Happy Anniversary

One year ago, we wrapped principal photography on The Year Dolly Parton Was My Mom. On a secondary highway about an hour and a half outside of Winnipeg in the rain and fading light, we shot our final scene of the film - and of the whole production.

Even though I remember that moment like it was yesterday, so much has transpired in the 365 days or so since. But now, quite appropriately, a year later we are marking our first year production anniversary by heading back to the Peg - to where it all wrapped up. With a finished film tucked under our seat - or in the overhead bin, I'm not sure... Where does one stow a 35 mm print representing the labour of love of so many people over so many months and years? Truth be told, it deserves a seat in first class.

One way or another, the film is finally going home. Going home to the other half of cast and crew that helped create it. With the exception of our dear co-producer, Liz Jarvis, none of the Manitobans have seen the fruits of their labours yet! So I am totally looking forward to our cast and crew screening at the Cinematheque next week - to show the film of course, but also to see these amazing people again! Because through all the film's "coming out" moments these past months, we've been missing them. We've been accepting credit and compliments in their stead. The whole experience hasn't felt really and truly complete as long as the Winnipeg group hasn't been part of it.

So, full circle here we come! And after our private screening, the film will play for the rest of the week at the Cinematheque in the Peg - with hopes of staying on a little longer if luck and numbers are on our side. If Manitoban hospitality is anything to go by, I think it will have a long and very happy stay!

P.S. Has anyone seen a missing blog post titled "Priceless"? It was last seen in this very spot - until sometime on May 13 (Friday, May 13 that is) when it up and disappeared without a trace. If you find this post which is of sentimental value to its owner, kindly contact us at: info@palomarfilms.com

New(s) Cycle

Okay, so I'm throwing my own bulletin into what is arguably the biggest mother of all news days in recent memory.

That's right, I'm choosing this very noisy news moment to jump in to the fray even though my little blurb can't hope to be heard over the reports of the long-awaited capture/assassination/burial-at-sea of the World's Most Wanted Man. Nor can it hold a candle to the Orange Wave blowing political winds of change (and shamelessly mixed metaphors) across an unexpectedly electrified Canadian electorate. In fact, it probably can't even stand toe to toe with whatever "shocking" thing happened on Celebrity Apprentice last night...

But share it I will, because my news is really more like a feeling. An intuition if you will - based on anecdotal, if carefully catalogued, observations. Coming off the circuit of Canadian cinema these last few months, I'm getting the feeling like there might be the first whisperings of a gentle, yet persistent shift in perception...

And if you listen very closely - that's it, with your ear pressed firmly to the ground or the tree - you too might hear the earliest, most primordial creakings and yawnings of a new trend emerging. In one word, that trend is ...

Chicks.

Canuck Chicks, to be geographically exact. Making movies. Gaining in numbers and recognition and respect. Starting, slowly but surely, to take their rightful place in this country's cinematic landscape.

Case in point: In these last few weeks alone, no less than FOUR feature films by Canadian female writer/directors have opened in Canadian (and some U.S.) cinemas : From Katrin Bowen's "Amazon Falls" to Deborah Chow's "High Cost of Living" to Penelope Buitenhuis' "A Wake" to you know who's film, it's slowly starting to feel like women's voices and views are occupying a slightly more proportionate amount of theatrical real estate than ever before! Maybe the captain of the Orange Wave, Jack Layton's whole "proportional representation" thing is catching on in more than just the political arena...

Anyway, as "Dolly" leaves Regina and Charlottetown and heads to Ottawa - with stops tonight in Vaudreuil-Dorion, Friday in Hudson, before moving on to Winnipeg in June, etc. - it feels more and more like we're coming home.

Second Acts Can Suck

Notoriously the hardest chunk of story for any writer to tame, the daunting spectre of the Second Act often looms like a large and blurry bête noire between the Snappy Opening of the First Act and the Satisfying Ending of the Third. Between those distinct narrative bookends that are usually the first to form themselves in the writer's mind - because these are the things that get them juiced and keep them going when the going gets tough - lies the vast, often arid, seemingly unnavigable land of The Middle.

