Ron Mann admits he used to pick the mushrooms off his pizza as a child.  "Mushrooms were kind of gross," he explains in the appropriately mouldy basement of the historic building at 299 Queen West.  "And I was told they didn't have any nutritional value either." 

When he got a bit older his palette, and his consciousness, expanded after delving into the mysterious, kaleidoscopic worlds of psilocybin experimentation.  "It's great in the woods," he smiles, eyes ablaze in memories of psychedelic mischief.  "I once hiked the Bruce Trail with my wife actually and I just remember it being completely magical...and I remember staring at trees for long time too," he adds laughing. 

But it wasn't until a chance encounter with fellow independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch that he took a much closer look at the wonderful world of fungi.

"Jim is a friend of mine and, most people don't know this but he's an amateur mycologist, he's a "Fungophile", he's someone who loves mushrooms, and he told me about the Telluride Mushroom Festival (in Colorado) which is a gathering of people who love mushrooms, and that turned me on to mushrooms and all sorts of great interesting people who became the focus of 'Know Your Mushrooms.'

That's the title of Mann's latest documentary film, which like most of his intriguing endeavours manages to simultaneously entertain and educate, focusing on a mushroom subculture that's largely misunderstood, stigmatized, and marginalized. 

He tackled a substance with a similar reputation in his popular film Grass, which quite comically revealed the ridiculous but ultimately costly efforts made by short-sighted politicians and law-makers to vilify marijuana and classify it as a "killer" drug responsible for destroying the minds and bodies of an entire generation. 

He feels that mushrooms get a similarly underserved bad rap.

"Here in North America we are fungal-phobic, we are afraid of mushrooms," he contends, noting that certain varieties not only have a wide range of health benefits, but some, like Oyster mushrooms, can be used to help clean up oil spills.  

"It's actually after Telluride that I had a new appreciation for mushrooms...I really didn't even know what mushrooms were.  They are the fruit of this web, an internet, a tangled web underneath the earth that sustains the planet, it provides nutrients to the trees and provides food to sustain our planet, without fungus, without fungi, we wouldn't survive."

It's somewhat ironic that the people, plants, and funguses Mann tries so hard to de-stigmatize in his films, occasionally end up stigmatizing him.  Know Your Mushrooms does touch on the psychedelic experience, most notably when mushroom expert Gary Lincoff colourfully describes the circumstances surrounding his first bizarre, mind-bending trip in a stranger's increasingly surreal cabin in the woods.  But whether it's avant-garde jazz musicians, beat poets, or mushrooms, Mann gives viewers a profound, all encompassing look at the many sides of his subjects.  The psychoative element of mushrooms is just a small part of the film.

"Know Your Mushrooms just got banned from the University of Western, because they saw the clip of Gary's mushroom trip and they assumed that the film was about (magic mushrooms)...and their fear was I was promoting drug abuse, and the film isn't," he maintains.  "It's about wild mushrooms and they actually reconsidered and have reinstated the screening of the film."

Mann's films may be packed with light moments and humourous animations, but he takes his work quite seriously. 

"I see myself more as a cultural historian than a filmmaker.  There's a sense of activism too because no one else is really covering (my topics).  Our history, of the 20th century, is an audio-visual history.  If it wasn't filmed it didn't exist.  And I want to get the record straight."

"The thing about mushrooms is the mystery and the wonderment," he adds, brushing his long curly hair out of his excited eyes.  "There's this child-like wonder and they do look like alien creatures.  They look like they could have come from outer space, maybe they did."

Speaking of the great abyss, Mann's next project delves into the limitless, lawless world of cyber-space, and how the counter-culture he documents and loves has shaped the internet. 

"It's called Peace Love and Microchips," he reveals.  "So that's what's in the books right now.  The internet is the future."

michaelt@citytv.com

More From Ron Mann:

Inspiring Change Through His Films

"I feel good about films like Grass and Know Your Mushrooms, and particularly Grass because it has raised consciousness about the drug laws, but it has also raised an incredible amount of money for decriminalization groups, so that those groups keep going and fighting the drug laws which are putting innocent civilians in jail for no reason."

On Mushrooms Being From Outer Space

"It's fascinating that there's this history of mushroom cults, people who have worshipped mushrooms from the beginning of time.  And I've read people like Terence McKenna, who is a psychedelic author and someone who I admire, and he has these theories that maybe mushrooms were these spores that travelled through space and inoculated the planet."

The Role Of Mushrooms In The Evolution Of Man

"(There is a) theory that civilization advanced after pre-historic man had ingested mushrooms, and because it enhanced visual acuity they would be better hunters and so that group of people would survive.  It's quite believable that mushrooms were ingested and helped evolution."

On The Role Of Government

"I just feel that the government shouldn't interfere with people's private lives.  They have no business being in the bedrooms, or what they do in the privacy of their homes if they are not harming anyone and certainly I think that substances like marijuana or psilocybin can be more helpful than detrimental and we demonize these "drugs" or schedule them as narcotics for other reasons, and those reasons are to spy on people."

On His Counter-Culture Roots

"I grew up with the words of Jack Kerouac and the music of Cecil Taylor, I read comic books by Robert Crumb and read Mad magazine, which completely turned me into a pervert (laughs), and I was corrupted at a young age listening to alternative culture, and I felt that I needed to document these artists because no one else was."

Life As A Filmmaker

"See I'm a fan, a total fan of all the subjects that I've made movies about.  I was a fan of jazz, a fan of comic books, certainly a fan of grass!  I feel like I get to spend, luxuriously, years in some cases...making these movies and learning about them.  For me to interview people like Frank Zappa and Robert Crumb, Charles Bukowski...I really met incredible artists over the years, I'm so glad I picked this job!  You really really do learn from these people that you admire, they are heroes of mine."