There’s a Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie lookalike contest coming up
A chance to celebrate the instant CanCon cult classic IRL
Have you ever wanted to play a show at the Rivoli? Does the idea of wearing a beige fedora seem strangely appealing? Do you fall asleep every night with the dulcet sounds of “Nicky Nicky Nine Doors” playing in your head? If so, then grab your best friend, cut up your best jeans and enter the Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie lookalike contest, happening April 12 at 3 p.m. in Trinity Bellwoods Park.
Since the film’s theatrical release on February 13, a rather unusual fandom has rallied around its creators and stars, Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol. The movie, which cost an estimated $2 million to make, has become an instant cult classic thanks to its niche, absurdist humour. The internet, particularly X, is flooded with campy anime fan art and K-pop-ified images of the duo overlaid with sparkly GIFs. Bizarre memes involving Orbitz (a discontinued beverage filled with gelatin orbs that proves to be a crucial plot point in the movie) abound. A video of Johnson waxing rhapsodic about bubble tea has gone mega-viral, and another of him eating yogurt during a Q&A is threatening to do the same.
The two men have achieved unlikely heart-throb status—there are a slew of posts thirsting over the size of Johnson’s biceps, as well as “sexy Matt Johnson” Halloween costume ideas. Obsessive fan accounts like @heatedrivoli tout the film’s homoerotic undertones. The fandom received another boost when “The Alphabet Song,” a jaunty joke rap from the film, received a nomination for best original song at the 2026 Canadian Screen Awards this week.
The lookalike contest comes as the latest in a series of similar events. In October of 2024, mysterious posters began popping up in New York advertising a Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest. The event, held in Washington Square Park, drew a crowd of approximately 10,000 people—including Chalamet himself. Then, that December, Drake crashed a Drake lookalike contest that was held on Queen Street West. Since then, there have been lookalike contests for Adam Sandler, Jeremy Allen White and, most recently, John F. Kennedy Jr.
No doubt the Nirvanna event will attract a crowd of the duo’s stans as well as curious passers-by who haven’t seen a crowd of that many people in fedoras since a dubstep concert in 2008.
According to an Instagram page created for the event, this is an unofficial lookalike contest, so Johnson and McCarrol are not expected to make an appearance. But dreams do sometimes come true.
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Isabel B. Slone is a fashion and culture journalist living in Toronto. She writes for Toronto Life, the New York Times, the Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, Architectural Digest and more. She has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia Journalism School.
