A Never Forget Films production in coproduction with the National Film Board of Canada, in association with Pearl Productions and Odd Sock Films.

With little more than a 16-mm camera and a bedrock love of place, renegade filmmaker Mike Jones broke the trail for Newfoundland’s cultural renaissance. 

Short Synopsis  

With little more than a 16-mm camera and a bedrock love of place, renegade filmmaker Mike Jones broke the trail for Newfoundland’s cultural renaissance. Through never-before-seen footage of the comedic chaos that was CODCO, Smash & Grab: The Rebel Lens of Mike Jones summons this chapter of Canada’s hilarious history in a joyful journey of rediscovery featuring Mary Walsh, Cathy Jones, Rick Mercer and more. 

Long Synopsis  

With little more than a 16-mm camera and a bedrock love of place, renegade filmmaker Mike Jones broke the trail for the reawakening of pride and identity that was Newfoundland’s cultural renaissance.  

In the 1970s, freed from the iron grip of church and state, a creative revolution detonated that would impact the entire country. The members of the CODCO troupe—Mary Walsh, Greg Malone, Cathy Jones, Andy Jones, Tommy Sexton, Bob Joy and Diane Olsen—cut their satirical teeth in experimental theatre before their comedic chaos was loosed upon the rest of Canada.  

Justin Simms’ Smash & Grab: The Rebel Lens of Mike Jones is a joyful journey of rediscovery through the work of the “godfather of Newfoundland cinema.” Alongside his siblings (Cathy and Andy), Jones helped found Newfoundland’s first independent film co-op, co-directed the island’s first feature film (the cult classic The Adventure of Faustus Bidgood) and documented the rise of CODCO from regional hit to comedy legends. 

Through never-before-seen-footage of a young CODCO and interviews with friends, family and some of Canada’s funniest people, including Rick Mercer and Mark Critch, Smash & Grab summons this radical chapter of Canadian history. Demented, delightful and even a bit dangerous, Jones’ pioneering vision is still making Canada laugh. 

The renegade filmmaker who captured Newfoundland’s comedic coup d’état. 

Making Smash & Grab has been an act of self-discovery as much as it’s been an exercise in filmmaking. In telling Mike Jones’ story, I found myself staring into a mirror. Like Mike, I am an independent filmmaker working in St. John’s, navigating the grind, the risk and the particular loneliness of trying to make meaningful work on the margins. His struggle to find his voice—in a challenging region, against the grain, on his own terms—is one I recognize intimately. In ways I didn’t anticipate, this film became as much about every filmmaker who has ever answered cinema’s siren call as it is about Mike Jones himself. But what drew me deeper was the realization that I am part of a continuum—a great tradition of Newfoundland cinema that strives to speak truth to power, to hold up a mirror to pillars of power and dare it to look back. I am fascinated by how identity and ideology are built, how art shapes a people’s sense of who they are—and the story of Mike Jones and CODCO sits at the very heart of that question. The work produced during the remarkable cultural renaissance we explore in this film didn’t just help Newfoundland discover its own voice, but in so doing, it helped Canada understand itself.