film are great examples of this where the characters remember conflicts that they had from the perspective of what they think would have been the most hurtful to the person they're remembering hurting, and I think that tells you a lot. When Jay's remembering how mean he was to Matt at that signing underground, he didn't say any of those things, but that's what he felt he said. When I am admonishing Jay, in a moment where in reality, when he and I are having that fight at the door in 2008, where I'm actually quite crushed, I'm on the verge of tears, because I've been so humiliated. But my memory of it is that I'm mocking him for his absurd fantasy that without me, he'd have any life at all, and that is what I think the character really does believe he did. I think that even though in those scenes, we're really trying to say the cruelest things possible to one another, that maps to how real friends do feel they hurt one another without even saying it. You call your friend and you’re like, “Hey, do you want to get dinner?” And they're like “No, I'm busy”. The words, exchanged were kind of dead and meaningless. But the feeling of that, hearing that from a friend, it's like if you were to have a flashback of it, you would think your friend said, “I hate you”. And that, I think, gets people feeling like, oh, that is really what it's like to have a friend because you hand over the ability for them to hurt you, as opposed to being superficial and saying, “oh, I love you. You're so great”. I mean, those types of friendships really have, you know, no vulnerability. Whereas Jay and I, we're very upfront with one another in the movie, where it’s like we openly mock one another. We mock one another's dreams and their foibles. We're calling one another stupid constantly. But you get the sense that we really do care.

Jay McCarrol: And as long as the camera is far enough away with a bit of foreground, that feels like a caught, private moment. And that even adds to the vulnerability, too.

I think we're almost done. But I have one last question. The movie is obviously a comedy, It's super silly, but I think there is a strong emotional core to it. As I was walking out, I heard a woman behind me say “I cried multiple times in the movie”. Can you talk about building the emotional core of the movie, and how your real-life friendship parallels the film?

Matt Johnson: I would say the biggest for me are documentaries exclusively. Jay and I had watched a documentary when we were both kids, not directed by Jerry Seinfeld, but about Jerry Seinfeld called Comedian, and it was an HD cam, like, bouncy, handheld version of Jerry and this other guy, Orny Adams' career through comedy clubs. That was hugely influential on me. In fact, if you were to watch that film, you'd see we ripped off their ending literally exactly the same. The ending of Comedian is the ending of Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie. I had always thought that those cheap aesthetics and shooting things like The Office, which was big right when we were starting the web show, give you access to a kind of veracity, with not only actors, but with real people, that you can't get if you're shooting cinematically. And I've tried. Like, in BlackBerry, I had a vision where I was like “Oh, maybe we can shoot with prime lenses and make it seem like a documentary, and audiences will think that it's real in the same way”, and it doesn't quite translate. Like, you need it to really be dirty and messy in order to let the audiences know this is really happening. There are other people who are doing the same aesthetic except in a much more elevated cinematic space, The Safdie brothers are a perfect example of this. So much of Uncut Gems and Good Time is shot with primes, out in public, long lenses, where you don't know if the people are real or not. We haven't discovered how to do that in a way that works for us. But in terms of nailing down a specific, like, oh, this aesthetic from this film is what we're borrowing, it mostly came from necessity of the cameras we had and the people we were shooting with, who were film students.

Image: VICE MEDIA

Thanks so much to Jay and Matt for taking the time to chat with us. Nirvanna the Band the Show is not currently streaming in the U.S., but is worth taking the time to download a VPN and stream it from SBS On Demand. You can watch Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie during its release at SXSW 2025 until it gets picked up for distribution and streaming.