Emerging from Toronto rep theatres The Original 99 Cent Roxy and The New Yorker, Brunton got into the punk music scene as a documentarian in the late 70s, making his short film The Last Pogo, and then went on to build one of the most prolific careers in Canadian indie film and television.

He won a Genie Award for Best Live Action Short for The Mysterious Moon Men of Canada, and went on to produce for many of Canada's most well known auteurs. Brunton's feature producing credits include the cult classics Roadkill, Highway 61, and Hedwig and the Angry Inch. As Executive Director of The Feature Film Project at Norman Jewison's Canadian Film Centre, he executive-produced some of the most successful projects to come out of that program, including Rude and Cube.

He then went on to conquer the television world with several series including: Our Hero, An American in Canada, The Newsroom, Puppets Who Kill, How to Be Indie, Little Mosque on the Prairie, Almost Heroes, Connor Undercover, Spun Out, Schitt's Creek, The Good Witch, Kids in the Hall, Shelved, and One More Time.

His filmmaking life came full circle in 2014 with the release of his feature documentary on Toronto's 1970's punk and cultural history, The Last Pogo Jumps Again, co-directed with filmmaker Kire Paputts.

His seminar Writing to Budget has been presented at the Directors Guild of Canada and WIFT. He has taught at Ryerson (now Metropolitan University), as well as being a guest speaker at York University, the University of Toronto, LIFT, and across Canada at film co-ops in Toronto, Halifax, Winnipeg, and Vancouver.

As of May 2025 he is a writer and the Executive Producer of "Nash the Slash Rises Again!" a feature documentary on his late friend, the iconoclastic Toronto musician Jeff "Nash the Slash" Plewman.