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.

The Flurries of February

Batten down the hatches...

I knew February was going to be intense, but so much seems to be happening all at once now that our (really well-reviewed!) album has been launched this week, the film is poised to close the Rendez-vous festival tomorrow night and then is scheduled to come out in Quebec theatres next Friday - with a preview screening this Monday thrown in for good measure ...

Marked by the opening of the Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois and interview requests starting to trickle in from across Canada, finishing the French version of the film (have I mentioned how really good it is?), hammering out the finicky details of the poster in both official languages, preparing the film's coming out in Quebec and then R.O.C., this whole, foreshortened month of my birth as well as my film's, has been a breathtaking whirlwind.

But the winds of whirl turned up to hurricane force this past week...

Our young star Julia and her fabulous mom, Sue (notably referred to as "Ju and Sulia" by yours truly during a thank you speech recently!) landed in town on Tuesday just in time for the album launch party. Then along with Macha and Barbara, we spent the next day doing a carousel of multi-media interviews at a great Mile End diner called Nouveau Palais. You have to be in it to believe it, but the game of musical chairs they call a "press junket" I can only liken to "speed dating" - of marathon proportions.

For Julia and I, this was our first press junket experience. So we were both a bit nervous. But at the end of that long day (10 am to 3:30 pm) of sitting in a booth in front of one journalist, telling our story into a microphone (or cell phone, or camera), getting the tap from Mélanie Mingotaud (publicist extraordinaire) to get up and move to the next booth and start all over again... after doing that ad inifinitum all day, we were naturally exhausted. But also, exhilarated.

For the most part, it seemed that the journalists really wanted to talk about the film. Many of them talked to us about their experience watching the film, how they felt, what touched them. Unless these reporters are better actors than my actors - whose performances many of them noted are downright remarkable - I think there was a very positive vibe in the room. Okay, those warm, homemade mango-cranberry muffins supplied by Nouveau Palais might have softened a few of the crustier types up, but all in all, if this HAD been a speed-dating event, I'm pretty sure we would have got lucky!

Since then, it's been a non-stop sprint toward the first of our many imminent finish lines, the closing night gala screening of our film tomorrow. This "closing" marks our beginning... the first time our film will go out in the world, on its own. In the flurries of February.

I feel nervous and protective and excited. I'm trying very hard to stay "in the moment". Every single one of the many million of them. Wanting to soak all of this goodness, all this newness, up.

There is only ever one "first time". And so far, mine has been ALREADY been all I could hope for - and more....

Happy Birthday, little movie. I love you and wish you, many, many happy (box office) returns.

Swinging Both Ways

In the wake of Arcade Fire's now infamous French/English thank you speech at the Grammys AND the sound mix of the frankly fantastic French version of our film, let me tell you, "Bi" is in, baby!

Okay, time for full disclosure here - I've always been straight. Always liked my movies the old-fashioned way : original, the way the creator intended them. Don't give me any of this foreign monkey business - laying strangers' voices over actor's faces. It's just wrong. And downright unnatural.

Here in Quebec, this kind of thing is a far more common occurrence than many of you living in less "bi-friendly" places may realize. For example, all the big Hollywood films are dubbed into French by local actors so that when Tom Cruise or Julia Roberts or Brad Pitt opens their mouth, someone else's voice and language and even breathing comes out!

Lots of people are fine with that. But for my money, even if the whole movie's in Serbo-Croatian, it's always better to experience the original version with subtitles. That way, even if the specific meaning of their words escapes me, I still hear the actual actors' voices, intonations, colours, subtleties. So I can rest assured that the original intentions of the people on the screen - and behind the scenes - are intact.

Well yesterday, I took a walk on the wild side and have to come clean about something ...

It's actually not so bad once you try it.

But - and this is a big but - it really depends on WHO you try it with.

And as I understand it, ours was not your run-of-the-mill dabble in alternatives. This one was special. Yes, we had a wonderful director and team taking care of us. And yes, we had great actors who specialize in the very particular art of oral filmmaking - the most outstanding of whom is Macha who can actually "dub" herself...

But the final outcome still goes far beyond just a reasonable French "copy" of the original. It is instead, its very own, original "version" of the original. With its very own particular charms and subtleties and delights. The French version of our English film is, in my wide-eyed opinion, every bit as faithful to the creator's intentions as the original.

And like I say, it all depends on who you do "it" with. There's no doubt in my mind that this first experience and the finished product was largely so gratifying and successful because Barbara never once lost sight of the film's essence, never once let go of any step in the process - from the translation to the casting to the performance. Not a single detail. Along with a team that was able to rise to this rather unprecedented challenge, she achieved what could be, and hopefully will still become, the gold standard for this necessary step in our national cinema - creating a living, second language alternative that can stand toe to toe with the original. And offer up its own set of goodies for those in the club.

Dolly has a line in our film that goes something like this: "I don't care if you're black or white. Or both. I don't care if you're gay or straight, bisexual or whatever... Whatever you are, just be that. And be good at it!".

As usual, Dolly has her finger on the right pulse...

An Offspring is Born!

...or at least, delivered...

Early this week I packed my car with a very small but precious cargo, printed out a Google map and drove very carefully, following many convoluted directions, to a barren building on the side of an industrial freeway just outside of Montreal.

I protected my thin little bundle from the frigid winter winds by holding it under my coat all the way across the vast parking lot. Once we got inside the building, I carefully cradled it in the palm of my hands, transporting it across the lobby, up the stairs and through the doors to a non-descript office, where I personally handed off the MASTER of our soundtrack to the woman who will see that it goes forth and multiplies - into many beautiful, bouncing CD's!

What this all means, is that the OFFICIAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK of The Year Dolly Parton Was My Mom featuring Dolly Parton, Nelly Furtado, Martha Wainwright, Coral Egan, The Wailin' Jennys, Geneviève Toupin and Luc Sicard's original score will be obtainable, listenable, available to everyone by February 22nd - four days before the film premieres at Les Rendezvous du cinéma québécois!

The long and completely joyous process of "building" this creation officially came to an end last Sunday night when Luc and I finished the mastering of the album with the mother of all masterers Ryan Morey (check him out at: http://www.ryebreadmastering.net/, he's worked on some of the most groundbreaking indie albums of our time).

And now, in a matter of a few short weeks, it's all going to be out there for the listening... and the talking about.... across the whole country.

Stay tuned here and on the Facebook fan page for exclusive sneak previews of some of the coolest cuts COMING SOON!