Its name alone is an onomatopoeic omen of the murky challenges to come: "middle" is so perilously close to its ambiguous cousin, "muddle". And not too genetically far removed from "muffle", "waffle" and thus, "wander"...

And so, it is often the place where a good story can go astray. Or, at the very least, lose steam.

Popular wisdom goes that, in order to avoid these classic Second Act pitfalls, there is just one prescription: Raise the stakes. Throw increasingly bigger obstacles in the protagonist's way.

In other words, put your hero(ine) up a tree. And then proceed to throw rocks at him/her. Start with pebbles, go to gravel, continue to work your way through the various geological mineral formations and finish with a nice, fat bolder.

According to the pundits, that'll keep the narrative moving through the marshy, mushy landscape of The Middle to usher the story artfully and effectively to its ultimately satisfying Third Act.

Here then, is about where the river stones should start coming at us. Having sailed through our opening act of major openings in Montreal, Toronto, and most recently Vancouver, our film's theatrical life is now hitting the middle of its story.

With many scheduled, if limited engagements coming up in various places across Canada, we are entering a hopefully long and steady second act. And happily for the sake of sustaining tension in the story, despite generally fantastic press and good word of mouth, all our efforts to build audiences and box office in our snappy First Act are being challenged by the movie-going audience's increasingly solicited entertainment dollar and sundry other sticks and stones in the Second Act.

Duly following the prescription for a tight, tense narrative though, we have raised the stakes by also trying to navigate our way through the unchartered and sometimes mystifying territory of the international festival circuit. And according to the rules of good storytelling, we are still winding up in more valleys than peaks, but on we trek - jumping from tree to tree and working on our stone-dodging techniques.

Homing In

Vancouver welcomed me with clearing skies and shimmering seas. And cherry blossoms, like pink popcorn lacing the trees.

This town always seduces me and turns me into a bit of a pastoral sap. It lifts my spirit. Fills my lungs with fresh, tangy air and my head with visions of a healthy lifestyle and a hard body. When the sun is shining, the ocean is pungent and the mountains are lording it over all us latté loving Vancouverites, the only thing we want to do is be out in it.

But when it's raining - where better to be than out of it and in a cinema? Keeping dry and dreaming different dreams... Right?

I hope. I hope for rain. All weekend. For we open our film here on Friday and it's not been an easy Spring for the Lower Mainland. Beautiful weekend weather would be a box office death knell.

Since I have absolutely no control over the weather however, I came out here a bit early to press some palms and plaster some posters around my old hometown.

So far, my door to door director schtick has mostly been met with a very laid-back nod, a half-smile and a casual point to where I can put up the poster wherever I go. In contrast to Montreal or even Toronto, where it would cost me a good half an hour every stop because people were so eager to talk about the film, my role in it, what it was about... Maybe because this is a bit more of an industry town, people take films and their makers more in stride. Sort of like patrons in a Los Angeles restaurant finding out their waiter is really an actor....

Anyway, so far, that part has been very sociologically interesting - not unpleasant, but not on fire either. The flip side of this, though. is the reaction we've had from acting schools, filmmaking students, filmmaking collectives and local press... There is a real hunger in those circles for the stories behind making movies. And I've already been met and welcomed into a very vibrant fold of filmmakers - spearheaded by people like Paul Armstrong of the Celluloid Social Club, Javier of Raindance (a filmmakers' networking organization originating in Britian and making its way across Canada to Montreal). At their event on Monday, I met Katrin Bowen, writer/director and one-woman powerhouse behind the lauded film, "Amazon Falls" which débuted at TIFF last year and is opening in Vancouver April 15th - an exciting event to which yours truly got invited!

