Author Archives: Dominika

Jeff awards primary school students with a $2000 grant for their efforts to fight against transphobia

AUTHOR: Dominika | 26. September 2018 | no comments

On September 24th, Jeff Stinco represented the Simple Plan Foundation at the annual presentation of the GRIS/Simple Plan Foundation prize, which is being awarded to deserving young students, who invest their own time and efforts in demystifying homosexuality and fighting against homophobia.

“This annual competition encourages young people to create projects to fight homophobia in their school. Thanks to these projects, they become real agents of change in their environment and it is fantastic to see that it happens even in primary schools.”

– Jeff Stinco –

This year, the award went to three young students – Maïté, Zéna and Éléonore from the Rose-des-Vents primary school in Montreal, Canada, who wrote and illustrated their own story of a trans character called Alexandra. For their extraordinary effort to help fight not only homophobia, but also transphobia, the three girls received a $2000 grant from GRIS Montreal and the Simple Plan Foundation.

Just like every year, Jeff Stinco was there to award this prize to the deserving winners. Check out how he later praised Maïté, Zéna and Éléonore’s efforts:

“I’m proud (my smile may be giving it away) of the prize I awarded today as the spokesperson for the Simple Plan Foundation – GRIS Montreal and the Simple Plan Foundation partnered a few years ago to built a program to inspire kids from elementary or high school to build and present a project that demystifies, opens dialogue and/or educates about diversity within LGBT communities. This year, the recipients of the Gris/Simple Plan Foundation prize were students from the Rose des Vents high school in MTL. Zéna, Eléonore and Maïté presented a beautiful short story to their fellow schoolmates about young Alex who accepts his uniqueness and allows himself to become Alexandra with the help of an open minded friend, a sex ed teacher and his parents. It’s a well written story filled with smart facts about the LGBT communities and about acceptance. Way to go girls! Now, run with the chèque and get a book deal!”

– Jeff Stinco –

You can find out more about the GRIS/Simple Plan Foundation prize here and make sure to head over to our gallery now to check out all the pictures of Jeff’s presentation of this award on Monday:

Click here to enter the gallery

Pierre to sing in Summertime Dropouts movie with one of the featured bands

AUTHOR: Dominika | 24. September 2018 | no comments

Despite the initial reports that while Simple Plan would be making a cameo in the new pop-punk musical movie Summertime Dropouts [read more about their cameo here], they would not be performing, turns out that information wasn’t 100 % correct.

Thanks to a new image, published by the film’s official Instagram account, it was revealed that Pierre would be joining one the young bands that appear in the movie on stage.

The band that Pierre will be joining, is the movie version of Summertime Dropouts, which is the name of the real-life band that inspired this movie. Plus – one of their songs was even chosen for their movie alter-egos and Pierre to sing in their scene on stage together.

You can have a look at the first sneak peek of Pierre’s performance with “Summertime Dropouts” (filmed in the first week of September in Minnesota) on the image above, or check out the full version of it in our gallery:

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Simple Plan reveal a rare image from not being Punk’d by Ashton Kutcher

AUTHOR: Dominika | 21. September 2018 | no comments

As some of you might recall, from 2003 to 2007 Ashton Kutcher hosted a show on MTV called Punk’d, in which Ashton tried pranking various celebrities from Justin Timberlake to Pink, who were not aware of being punk’d nor being recorded by hidden cameras. And while some of the pranks for the show worked beautifully, some did not – Simple Plan being the prime example of one of them.

The guys from Simple Plan were one of the first “celebrities” who Ashton Kutcher tried to get punk’d as back in 2002 or 2003, when the first season of Punk’d was being filmed. The actor/prankster decided to put them in an awkward situation, but before he could get them, Simple Plan figured it all out by finding all the hidden cameras in their car.

Chuck and Seb recently recounted this story in an interview for Alternative Press. So.. what exactly happened that day, you ask?

Seb: Ashton Kutcher tried to punk us!
Chuck: Yes, we were among the people they were trying to punk on the first season before Punk’d ever aired. We made the list. So it’s a pretty crazy story… Do you wanna say what happened?
Seb: Yeah, it was a car one… I think they got..
Chuck: It was after we played a late night show… I think it was Jay Leno, or maybe it was Craig Killbourne back in the day. But anyway, we get picked up and there’s a limo waiting for us.
Seb: Dax [Shepard] is driving, which we don’t know at this point.
Chuck: But right off the bat, that’s weird because usually it’s always a van, so there’s like a limo there.. huh. And we get in the limo and right away the guy turns around and he’s playing our CD. And he’s like: ‘Man, I love you guys so much! Chuck, your drumming is so amazing. I’m such a big fan!’
Seb: And nobody EVER says that, so you know there’s something wrong there..
Chuck: Right off the bat I’m tipped off that something’s wrong, cause the drivers don’t know my name, shouldn’t know my name and he knows.
Seb: And here’s the kicker: we’ve been involved in hidden camera shows. You know, Pierre was on Damage Control. So we’re like very familiar with it. And basically like as soon as we sat down in the limo, we see there’s a camera in the Kleenex box, we see the camera in the corner there, so… it’s already fishy.
Chuck: And also our manager’s there and we always have a tendency when something’s weird, we switch to French. So right away we switch to French and our manager’s always trying to get us to speak in English because it doesn’t make great MTV moments if you speak in French. So there’s something weird. Then we keep going and then the guy has to stop at a gas station. It’s like: usually when you get a driver, they don’t stop at a gas station, they should’ve done it before, so it’s kinda weird. And a homeless guy comes up to the driver and starts asking him for money – he comes out, starts beating him up. He gets back in the car, hits the homeless guy and we’re just like: ‘Whoa, what the hell is going on?’ And here’s the kicker: I was kind of doing all the reading on Billboard magazine and all that and knew there was a show coming on MTV called Punk’d. Cause I read about it, it was announced like ‘oh, they’re gonna do a new show, it’s gonna be about like all these celebrities getting caught into weird situations. So I knew that was going on and I saw he had his work sheet on his dashboard saying ‘Punk’d’. So I’m like, man, I literally said: ‘I think we’re getting Punk’d by this new show by Ashton Kutcher!’. And that’s when they stopped the whole thing. He came out and he was really upset. He was like: ‘How did you guys know?’. Well, we’re smart!

– Interview for Alternative Press [link] –

And why are we talking about this over a decade old story now? Simple Plan just posted a never-seen-before throwback picture from this not very well executed prank by Ashton Kutcher [see above]. Head over to the gallery now, to check it out in full size:

Click here to enter the gallery

New photos from Simple Plan on the film set of Summertime Dropouts!

AUTHOR: Dominika | 20. September 2018 | no comments

A couple of new photos from the early September filming of the new “pop-punk musical” movie Summertime Dropouts, which Simple Plan will be making a little cameo on, have now appeared on the Internet [read more about what we know so far about this movie here].

Check out all three new photo additions from the behind the scenes of this film, which also feature some of the actors from the movie, in our gallery:

Happy birthday, Chuck!

AUTHOR: Dominika | 17. September 2018 | no comments

Exactly 39 years ago on this day, September 17th, the drummer of Simple Plan, Chuck Comeau, was born in Canada, which is why today calls for a big celebration! Dear Chuck, we hope you’ll enjoy this day surrounded by your loved ones and we wish you all the best for the next year, lots of love, health and plenty of patience with the new record!

Happy birthday, Chuck!

(Don’t forget to leave a comment on Chuck’s Instagram today and wish him happy 39th birthday!)