All That Monk Business

Meet Buddy Monk, a barber, recently dropped by his social activist wife who has, for the last time, been deceived by her hypercompetitive husband's attempts to win anything, anyhow, all rules be damned. She's now trying her hand at waitressing, in a restaurant run by Buddy's mother, which ought to go well. As for Buddy's father, he's been dead for 25 years, but when a retired fisherman finds his will the past comes roaring back into Buddy's life, exposing a previously unknown family connection and turning on its head our barber's relationship with most everyone in his ambit. All That Monk Business is a gritty, comic, emotional charge through Vancouver's Commercial Drive and Downtown Eastside, a story of people coming to grips with the past while nourishing themselves through interconnections on streets ablaze with contrasts and eccentricities.