Today's Hot Docs pick: Scouts Are Cancelled
by Glenn Sumi

You won't listen to a telemarketer in quite the same way after watching Scouts Are Cancelled, a fascinating doc about poet John Stiles.

Stiles, born in rural Nova Scotia, lived for about 8 years in Toronto, where he took on a series of tough jobs to support himself, including door-to-door salesman (where he was told to sell in poor neighbourhoods, because the people would be more likely to listen to him and buy) and telemarketer.

Whenever Stiles reads from his work in performance, or in a studio session filmed in cool jazzy black and white he comes alive. His body takes on a different character. His words stand up, stretch their limbs and do a little dance.

When he's not reading, he's not quite present. He blinks his eyes a lot, as if he's just woken up. His mouth settles into a frown.

One of the best sequences contrasts Stiles's own colourful readings with a series of monotone readings from students in a high school where Stiles teaches. Its brilliant.

The ending is also moving, when Stiles goes back to his home town, visits his mother, and goes in search of an old friend in an apple orchard.

This, I think, is the heart of the film. Where does artistic inspiration come from? The answer is still a big mystery, but Scouts Are Cancelled offers a partial response that's beautiful and poignant.

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Toronto Star, April 13th, 2007

Scouts Are Cancelled: Watching John Stiles performing his poetry which largely evokes his childhood growing up in Nova Scotia's rural Annapolis Valley is like watching someone lost in a trance. He squeezes his eyes shut, channels the voices of his speakers and loudly emits the sounds of growling dogs, wailing sirens and non-verbal whoops of joy and despair. An original artist with an unsurprisingly obtuse relationship with the world, he has become the subject of a film made by his close friend John Scott that is both true to the poet's art and understanding of the person's idiosyncrasies.--Geoff Pevere

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NB Scouts are Cancelled is a feature length documentary based on a book of poetry published by Insomniac Press. This is not a magazine piece, rather some of the recorded poems and might serve well in a piece about Canadian poetry or the poetry of rural Nova Scotia. The poems are mostly a minute long, some two minutes but they are sound rich and original.