Also this week Julia's mom, Sue Chappel has been gathering likeminded people together for a sort of film-y "salon" at her place on Thursday night, not to mention organizing and throwing the after-party with husband Wayne in honour of our first night's screening on Friday. Sue's sort of like a den mother/mentor/booster to many burgeoning actors, writers, directors here in town and has also hooked me up with an inspiring young man, Julian LeBlanc (alias "Gossip Boy") who is on the rise as an actor and filmmaker but also as a strong voice for Canadian cinema on his blog of the same alias.

Finally but not leastly, my terrific publicist Bonne Smith has created many media opportunities for me here even though she's based in Toronto. If the stimulating, in-depth interviews I've had to date are anything to go by, well then there is actually more to Vancouver than meets the eye. And already, what an eye-full!

Dispatches from a Door-to-Door Director

By far the best part of promoting the film has been the face-to-face part...

After shaking hands and kissing babies all the way around the Cineplex that's showing our film here in Montreal (held over now for a fourth week!), I loaded my poster-ettes, my CD's and my thermos into my car and hit my 401.

I arrived at Toronto's Cumberland theatre in time to see people getting seated - and man, were there ever a lot of seats. In fact, the seats outnumbered the people about 6 to 1. But what they lacked in numbers, the people made up for in enthusiasm and warmth. Only two people left when the credits ended, everyone else stayed behind for the Q & A session after. It was lively, engaged and engaging. And then even after that, people came to talk to me one on one - and buy a CD of the soundtrack.

Nonetheless, the low attendance on our "opening night" in the T-dot had taken its toll... Holed up in my hotel room the next day with a bad cold, ear infection and tender morale, the last thing I felt like doing was venturing out into the naked city to show my blotchy face - let alone engage with anyone. But I needed an espresso something bad, so finally my taste for caffeine triumphed over my pride and off I set - grabbing my bag of posterettes on my way out the door...

And in less than an hour, I'd not only put up four posters in busy shops, but met a fellow filmmaker who's got a company called Sharona Films, met a fellow prairie girl hailing from Winnipeg who invited me to another Winnipeg'ers art opening that afternoon and Joanne Kim, who owns City Bakery next to the hotel, and has the warmest, most open smile of any human I know.

And she has a running group! After I signed a poster-ette to hang on Joanne's "wall of fame" just above the coffee condiments, she told me she was going running the next morning with her group, going for brunch, then taking them to see my movie.

We then spent some time swapping titles of our other favourite "sleeper" films we'd discovered by happenstance (hers is "Unthinkable", mine "Junebug"). I polished off the best avocado, hummus, brie sandwich on multi-grain in town and headed out to find the gallery where Winnipeg artist, Janet Werner was opening her show.

When I walked into that gallery, the woman I'd met in the bakery was there with her daughter, holding the poster-ette I'd given her and talking about our meeting to a circle of - as it turns out - other prairie girls! We're everywhere!

After chatting to them for a bit, about the movie and other stuff, I had to get back to the hotel to meet Brad Horvath (my first door to Dolly) for a "congratulatory" drink before presenting the film at the Cumberland again. At the bar, I took out a poster-ette to sign for his office and the bartender came over exclaiming, "The Year Dolly Parton Was My Mom! That's the movie my girls want to see! We saw the trailer last night and they said, 'Daddy, can we go to see that?'"

I mentioned that if he didn't want to disappoint those moppets with impeccable taste he would have to hurry, because it was likely the film would not be playing long. He brushed my worry aside and asked if I would sign a posterette for his girls. He ran out to the lobby and came back with a Sharpie. Then offered us another drink - on the house. No self-respecting door-to-door director should ever turn down a free drink but alas, I had to get to the theatre.

Buoyed by all this good will and synchronicity, I jumped in a taxi and sped to the Cumberland...

Where the seat-to-people ratio was even higher than the night before. The valiant, seriously outnumbered people who had come out, stuck together though and every single one of them stayed afterward to participate in another lively, even longer Q & A. And I sold twice as many CD's as the night before!

