The Big Top Fury

A circus clown steps into a boxing ring against a brute robotic man and attempts to win the bout using gags instead of punches.

Creative team

Writer/director: Mick Rochon
Producers: Mick Rochon, Pieter Stathis

Filmmaker’s statement

Gotta love Saturday morning cartoons and afternoon matinees as a kid. This magic vaudeville was beamed down from some unknown planet out there and it didn’t matter where. Then it was explained to me where it actually came from and that was that. I wanted to be a film guy when I grew up.

Several years later I wrote a short film called Sparky Versus Rocco that aired on Super Channel for a year and a half or so. The new experience of making my own film was exhilarating and painful, to put it mildly. There’s no film school out there that can teach what it’s really like to make your own movie and get them in front of an audience. Sparky Versus Rocco was my first ‘calling-card’ and could not have been made without the unparalleled devotion of the cast, crew, friends and family who are all the same bunch.

Sparky Versus Rocco was a success but it wasn’t the film I originally set out to make (welcome to filmmaking 101). It was okay but I was constrained by the self-funded budget and the limitations of the day’s technology. I knew what I wanted to say with the film but it never quite came out that way.

Years later technology literally advanced right before my eyes. It became affordable to carry a whole post-production studio in my backpack. I began to experiment with digitized 16mm Sparky Versus Rocco footage and outtakes with one thing leading to another.

I learned to how to edit film and produce my own visual effects. I wrote a new script I called The Big Top Fury. It had a similar premise to Sparky Versus Rocco but was a new story with different characters, new dialogue, new music and all-new scenes that would pack a punch, so to speak.

Cut to present day. The Big Top Fury would become my greatest lesson in perseverance so far. It’s the film I originally wanted to make and much more. Thank you to everyone who excelled in their respective talents and waited patiently with me for all those right moments.

We now beam The Big Top Fury to you from some unknown planet.

About Mick Rochon

Mick Rochon grew up on various Canadian Forces military bases but he and his family eventually settled in Winnipeg. Mick became an avid musician, performing in rock bands as a teen to which he jokes “If you didn’t want to read my scripts, then you had to listen to me play guitar.”

He studied visual communications that led to a career in graphic arts and printing. A decent promotion in his field led to a decision to respectfully decline the offer and make the move to the robust movie industry in Vancouver and develop a long-standing career in film locations management.

In his position Mick routinely worked in one-on-one collaborations with world-renowned filmmakers whom he admired in his youth: “Finding the perfect film location for a director was a perfect opportunity to study my mentors up close, ask questions and develop my own ideas for making a movie.”

With this experience (and never taking his position for granted), Mick proved he would not squander an opportunity to initiate his first independent film Sparky Versus Rocco. Recently, he is proud to release the short film The Big Top Fury.

Mick currently resides in Vancouver. Having worked on over 200 productions including television movies, series and feature films, he divides his occupation between being a ‘hired gun’ location scout with producing his first feature film Cirrus, a science fiction about a spectacular future that may have already happened.