Vigil took three

years to complete

From pase VW

day-old Globe atl Maal, and it was dike a piece of home.
because we had been backpacking for tear months So 1
grabbed it and there it was in the Entertainment section. f
think J had a tecling of not knowing and missing out and
teching kind of ripped off. Jr did sort of moris ate me, so |
decided to write a story about people who wanted ta go.

MV: Were you a big fan of Kurt Cobain?

JM: Oh veah. [just fove music and the end ofthe "SOs
and the beginning of the “90s werg just so terrible. There’s
a scene in the movie where they pull outa top ten list and
there’s Vanilla Tee and Milli Vanilli. It’s an actual top ten
list trom the first week of “94 and it just makes vour skin
crawl now. I think REM is on there but everything else is
like Michae! Bolton, Garth Brooks.

MV: [I’m holding up a small poster from the film’s
press kit} Don’t Come If You Pine For A Vanilla Ice
Comeback Tour.

JM: We wanted to get word out about the film and we
dida’t want to put, ‘Come if you
like...” so we thought who don’t
we want to come? [t’s a much
bigger audience, right? So we
had ‘Don’t come if vou want to
give your daughter a makeover.”
or ‘Ponce got fired trom an ice-
cream palace for overscooping.”
These are quotes trom the film.
MV: I thought maybe it was a
quote from Kurt Cobain
or something.

JM: No, that’s a quote
from one of the char-
acters in the film.
Actually it’s 2 true

Director Justin story trom one of my
MacGregor... friends who's a lawyer.
Premiering film —_He got fired from a job
at festival. for over-scooping the ice

cream.

MV: From Big Scoop by any chance?

JM: I probably shouldn’r name it.

-MV: “Apparently Shakespeare sucks now.”

JM: That’s also from the film, because apparently if you
go to English Departments now-a-days, Shakespeare sucks.
MV: I’m looking forward to the film very much.
I'm really an independent film fan and I know how
difficult it is in Vancouver to make an independent

JM: Ok yeah, it’s been almost three years to the day. I
started writing it as a novella for the three day novel writ-
ing contest, in Sept. °95. I look back and think 37
months! And we're just showing it for the first. time!

MV: How did you raise the money for it?

JM: We got $20,000 from the B.C. Arts Council. We
got it in the can for $33,000 dollars. We phoned people
up and said “We know you have $1,000. Give it up!” I
think when we were on day five of the shoot I had $2,000
left in the bank, and we needed $12,000 to get us through
the last day. We raised that moncy the same day. I don’t
like to think about the kind of karma that’s helped us out.
You know, I don’t want to jinx it? It’s been really lucky.
My sister gave me $5,000 and ‘my little brother. Then we
brought people to set and said, ‘See, we can’t keep it
going without more money!”

Like I said — [’m looking forward to this one.

The last screening of The Vigil is tomorrow, October
3rd at 4:30 p.m at the Paradise Theatre.

Journey We

Contrituting Writer

WHEN director Sturla Gunnarsson
read Rohinton Mistry’s novel Such
a Long Journey, he was captivated
by it’s rich imagery and extraordi-
nary vision and knew it could be
translated into a remarkable film.

He was stunned, though, to be recening:
standing ovanon trom his reflow
Vancouverites after the showing of lis alin
last Saturday afternoon

Maria Verdicchio: So is this the first
tine you've been back in Vancouver for a
while?

SG: My mother fives here. and all of my
in-laws live here, and [work out here a tot. 1
come here probably three times a year at
least.

MV: I first heard your name from a
friend of mine who told me about Such a
Long Journey before you left to film in
Bombay. Then I kept hearing your name
everywhere, and one day I was watching
a great documentary called Gerrie and
Louise and as the credits rolled there was
your name and I thought who is this per-
son?

So then last February I read an article
about the filming of Sucl a Long Journey

in Bombay, and scme of the trials
and tribulations you faced. Can
you tell me a bit about that?

SG: First of ali, when [came home and read that article

I was stunned, and [ thought that doesn’t sound like

the film I worked on. I was disappointed. He sort of

outlined all the problems we had, but every film pro-

duction is in a perpetual state of crisis, that's normal.

What he didn’t capture was the kind joy and fun it was. We

had a ball! It’s really tough, it’s on the other side of the planet
and there isn’t an hour in the day when business hours overlap,
it’s a different language, a different culture, different religion and
a whole different kind of cosmology — things don’t happen the
same way, they really don’t.

Even the sense of causality — it just doesn’t function that
way. V.S. Naipul described India as a functioning anarchy, which
is what it’s like. Every time you sort of think you've got things
worked out it falls apart on you and then a miracle occurs and it
works out. That’s what the making of the film was.

Bombay has 16 million people, half of them live on the strect.
People drive with their hand on the horn — it’s like insects with
their sonar. It’s noisy, it’s polluted, it’s sheer chaos, but the peo-
ple there are so great. They have a tremendous spirit.

Making che film was a gift because of the kind of humanity
that we were exposed to, and my kids still miss it. You step out-
side of your hotel, and there it is, right! Hundreds of thousands
of pcople you have to deal with. At first you can’t even see it. It
takes a week or two because it looks like a wash of some generic
third world image you have in your head and then little by litde
you start to see details. You start to see that it’s not all that bad a
hovel, there’s a nice floor, and there’s a little shrine in there and
you begin to differentiate between different peoples and districts.
I drove the same road every day for five months and I never got
bored. There’s always something going on. Does that sort of
answer your question?

MV: Yes, it does because after reading the article, it did
sound quite horrific.