Despite the dismal box office, I still drove out of Toronto the Trying the next day, the trunk of my car - and my heart - lighter than when I drove in. All because of the people.

Missing Metaphors

Try as I might (and I really have tried), I just cannot come up with a better way to describe the whole process of writing, directing and promoting a feature film than the old tried and true saw: It's a lot like having a baby.

As dramatic as it may sound, child birth seems to be the most appropriate metaphor to explain what a life-changing, all-absorbing experience it really is.

Even though I am not a mother myself in the biological sense, I do have enough friends and family who are mothers to know that once you have a child you are constantly inhabited on some level by the responsibility, love, concern and yes, guilt you feel toward that child. That helpless being you brought into the world haunts your consciousness 24-7. Its welfare is the last thing you think of before you fall asleep at night and the first thing you think of when you wake up in the morning.

Such is the experience of making and then nurturing an independent film. In fact, so many parallels can be drawn between parenting and low-budget filmmaking that no other metaphor comes close to being a viable contender. So I've surrendered myself to just going with it...

However that logic does break down when you consider that even after gestating the film for an unbelievable six years, it still ends up in an incubator as soon as it enters the world.... its life literally hanging in the balance from the second it's born.

And you wonder, how can something seemingly so "ripe in the womb" still be so incredibly fragile once it finally emerges?

Then again, they say it takes a village to raise a child.... And everyone knows how hard it is in this day and age to rally a whole village to take care of any one thing, let alone someone else's baby.

Okay, there's that damn metaphor again.

Don't get me wrong, plenty of people - family, friends and strangers alike have already gone out of their way, dropping by to see the "baby" during visiting hours. Almost all have had warm, positive and emotional reactions to it. They've written newspaper articles about it. Featured it on t.v., radio and the web. They've wanted to know more about it, about how it was made, about what hopes we have for its future, about how it makes them feel. They wish it well. They tell their friends about it.

It's been a joyous, but equally tenuous, time. The reality is that incubators are at a premium in this country and our visiting hours have already been cut back. Only a week into its life and I know my "baby's" days are numbered.

So like any mother would, I lay awake at night - still counting my many blessings - but wondering if there's something - anything - more that I should have done, or that I still can do, to keep my baby alive... No metaphor intended!

Yet Another Eve

Poised for another "big step" on this last leg of the filmmaker's journey, I feel like I really should have written about the previous "big step" while the afterglow was still hovering at nuclear levels. Because, frankly by now I'm a little strung out about what's around the corner...

So before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let's just dwell a little on the past, shall we? It's nice and warm and cozy there...

Our "world premiere" was last Saturday night when the film made its début by closing our beloved Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois festival. The "big" theatre at the local Cineplex was full of well-wishers and warm smiles worn by friends, family and fellow filmmakers. The best way to bring our baby into the world really.

After the big love fest that was our "premiere" faded into memory and hangovers, some advance press - positive at best, benign at worst - came out and naive, novice filmmaker that I am, I thought that was it - the ultimate test... And it was feeling like we passed.

Not so fast.

If you're lucky and the press has been paying attention (which we are and it has), then the day or two before the film takes up official residence in its respective theatres, early reviews start coming out. Yup, just like in the movies.

And the calls and the emails and the posts start flying... we got 3 stars here, 3.5 stars there, oh don't read that one, you'll see stars - and not the good kind... Yup, just like in the cartoons.

But even though my head is swirling with stars and a few scars, I'm more buoyed by the many, "real-people reviews" we received after our premiere and "word-of-mouth" advance screenings last week... If all the unsolicited, often emotional outpourings of comments are anything to go by, the film actually touches a lot of people. It makes a lot of very different kinds of people feel a lot of things - good things.

And I've been lucky enough to be there to hear both men and women, young and old talk about it. That's like a spa for my tired, but now satisfied soul. And it's already more than worth what it took to get this little story told.