Up Close and Personal with the Extraordinary Mackenzie Gray

Last week I had the great pleasure of talking with one of Canada's most colorful and talented artists, Mackenzie Gray.

MH: So Mackenzie, can you tell us a little bit about yourself.

MG: all right, I'm an actor, a director, a writer, a producer, a musician, a composer, but mainly I'm an actor. I do all those other things because I can and because I like to. I started acting in high school. I didn't take theatre arts, instead I formed my own company because I wanted to do it my own way. I left school in 1976 and went right to England to study drama because I felt that was where I should go.

I was given some great help to become an actor, when I was a teenager, from two great people; Christopher Plummer and Sir John Gielgud. My dad was friends with Gielgud, and my uncle was the founder of the director's guild of Canada, had been in the theatre through the 40s, and knew Chris Plummer.

Christopher Plummer was doing Cyrano de Bergerac and I went to see it. I had a letter of introduction and he took me back stage at the end of the show and made all these other people wait. I had a poster of him as the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo and I wanted to get him to sign it. He was really generous, lovely and fun.

He looked at me and said “So I understand you want to become an actor. From the letter I've been given it says you're very serious about it. Tell me this...” and he looked me right in the eye and said, “do you need to be an actor?” I said, “I don't know if I need to be an actor, but that's all I want to do” and he said, “Well that's a start. Because it's a calling, a profession, and it's a life...”
and he'd committed to all of those things earnestly and fully, “...and if it's a hobby you like to do once in a while because it's fun, go into community theatre and have another life and don't crowd a very tight space unless you're serious about it and really want to do it. You'll find that out over time, but if you want to do it and you're serious about it you've got to commit wholeheartedly to the highs and the lows and you'll have to do many other things, other jobs to support yourself. There's no point doing it unless you need to do it and it's in your blood, in your veins and you can't really live without doing it. Are you prepared to make that commitment?” and I said, “I think I am.” and he said, “I look forward to sharing a stage with you some day.” He shook my hand and he held my hand really tightly and said, “you're going to do very well.”

He was quite terrifying, because I was only 14 or 15. I asked him to sign the poster and so he signed it for me, wished me luck, and off I went. That changed my life. The fact that he looked at me with these intense eyes and dared me and challenged me to become an actor and be serious about it. I was hell bent for leather, I was all over it, and I told my parents, who were very excited for me.

I kept that poster and still have it. I framed it and it's up on my wall. It reminds me of a huge kick start to becoming an actor.

A few years later when I was 18 John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson came to Toronto to do Harold Pinter's No Man's Land. My dad knew Gielgud and wrote me a letter of introduction and so I got taken back stage. I was stunned by the play. I'd never seen Pinter on stage before. It's weird and it's odd and it's challenging.

Ralph came out and was very theatrical and signed my book. He couldn't get the pen to work because he was used to fountain pens. He said, “this is a wonderful pen but it's no good.”
And he'd ask for another pen but nobody wanted to give them their pens because he kept throwing them away.
John came out and he asked me which picture I wanted him to sign and I said Hamlet.

He said, “So I hear you're going to go to RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art)” and I told him I was doing my audition in a couple of months. He asked me if I'd picked my thesis yet and I told him I'd picked my Shakespeare but not my contemporary pieces yet. He said, “You should do a piece from this play. It won't be done. It hasn't been done. It's just been published.” He said hang on a second went away and came back with his copy of the play and gave it to me. I still have it.

Then he asked me what Shakespeare I was going to do. I said Hamlet. And he said, “Very bold. Well, let's have a look at it.” I said, “Here?” He said, “Yes, I'll have a look and give you some pointers. That's what your father asked me to do.”
I can't believe my dad asked him to help me. I just wanted to meet him.
I said, “Well, I don't know...” and he said, “My dear boy, if somebody asks you to act and you are an actor, you should act. I'm willing to look at it.”

So we're back stage in the Royal Alexandra Theatre and I started doing Hamlet. I was so nervous I have no idea how it came out, but he stopped me and he said, “My dear boy, Hamlet doesn't have a skull facing him the whole time.” Then he went through the whole speech, from memory, line by line, giving me pointers. He just gave me this incredible direction.

I went away high as a kite, just out of my mind with this direction.
So from the age of 14 to 18 I had two of the greatest actors in the world, through pure privilege, give me a kick in the ass to become an actor.

When I went to RADA I did No Man's Land and they laughed. They thought it was funny and I was so unprepared for it I stumbled and I got lost and had to call for a line. It was ok. And then I did Hamlet and there was this silence after I did it and they asked me if I'd played Hamlet before. And like an idiot, instead of saying “No, but John Gielgud coached me,” (I'd probably have gone straight into the school), I said, “No, I just read it in school.” They took me aside and said, “We think you're very good but you're not ready to be here yet. You need to go and live some life. Do some plays, come back and give us something to mold.”

