Blaine Thurier

Though best known as the keyboardist for the indie rock band the New Pornographers, Blaine Thurier also cultivated an award-winning second career as a filmmaker on such eccentric comedies as "Low Self-Esteem Girl" (2000), "A Gun to the Head" (2009) and "Teen Lust" (2014). Born in Estevan, a city in the Canadian province of Sakatchewan, Thurier was raised in an evangelical family in Alberta, Canada. Thurier's initial interests were cartooning and filmmaking, and he had no significant musical background prior to joining the Canadian indie rock supergroup the New Pornographers in 1997. Thurier played keyboards on the band's debut album, Mass Romantic, and remained with the group during its rise to prominence in the United States with 2010's Together, which reached No. 18 on the Billboard albums chart and beyond. During this period, Thurier also launched his career as an independent filmmaker, beginning in 2000 with "Low Self-Esteem Girl," a surreal fantasy involving drug dealers, evangelical church groups and demonic possession. The picture won Best Narrative Feature Film at the 2001 SXSW Film Festival, and established Thurier as a unique voice in Canadian independent film. His second effort, "Male Fantasy" (2004), explored a similar path of interwoven fantasy and reality in its story of a divorced man who attempts to boost his self-esteem by reinventing himself as a lothario. In 2009, Thurier issued his third feature, "A Gun to the Head" (2009), about a reformed criminal whose outlandish past invades his current state of domesticity. He contributed a short documentary profile of his bandmate, Carl Newman, for a collection of short profiles titled "12 Takes" (Knowledge Network, 2010) before returning to features with "Teen Lust" (2014), a parody of teen sex comedies with a decidedly supernatural bent.