Tie VICTORIA PARK

In the Year of the on By Marc Glassman

It is one of those hot summer afternoons when we Canucks don't feel comfortable in our own skins. You could fry an egg on Augusta Street, as an old Toronto saying might go, only neither Don McKellar nor I want an omelette. All we want to do is beat the heat. The local citizenry is out in force. Kensington Market is writhing in the humidity. Bicyclists are dipsy-doodling around the inline skaters who are bursting through the cars and the pedestrians in this crowded downtown corridor. Greengrocers and haberdashers are hawking their wares. As we walk, people nod at Don, a local for many years. A woman in a sequined tank top and cut-off jeans looks

TAKE ONE 11 Last Night. On the last day on earth, Sandra Oh (above) plays a woman just trying to get home to her husband.

at Don and says, "Loved the show, man." Night Gala spot; the aforementioned Last Returning to McKellar's apartment, a Don smiles wryly, thanks her, and we Night, McKellar's funny and affecting take three-storey walk-up in the market, move on to a restaurant where we are on a millennial apocalypse, opens his new trophy is sitting on a greeted by the waiters with a respect that Perspective Canada; Elimination Dance, a sideboard. Cannes's Prix de la jeunesse, I have never encountered at that skilfully realized short adapted from is its young filmmaker prize and has particular joint before. Michael Ondaatje's grim and funny poem been won by a lot of hot talents over by McKellar, his cohort Bruce McDonald, and the years, ranging from Martin It is a week after Last Night, Don Ondaatje; and The Herd, a NFB docudrama by Scorsese to Spike Lee to Patricia McKellar's first feature film, won the Prix Peter Lynch, which features a delightful Rozema. Occupying a prominent place de la jeunesse at the Cannes Film Festival cameo by McKellar as a repressed in the kitchen is a huge blowup of a and two months after Twitch City, his Depression-era functionary. dissolute-looking Al Waxman. The quirky postslacker comedy series, former "King" of Kensington and star of finished its successful run on CBC-TV. And if all this screen time wouldn't the CBC's most successful conventional Whether he desires it or not, the thin, be enough to swell even the most sitcom from the 1970s was cast as a unconventionally handsome actor, writer sensible of heads, earlier McKellar repulsive bum and murder victim in the and director has become a Toronto media films will also be shown at the first episode of Twitch City. Now star. And the best—or worst, considering festival as part of a salute to the Waxman's new image looms over how shy McKellar often can be—is yet to 10th anniversary of the Canadian McKellar's Kensington digs. come. This September, McKellar is due to Film Centre. His short, Blue, a break an unofficial Toronto International "My character in Twitch City," McKellar cheeky look at skin mags, stag films Film Festival record by appearing in no admits, "is a kind of caricature of a and carpet manufacturing, will be less than four new films in one year. The perception some people might have of shown at the Centre's retrospective Red Violin, the McKellar/Francois Girard- me. It's a joke at my expense. It's the way penned and Girard directed feature about along his first collaboration along I feel some days when I'm at home feeling the life and times of a musical instrument with Girard, the Genie-winning pathetic and full of self-loathing and just over three continents and four centuries biopic, Thirty-two Short Films About sitting in front of the television set eating has garnered the prestigious Opening Glenn Gould. cereal." Curtis, Twitch City's ultimate