SG: Yeah, it sounded like a nighamare! He was a political
writer, not an entertainment writer and was intoxicated by the
drama of these Canadians up against it filming in India. It was
really disrespectful too of our hosts.

Rupert a return to roots

Maria Verdicchio
Contributing Writer

“JT have a question. Was that marijuana
real?”

This is how the question period started for director
Johnathan Tammuz, after the premiere screening of
his film Rapert’s Land, last Sunday ar the Ridge.

“It could have been real. We had an offer from
the B.C. Hemp society. It was very tempting, but
after reflecting upon it we decided it was worthwhile
recreating it from a model. So they provided us with
all the equipment, but the plants themselves were
actually man-made.”

Also present with Tammuz at the screening were
writer Graeme Manson, and actor Gabrielle Miller.
Tammuz trained at the National Film and TV
Schoo! in England as a directing student after com-
pleting a psychology degree at Brunel University. In
1990 he was nominated for an Academy Award for his short Te

. Childeater. He went on to direct several dramatic and documen-
tary projects in the UK as well as the feature Minotaur in 1996.

“The idea for Rupert’s Land was mentioned to me ata party
four years ago. The concept that really attracted me in the begin-
ning was nothing more than two half-brothers, who've not scen
each other since early childhood, meeting 20 years later to go to

Tammuz was
nominated for
Academy Award
in 1990.

their father’s funeral in the Canadian outback.” A
year and a half later he optioned Graeme Manson’s
script and they were a team.
“Do you think the audience liked it?” Manson asked
me sheepishly. Hoots of laughter rippled throughout
the packed theatre, again and again, as the audience
watched the black comedy. “Yes, they definitely
enjoyed it”, L assured him. He nods, “I let during
the screening” he explains.
Manson’s inspiration for the story came from spend-
ing summers working in Prince Rupert, his love of
British comedy, and the road itself between
Vancouver and Prince Rupert. Manson returned to
Vancouver last year, after studying at the Canadian
Film Centre in Toronto, to see his first screenplay
produced.
The story follows two half brothers, reunited after 20
years. Rupert (Samucl West), a straight-laced British
lawyer, and Dale (Ian Tracey), a hard luck B.C. fish-
erman, set off on 3 journey of rediscovery as they drive to their
father’s funeral in Prince Rupert. It seems that the only thing the
brothers have in common is their dead father, as the nwo try to
get reaquainted and come to terms with the past.

Rupert’s return to his roots quickly becomes a lot more than
he bargained for, with his bizarre lost family in tow including,
Dale’s mother Trudy (Susan Hogan), who’s only interest is in

Friday, October 2, 1998 - North Shore News — 31

rth the wait

All the details were accurate, it wasn’t inaccurate, it’s just chat
he didn’t get the fact that we were laughing instead of crying
more often. [t was very tense. You lived so intensely there.

MV: Being a documentary filmmaker must have helped
filming in that situation.

SG: We were not intimidaced by it. We filmed in the red light
district which is controlled by the Goombahs (Mafia types).
There is no rule of law there.

We used the real girls and the house in the film, and we also
shot in the thieves market where stolen cars get dismantled. It’s
not like here, you can’t control it, you can’t “own” the strect,
you don’t have off-duty policemen to help, you're thrown into
the middle of it and you have to make it work. That’s where the
miracles occur because things aren’t pertect, you can’t do what
you had in mind, but whaz presents itself is even better.

MV: Spur of the moment filmmaking.

SG: Yeah! I've always found that subjects that interest me are
the stories where you have that intersection between biography
and history, and where you're dealing with a personal story in a
broader sort of political historical context.

This, less so than a lot of my films, but this story takes place
on the eve of the Pakistan /India war which resulted in the cre-
ation of Bangladesh. It’s also a story which takes place at what's
considered the end of innocence in India at a time when people
started to become aware of the political corruption going on. It’s
being told through the eyes of'a man who’s a lowly bank clerk
who ends up disillusioned with the system he’s living in.

In Geetie and Louise the wwo characters are in a bizarre love
story set against the backdrop of the collapse of Apartheid and
the war crimes tribunal. Those are the things that interest me.

Such a Long Journcy is a fictional story though, like in the The
Diary of Evelyn Las. | approached that like a documentary, to
try and be truthful. The truth is more interesting than what peo-
ple tell you matters. If you look at the truth long enough and
hard enough you can put it up there and it will be dramatic and
it will more interesting than what all the scicenwriting gurus tell
you you're supposed to do.

Such a Long Journey will be released in theatres before
Christmas. It is definitely worth the wait.

Red Sky inment
Rupert's Land opens Canada-wide later this month.

getting a piece of her late ex-husband’s estate, her old flame and
dead husband’s best friend Bloat (George Wendt), and Dale’s
pregnant fiancee Shelley (Gabrielle Miller), who's lett him for his
dope-growing landlord.

“What F liked about the film, is that essentially it’s a fairly seri-
ous drama about a dysfunctional family and at the same time it’s
a comedy, and, for me, that’s a most wonderful combination. I
love the interplay of the drama and comedy. I love the washroom
scene for the dramatic, I like the drunk driving scene, the Solstice
party scene. I kind of like the horse even though he gave me a
terrible time — his agent promised a Jot more than he could
deliver”, adds Tammuz.

Rupert’s Land will be released at the end of October.

NEWS photos Maria Verdicchio

Director Sturla Gunnarsson'’s film Such a Long Journey opened the
Vancouver international Fitm Festival last week in a gala presentation.

aoe

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