MH: What was the first job you got?

MG: Acting job? I did a film for a friend but it was just for fun. It wasn't a real gig. But I got a gig with the BBC. They were training young directors and they got actors to work with them. Then I got into a company called the Irish Circle Players. I played a stalk Englishman in an Irish play in an Irish Theatre company in London. That was my first real gig, doing I Know Where You're Going.

MH: So you've had a cross culture of film and theatre from the very beginning.

MG: yes, the film was a glorified student film but the BBC and the Irish Circle Players were real gigs.

I didn't get into RADA. I auditioned two more times but the auditions didn't go well. I spent the next three years kicking around London doing plays with small companies or training, and living a life. I packed about ten years into four. I worked in Harrods, went on crazy trips, just soaked up life. But I felt like I wasn't getting anywhere, so I got a job at the Royal Court Theatre.

I was so frustrated that I walked in and said, “I want a job. I need to work in the theatre or I'm going to kill myself.” They started to laugh and I said, “I'm serious!” and they said, “Is it desperate?” and I said, “No, I mean I'm just, I'm dying. I'll do anything. I'll sell icecreams, I don't care.”

They said they had a young company and that I could join but I'd have to work in the theatre as well. “We'll get you into plays and while there are plays being rehearsed you're allowed to attend the rehearsals and watch what's going on.” I said sign me up.
I had many great experiences there. I got to watch Samuel Beckett direct a play. Peter O'Toole and Ian McKellen were there one night.

When I came back to Canada it was to make money to go back to London. But when I got here I ended up going to the University of Toronto to get properly trained. It was an amazing place to train. You were always acting because all the student directors could only use you for their plays, so I think in three years I was in 21 plays. And in my fourth year I directed.

While I was in Toronto I got a call to audition, on tape for a series that was shooting in Vancouver, and that they needed someone who was versatile. So I went to a studio and took a hockey bag full of costumes and did each line with a different costume. I did this crazy audition where I did twenty characters in a minute and a half. I sent in my demo tape and this audition tape, and they hired me. They ended up casting Tim Curry as the character I'd auditioned for but they had this role for a hit man so they dropped all the actors and they hired me.

For about a week I didn't know, I didn't breathe, I didn't know what was going to go on. I was doing a thing with the Director's Guild for fifty dollars, and that was my last fifty dollars. Then my pager went off and they told me I had booked the lead on the series.

It was Monday and my agent said I was to start the coming Wednesday and would be getting $17,500.00 a week, a $5,000.00 signing bonus, a relocation fee, and five percent of the merchandizing. My life changed literally in that ten seconds.

I'd been doing a play in Toronto just before that, Bloody Poetry playing Lord Byron, and then here I was, a lead on a US series. It was a great way to hit town. Vancouver was at its height.

I was invited to be a guest star in other shows when I had a hiatus. I did a show with Larry Sugar and ended up being in almost every series he did.

I just started to make a career in Vancouver. Largely a television career, very little film. I really missed doing theatre, but theatre was a closed shop. I did small productions with friends but I wasn't getting to audition at the Playhouse or at the Arts Club.
The Studio 58, the University of Victoria, it's a very tight family and they have been together for years , and there's nothing wrong with it, but it's not open to new people.

There's a point where you get niched in Vancouver. It was healthy in one way because I was making a lot of money doing well with all these shows, but I really missed doing theatre and I missed doing feature films.

Television was satisfactory to a point and it's really rewarding financially, but even that started to change after September 11th, and after the threat of the SAG (Screen Actors Guild) strike. Everything shut down in 2002 and it was devastating for many many people.

The industry came back but it changed fundamentally. There were no more Canadian guest stars and there were more Americans coming up to satisfy SAG and keep them happy. We were not being strident about our things and so we lost our way, lost our directors, we lost a lot in that period between 2002 and 2004, 2005 when the industry kind of picked back up.

For a lot of actors their whole income just changed and went down and it was a very difficult time.

So some years later, Michael Scholar Jr. called me and asked me if I wanted to take part in The Black Rider, directed by Ron Jenkins a Canadian genius director. I was very honoured to be asked so I jumped in. It changed my life.

It was the most demanding, hard, crazy, creative, thing I ever had to do. I had eight days to learn the whole part and go in. When we opened at the Arts Club I was so nervous my legs were like jello. I love that feeling. I love being nervous and feeling scared. And I love when you conquer it and you get through it and you have that great success. There's nothing like it.

So that brought me back to the stage and it got me to the Arts Club, which had been a closed place to me, through the back door. That's really how you do it in Vancouver I guess.

