This is a column in which the whys and wherefores of releasing strategy are explored. Anyone out there with an interesting theatrical or video release campaign on the horizon, please give Playback a shout at maddever@brunico.com.

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You have the latest feature from a Known Canadian Director whose films have pushed the North American road movie to new peaks (as in Twin), by assembling a European surreal/grit factor with u.s. zanyness, and exuding grunge before there was a word for it. His last film, Dance Me Outside, signaled a change of directorial direction, but the new entry returns to his extreme rock ‘n’ road roots (Roadkill, Highway 61). What’s your next move?

Canadian distributor Everest Entertainment decided to release Bruce McDonald’s Hard Core Logo theatrically on the heels of the last leg of its festival travel. The film was shown at the Vancouver International Film Festival, following buyer screenings during the Toronto and Montreal fests.

Hard Core opens on two screens in Vancouver on Oct. 11, with the screen wattage heading up to 30 across Canada a week later.

The Shadow Shows and Terminal City Pictures release, convincingly starring Hugh Dillon, Callum Keith Rennie, Bernie Coulson and John Pyper-Ferguson, is based on a book by Michael Turner about a Vancouver punk band. Hard Core amiably dishes out raw language and extreme expectoration as a doc film crew helmed by McDonald traipses through Western Canada chronicling the band’s reunion tour.

The film – penned by Noel Baker and produced by Brian Dennis and Christine Haebler – has a raw, very un-studio ending, but overall humor (even in the credits) shines through. For all its attendant grit, dop Danny Nowak has managed to inject beauty into the punk scene via lush black-and-white sequences. The band’s sound, featuring wicked thrash guitar from Rennie, was almost too accomplished. The original score was written by Shaun Tozer.

The p&a budget is $500,000 to $600,000. Hard Core positioning is a two-tiered marketing strategy – one is to the Trainspotting audience, the other skews older and more mainstream, the male/female 25-plus crowd who have fond memories of This is Spinal Tap.

In search of the first edgy set of seats, the Hard Core trailer opened for Trainspotting, and there was ‘massive marketing’ at the campus level. Fridge magnets and buttons graced frosh kits, Hard Core pub nights left a trail of t-shirts and hangovers at major campuses across Canada. And bmg is going out early to campus radio with a single from the Hard Core Logo tribute album – featuring the dulcet tones of 54-40 and The Pursuit of Happiness. The first music video unspooled on MuchMusic in the week prior to the launch.

The campaign spills off campus and into all the hip clubs and nosheries coast to coast via the miniposter washroom ads as well as the usual print suspects, or ‘covers of all the weeklies,’ as Everest president Paul Gardner puts it.

The second-wave mainstream print and tv buy features spots that highlight the comedic nature of the film. ‘People will have title awareness by the time we’re done,’ says Gardner confidently.

The Everest team and publicist Virginia Kelly have been working on the campaign since early spring.

Gardner expects to do $25,000 to $30,000 in Vancouver on the opening weekend. Overall cumulative box office expectations are $500,000 worst case scenario, with $750,000 to $1 million, ‘if everything goes according to plan,’ at the better case end of the range. ‘Anything over that is just Christmas coming early,’ opines Gardner.

As to life after theatrical, Citytv has tv rights.

There’s also no news on a u.s. distrib or release yet – CFP International’s Jeff Sackman says the performance of the film in Canada will do much to determine what happens there.

Check out the film’s Web site. (www.hardcorelogo.ca)