r Ma CARPET SALES, CLEANING & REPAIRS f Shenasi Carpe me COMNEr 1199 North Van thi Kenneth Sherman's The Time Being Pit North Shore pair gets exposure in new film “Just as many people who claim a belief in God disprove it with their every act, so too there are those whose every deed, though they say there is no God, is an act of faith.” — Charles Ludlum This quote precedes one of the shorts I saw at the recent Vancouver International Film Festival. Kenneth Sherman’s The Time Being is about one man’s search to come to terms with the finality of his partner’s death and the loss of love due to AIDS. It’s a touching, visually innovative film, combining video, 16mm, and Super 8 in both black and white and color, with powerful performances by two North Shore actors, Todd McGillivray and Donny McWilliams. Todd McGillivray: This was shor almost two years ago as Kenneth’s 20-minute graduate piece at Emily Carr, but as we shot it he really liked it, and ended up with almost three hours, which was cut into 52 minutes. Donny McWilliams: He didn’t have a lor of money to put into it and wanted to find people with little experience to give exposure to. Hats off to Kenneth. He had such a great crew working with him. They were all picked from his class, or peo- ple he knew. The director of photography was fabulous. You'll see when you watch the film, how beautiful it looks, the lighting, everything. MV: How did you become involved in it? DM: An open casting call. I remember talking to Kenneth about it. He got a lot of phone calls and when people found out what it was about they wanted to stay away from it. They _ had so many reasons — one guy even went so far as to say that body wasn’t in as good a shape as a gay man’s — he assumed that all gay men work. out. Like, why couldn’t they just say they were uncomfortable? ‘TM: (Laughs) Which is funny because when you see the film, I’m not in shape. » 1000 carpets imported from Iran, India, and China. DM: There’s akways a lot of interest: when there’s an open casting call, but as soon as they find out they have to play a gay man they shy away. MV: They’re afraid of being typecast? DM: Or, maybe they’re just not comfortable with what it is they’re doing. as an actor you should jump at the opportu- nity to do anything, especially something as good as this. MV: Tell me a bit about your backgrounds. TM: Well, Donny’s the movie star. Actually from this film, you may not be able to see all his talents, but he’s an incred- ible actor. We're trying to start a theatre company with a few other people. I have done mostly theatre. I just did a Fringe pay cal Faking fe that got pretty good reviews. Donny, you also come from a theatre background? DM: I'd like to. I’ve only done a little bit. Theatre has always been a real passion for me, but the commitment and under- standing of what it would take wasn’t there until I moved into the city. See, 1 came from a small farming town just outside of Ottawa, and would drive once a week from Ottawa to Toronto to attend an acting class, MV: How did this film affect you? DM: Like I said, I come from a smail town where there’s a lor of bigotry and discrimination towards basically everybody except those living in the town. So I was pretty naive to the whole thing, but I knew in my heart it was a good project. I had to do quite a bit of research, and it wasn’t what I expect- ed. It really opened my eyes to a bunch of really great people, who are struggling with something that they have no contro! over. Something I realized after meeting these people is that I don’t have half the amount of love in my body that they do. MV: So you went and spoke to people who have AIDS? DM: Yea, it was hard to find people who THIS WEEK’S PICKS: "4. 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During the Walk for AIDS, I was down there hitting all the booths trying to find out wi ho I could talk to, and they helped me out. TM: There was a play that I did many years ago, where I played a homosexual pediatrician. So 1 went down to the PWA society and they couldn't find anybody who would talk to me. Finally, one of their workers came forward, who had HIV, and I spent eight hours talking to him. He had talked about his relationships, family life, work, and how one day he was walking across the Burrard Street Bridge, and stopped in the middle, and stood there for about 10 minutes — then kept on walking. Now that’s something we never think of. TM: We both had concerns about playing our parts as truth- fully as we could, and being heterosexual, and understanding what it’s about. You don’t want + insult ‘anybody. We found when we were shouting a lot of zhe time it was just the two of us, and then in this party scene we were surrounded by people we didn’t know, and we were pretty nervous, but we really bonded not as actors but as people, because we were both in the same situation. MV: You both secm to be very proud of this film? DM: Yea, but that’s why we didn’t want to do many inter- See Sherman page @ CRITICS’ MPAA THEME VIOLENCE COARSE SEX & LANG. N RATING UDITY ‘PG-13"- action” “mild: PG-13 comedy some + PG13" comedy... R thriller * BG-19 “adventure R comedy much “4 P43.” comedy: mild. PG-13 thriller = =much much “(PG adventure - some «: “some: R action lots Saad some “some . lots “much. lots some... “much *: mild kk 2s much much * Over. 40 .000 Tapes * * *3 Floors of f Videos * Huge selection of Japanese animation * * Over 800 Laser discs * * SEGA, Nintendo, SuperNintendo & Nintendo 64* ° RENT 2 TEMS & * Hundreds of 8-movies in stock * “Drive-in” Ciassics from the 50s, 60s, & 70s?