12 FALL 1998 g Above: Sandra Oh. Top: Genevieve Bujold.

couch potato, is portrayed by McKellar as discovered during a slightly sleazy figure who will do the shooting of anything to maintain his precarious Twitch City that 7v&-ht lifestyle. When Nathan (Daniel MacIvor), McKellar had never his "obnoxious anal monster" of a seen her in any film roommate, is arrested for killing before, not even in Waxman's hostile, homeless character, Lynne Stopkewich's controversial feature McKellar showed up with a 20-page script Curtis swings into action, bringing in a Kissed. But, as she points out, that's how at McDonald's digs on College Street, then series of crazy tenants to pay the rent. McKellar works. "If you have the right an ethnic and now a trendy area in Nathan's girlfriend, Hope, is allowed to sensibility, he says, 'Why don't you come downtown Toronto. "It was sort of a Twitch stay in the flat, provided she takes care of over and do this thing?'" City-like apartment. Bruce was cutting Curtis, buys the food, cleans the place, [Atom Egoyan's] Speaking Parts and we got and pays rent on the closet which serves The director of Twitch City, Bruce along right away. We had similar tastes in as her minimalist room. McDonald, and McKellar's first meeting a music. He showed me record covers and decade ago mirrors Molly Parker's documentation for Highway 61 and asked Molly Parker, who plays Hope, anecdote. McKellar was appearing in a me to write a script on spec. Well not on acknowledges that, "I'd never done self-penned play at Toronto's Theatre spec—for $100. I remember thinking he had comedy before and I was terrified. When I Passe Muraille when he was introduced to pretty nutty ideas in his initial proposal, like said to Don, 'I don't know why you guys McDonald through a mutual friend, theatre talking dogs as border guards. He gave me wanted me for this part,' he just laughed." director Daniel Brooks. McDonald was tons of stuff, folders full, and asked me to By portraying Hope as someone who is looking for a writer for his first feature film put them together. I thought, 'Should I do "incredibly earnest without seeming silly and McKellar assumed for years after that this or should I try and come up with • or stupid," she injects romance into a he had seen his show at Passe Muraille. "I something I would like myself?' I decided to show that would have seemed cold and just found out a couple of months ago," do it my own way and maybe miss out on precious without her. Parker, who says recalls McKellar, "that Bruce had never the 100 bucks. When I showed it to him, he that Don "makes me laugh all the time; actually seen the play. I don't think he'd really liked it, and I realized that we could he's sort of deadpan and very smart," actually seen anything that I'd written." work together." Don McKellar at work on Last Night.

garnering the 1989 Toronto-Citytv Award different formats, as we had on stage, for Best Canadian Feature Film. Its using documentary elements, reading success allowed production to begin on transcripts and so on, I could achieve a Highway 61, a much slicker road movie. In synthesis that would work for the it, McKellar essays his first starring role as character." Director David Cronenberg's "Pokey Jones," a Thunder Bay barber portrayal of Tom, the carpet man, is who is suckered by big city girl (Valerie chillingly effective. His scenes with Tracy Buhagiar) into driving a corpse filled with Wright, who plays his flirtatious drugs down Highway 61 to New Orleans. secretary, are funny, tense and sexy. They McKellar's script is economical and form the emotional core of the film. funny, and despite McDonald's reluctance McKellar's script carefully delineates the ("Bruce auditioned everyone in town different attitudes of the "bored before me"), McKellar is credible as the housewife" who played in stag films and naive small-town boy who has to wise up Cronenberg's repressed Tom. Porn to survive his road trip. practitioner and consumer meet in Blue's well-constructed and inevitable Soon after Highway 61 hit the festival denouement. circuit, McKellar entered the Canadian Film Centre. His background in theatre After Blue, McKellar was approached by stood him in good stead in his role as an Rhombus producer Niv Fichman to apprentice film director. "I've always co-write Thirty-two Short Films About been open to all kinds of collaborations Glenn Gould with director Francois like the ones I was able to foster in Girard. McKellar was initially fascinated theatre," he observes. McKellar was a and repulsed by the idea of a biographical founding member of the Augusta portrait of the pianist. "When I was Company, a theatrical collective which growing up, while my friends were also included Daniel listening to Pink Floyd, I was in the Brooks and actor basement, stoned, listening to Glenn Tracy Wright. The Gould with the lights off," allows trio's roster of McKellar. "But I thought that it was a t avant-garde plays particularly bad idea to do the life of included 86: An Glenn Gould. A less dynamic subject Autopsy, Wild Life would be difficult to imagine." It was and Indulgence, only when Girard suggested that Gould's IN THE YEAR OF THE DON which was one of life could be structured around thirty-two the signal successes episodes in homage to his famed of the first Toronto recordings of Bach's Goldberg's Variations Fringe Festival. "It was a collective," that McKellar became interested. "We While McKellar was writing the first draft McKellar remembers, "and it was quite an weren't trying to do the definitive of Highway 61, McDonald was working on intense relationship. It was wonderful, in biography of Gould," says McKellar. "It a documentary project about a rock band a way, and it taught us to fight for what meant that we were saying 'here's on tour in Northern Ontario. That idea we believed in. We co-wrote, co-directed thirty-two things about him." McKellar's metamorphosed into Roadkill, a and co-designed all the shows and script delineates many aspects of Gould's McKellar-scripted rowdy comedy about a performed in most of them." life, his virtuoso piano pieces, radio work, fictional rock group playing gigs in philosophical diatribes, his aversion to Northern Ontario. McKellar was brought Observing McDonald on Roadkill and concert performing and his love of music. along to do continuity, "because we had Highway 61 also helped prepare McKellar All are effectively dramatized by Girard very little money. Part of the strategy was for his own film short, Blue. There in a film that eschewed melodrama and to have me along so that if something McKellar intercuts footage from a faux turned into a surprise art-house hit. happened I could incorporate it. I 1960s "smoker" flick, The Bellboy and the remember in the script I had written Bored Housewife, with a sly account of a A well-developed sense of structure has something about a statue of a giant carpet manufacturer who controls his characterized every McKellar screenplay. sturgeon being in Sturgeon Falls, only it employees through verbal intimidation The Gould script is a marvel of economy wasn't there. So we grabbed this big dog, and his sex life through masturbation. and insight. Blue employs a narrative and I changed the script to include a dog "What I wanted to do with Blue was to sleight of hand reminiscent of an 0. instead of a fish." reflect the kind of theatre work I had been Henry short story. Even the rock 'n' roll doing. I started with a character and tried road films flow neatly from scene to The wacky, loose and low-budget Roadkill to come up with a formal device that scene, allowing characters to develop proved to be a Toronto film festival hit, would explain his split. By juxtaposing naturally over the course of the trips.

