From bartenders to record store workers to sex phone operators, the members of the fictional alternative band The New Normals go from struggling to make ends meet while sharing a downtown loft with no bedrooms to selling out iconic Toronto venues like Massey Hall. The film captures their rise to success while following the explorations of their relationships and sexualities. Evan (Lane Webber), the mixed-race, transgender lead singer, goes from being an outsider in his small town and even in his family to being the band’s sensual frontman adored by fans. It’s a rarity to see a film with a trans character as part of an ensemble cast, and We Forgot to Break Up effortlessly foregrounds his unique experiences while also weaving his character into the fabric of a band comprised of equally interesting individuals with their own stories and struggles. The film portrays trans resistance and queer love beautifully and honestly while celebrating sexuality, gender, and identity as ever-evolving experiences that don’t need to be pinned down.

As someone who truly knows what it means to be on the rise in a Canadian indie band, Campbell celebrates the film for its authenticity and admits that there have been “so many bad movies about bands and well-meaning movies that don’t capture what being in a band is actually like.” Campbell’s band, Stars, has had its share of inner-circle romances, which makes him the perfect fit for providing music and lyrics to the alternative and lovestruck New Normals. 

The romances between bandmates in the film struck a chord with Campbell, and despite the tensions that arise, he asserts that the best bands feel the sense of an indisputable “common fate.” He was reluctant to use the word “camaraderie” due to its positive connotation, and likens being in a band more so to being in a gang: “It’s not whether you like being in the gang or not, but you feel like the gang is you,” he says. “What makes a band work is that gang-mentality.” He notes that the New Normals are kids who “aren’t accepted on any level—their gender, the way they love, the music they play,” and that gang-mentality contributes to “making art as an act of revenge above all other things.”

While the band does find success in their art, their interpersonal relationships grow increasingly complicated along the way. When asked about the film’s somber conclusion, Campbell enthusiastically replied, “That’s life, baby!” The melancholic ending is part of what Campbell loves most about the film: “It’s not a hero’s journey—it’s just a slice of something real. All those characters will have second acts in their lives. The survivors, the ones who stick it out and continue to be artists, are the ones who don’t always know why they’re doing it and don’t always think it’s fun.”

Campbell acknowledges that the success of his band isn’t the usual experience. “With Stars,” he reflects, “we got lucky and we lasted. Most bands don’t, and the film honours the reality of what being in a band is really like — more than a happy ending does.”

In the end, viewers don’t know if the band is ever going to play together again, but since the New Normals already “forgot to break up” once, we’re left hopeful that they might just have one more encore left in them.

We Forgot to Break Up is premiering at TIFF Lightbox (Toronto) on March 15 and at the Rio Theatre (Vancouver) on March 19.