The Tragically Hip on No Dress Rehearsal — the most comprehensive doc ever made about the band

Last week, a new four-part docuseries about The Tragically Hip, titled The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal, kicked off the Toronto International Film Festival in advance of its Prime Video debut on Sept. 20.

While it's not the first documentary ever made about the iconic Canadian band, it may be the most comprehensive on-screen look into their history and legacy. Director and producer Mike Downie — brother of the band's late singer Gord Downie — interweaves never-before-seen archival footage with new interviews, covering everything from The Hip's rise to fame to the power dynamics within the band.

Following its TIFF premiere, Q's Tom Power had the chance to talk to Downie along with band members Gord Sinclair and Johnny Fay about the making of the docuseries, starting with where all the archival footage came from.

According to Fay, there wasn't a single person who owned this gold mine of old videotapes, but rather it "kind of lived everywhere," having been sourced from various friends and family. Beyond the footage, Downie says he also relied on his brother's numerous notebooks and journals to get some insight into what he was thinking.

"Gord was just a lifelong note taker, so he always had a moleskin in his jean jacket pocket or back pocket," Downie says. "There were a few times he would start writing in diary form, but it's pretty rare and mostly it was just these little moments…. I don't want to stretch it by saying I kind of felt a little bit inside his head, but you can definitely see the kind of things that were occurring to him."

But No Dress Rehearsal isn't just about the highlights of The Hip's career and legacy. It also gives audiences a glimpse of the quieter or more difficult realities of life on the road. For Sinclair, the process of making the docuseries unlocked a flood of forgotten memories.

"The two hours that you're on stage every night, that's the fun part," he says. "But the real work is the footage of us doing our laundry at the laundromat — the real glamour stuff…. You're not really a band until you've done the van drive to get out of Ontario for the first time. If you can survive that, you can survive just about anything."

Not only does the docuseries show The Hip's unglamorous side, but it also reveals how the five members didn't always get along. Throughout the four episodes, No Dress Rehearsal uncovers rising tensions within the band, which Downie attributes mostly to differences of opinion in the creative process.

"What I really see is the complexity of staying together in this group that was formed as youth," he says.

Still, The Hip will always be remembered as a band of brothers.

"We did have tons of squabbles, small and large over the years, but we always kind of kissed and made up," Sinclair says. "We never would take the baggage on stage with us…. You pack it away, as you do, because we were not super big on holding grudges with each other. We would  always remind ourselves that we were brothers first and foremost."

The full interview with The Tragically Hip is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with The Tragically Hip produced by Catherine Stockhausen.