14 FALL 1998 II What McKellar has learned from his theatre days is that characters and situations can be made to be as bizarre as possible as long as the script acknowledges the verities of solid story construction. His hip scripts are hits because audiences can understand the logic of the protagonists and their situations. Elimination Dance is a good case in point. Michael Ondaatje's poem is evocatively outré, describing various arcane ways in which people can be eliminated from "the dance." The film version dresses up Ondaatje's metaphor and takes it onto a beautifully dressed 1930s dance floor. Before a word of Ondaatje's cunningly dark poetry is recited, McKellar has already given the audience a couple to root for, a charmingly luckless duo played by Tracy Wright and McKellar himself.

Whether by design or happenstance, McKellar's acting career took precedence over his writing following the success of Thirty—two Short Films. Always busy, he Callum Keith Rennie and Genevieve Bujold: With Last Night, gives marvellous eccentric performances Don McKellar offers up a mirror of humanity performing its last rites. in Peter Lynch's Arrowhead (as a nerd who discovers a dinosaur bone), Atom Egoyan's Exotica (as a pet shop owner millennium. "To be part of a series but what sets it apart and makes it an harbouring many secrets for which he made it less presumptuous, " allows exceptional viewing experience is the won a Best Supporting Actor Genie) and McKellar. "It's easier to do something performance of Sandra Oh as a woman Patricia Rozema's When Night is Falling (as when you're asked." Changing the desperately trying to get home to her the owner of an avant—garde circus). subject from the end of the millennium husband. "She carries the emotional Lynch observes that "Don wears his to the end of the world occurred to weight of the film," acknowledges characters like a chameleon. When you're McKellar "almost immediately. It was McKellar. Her relationship with Patrick working with him, he really thinks of one of the first things I thought of.... I (played by McKellar), who comes into every aspect of the filmmaking from the didn't want to do something dated or her life to help her, gives Last Night its writing to the physical. In The Herd, I coy about the millennium which, power and resonance. wanted the government men to be probably like most people, I have mixed Kafkaesque ciphers, but Don's instinct feelings about as to whether it has any Is there a pattern to the films that was to personalize the two so that the meaning at all." McKellar has worked on as a writer, audience could connect with them. So, for actor and director? Where does the man example, when he is talking about the After some ruminations and discussions with the great story sense and a habit of research that the government had done with friends, McKellar came up with a creating quirky situations and on the reindeer, all of a sudden he was story line that hasn't changed much at characters fit into his own life's work? yelling, 'My research proves this.' Don all. There would be no superhuman Always pleasant, McKellar remains a knows all the dirty little tricks of heroics. Instead, people would be tough character to understand. Peter narrative." dramatized doing things most of us Lynch's description of him as "a might do should global scientists multitask—oriented guy with so many McKellar resisted, or hesitated for a accurately predict such a disaster months projects on the go that it is mind— long time before tackling a feature film in advance. McKellar wittily offers up a boggling" seems appropriate. McKellar project, apparently content to write and mirror of humanity performing its last has proven himself to be a great team act with his contemporaries. Last Night rites: obsessively having sex with anyone player, but with Last Night he has occurred when he received a phone call and everyone; staying late at a job; raised the stakes. Time will tell whether from French producer Caroline Benjo holding hands in a family ritual; going to McKellar will prove himself to be a (of the firm Haut et Court) who asked a blow-out concert; or meeting someone stand—alone auteur or continue on his him to make one of a group of films new and meaningful. The film is funny, well—trodden path of being a fine film dealing with the last day of the dark and its mise—en—scene is well crafted, collaborator. •

I TAKE ONE 15