Tyler's Barrel

2002· 55 min·

Tyler Canning is 20 years old and understandably bored. A boy from small-town Ontario, the high point of his life is filling out dead-end job applications at Mr. Sub and Country Style Donuts. Tyler’s need for thrills and dreams of fame led him to hurl himself into the Niagara River Rapids in 1999, and now he is planning the biggest stunt of all - going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. An impoverished yet determined hustler, Tyler throws himself into the tawdry underbelly of Niagara Falls, only to suffer an even crueler fall than the one he was planning. An alternately harshly realist and humorously absurd study of an alienated dreamer.