One of Canada's premier cinematic exports, Guy Maddin (b. 1956) is an award-winning filmmaker with a rising reputation. Known for his autobiographical tales---hidden deeply within comical, absurd, and surrealistic narratives---Maddin has earned international acclaim, including a lifetime achievement award at the Telluride Film Festival at the age of thirty-nine. Possessing a deep knowledge of silent cinema, modernist artists, and novelists, Maddin's seemingly amateurish visual style and unusual subjects (patriphagia in , incest in ) obscure the surprisingly literate sources for his films. These include novelists Knut Hamsun ( ) and Kazuo Ishiguro ( ), the Royal Winnipeg Ballet ( ), and the films of Erich von Stroheim ( ). collects pieces published between 1990 and 2009 and offers the reader a whirlwind tour of Maddin's offbeat career in his own words, as solicited by a range of journalists, scholars, and fellow filmmakers. Maddin is a charming, erudite, and candid conversationalist who is frank about his own perceived drawbacks, his good fortune, and the often high art culture that motivates his cinematic explorations.