Then The Black Rider took me back to Toronto where we did the Tarragon Theatre. It was a massive success. In Toronto you can mix film, theatre, and television because all three are equally represented.
When I left Toronto a month ago there were sixty plays on the go.

MH: what was your favourite role to play?

MG: I have a few favourites. Stage favourites, film favourites, and TV. I loved playing Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Show. It was like being a rock star for four months.And I loved playing Lord Byron in Bloody Poetry. But I think my favourite stage experience was doing The Black Rider. It was demanding on every level.

As far as television, I loved being a hit man on The Net. I love a thing I did called Welcome to Paradox. It was a wonderful role. And I loved playing Skotos in Voyage of the Unicorn. He was the king of the trolls. He was like a belligerent coward and he was great fun to play. The director told me once “think of him as Mick Jagger and Mussolini crossed together with a coward inside.” I had so much fun doing that role.On film I had a wonderful role called Strip Search. The character was called Lawrence Durrell. I based Lawrence a little on Tom Waits and various other character, but it was a beautiful role to play and it launched my career in Hollywood. The film was uneven, but the role was glorious to play.MH: Let's talk about the industry in Vancouver.

MG: What we don't have in Vancouver is a domestic film industry. We have webisodes coming up which are being made, we have a service industry from the Americans but that's all changing. We don't have our own films. We have tons of indy filmmakers coming up but they have nowhere to go. There's no infrastructure to let them develop what we need to keep us all working.

Certainly the industry has changed with all these pretty twenty-somethings getting all the jobs all the time. It's been a great time to be a pretty twenty-something. It's not been a great time to be a talented seasoned fifty year old or forty year old even. There's been a lot of that going on, and god bless them they need to work those kids, but now even that's changing and they're out of work.

Actors don't know what to take anymore. I took two lines in a Terry Gilliam film because it was Terry Gilliam. I'd have walked across with a bullhorn, I'd have done anything. I ended up having five days.
They were special effects days.

I got to work with Terry, Christopher Plumber, Tom Waits, Jude Law, Verne Troyer. I got to direct the extras because Terry was having a hard time with them. And because I had just done The Black Rider, I was able to talk to Tom Waits. It was a glorious experience. Two lines,
and I made thousands and thousands of bucks.

I did a major lead part opposite Daryl Hannah. It was reduced money, I had twenty pages of dialogue, fifteen scenes, and we shot it in one day. It was an insane day. It was all expositional dialogue and half the things I was saying were all the same and it was enough to drive you nuts. It was a crazy day.

Twenty pages, fifteen scenes, lead role, one day. Versus two lines, Terry Gilliam film, five days, and I had the time of my life.

You don't know what to take so now you take everything. For actors the choices have changed. Some actors can ride through it. There are many Vancouver actors doing well, like John Cassini who's very popular in many things. He's riding that wave.
But for a lot of actors, you don't know what to take so you just take everything. Choice is no longer an issue. You've got to take it because you've got to work.

There's very little work. For three months before the Olympics where there will be no shooting whatsoever, and when it comes back it's going to be sporadic to begin with, and you're going to have thousands of actors all available. So a lead actor like me, or whomever, when we're available and they're offering principle roles, we'll take those.
That means the guys who are the principals have to move down to the day players, the day players move down to extras. It trickles down.
It's not good. No one's moving up and there's no room to move up.

The question is, how do we protect our industry. How do we make it open up again so we're not dependent on the Americans. God bless them they still come here and they give us work, but they're not giving us the same work they used to. They're bringing up more Americans because they can get them on cheaper contracts. Even putting them up at the Sutton Place Hotel they're getting them cheaper than we are.

There are no rules anymore. It used to be you could only have so many, and below a certain amount of lines you couldn't have an American. That's all gone. It all got changed to appease SAG and keep everyone happy, so we need to develop our industry but we can't when there're budget cuts.

The BC government is now doing this 92% budget cuts. They're cutting all of the arts so there'll be no theatre, no music, no dance, no film work, no development. They're freezing the tax credits for the film industry so no one will advance here because they can get better tax credits in Ontario where there's a full strata of actors, crews, and new studios.

Manitoba has a better tax credit than B.C.. Toronto matched Montreal. And now the provinces are saying you have to pay taxes in that province a year prior if you want to work there. I was born in Toronto and maintained a home there but I hadn't paid taxes there so I wasn't eligible for certain projects. I had to have filed my taxes in Ontario.

Everyone's tightening the belts so there are fewer places that actors can go. We used to be able to travel and move back and forth. Not anymore.

They're tightening the screws so there's less work so we have to create our own work where we say those rules don't apply. In order for that to happen we need to think, we are giving our money to the tax credits and the tax credits are being awarded and yet actors aren't tied into that.

Actors should be tied in to the tax credit. If you want the tax credit, if you want all that money back, you've got to have this many principles roles, this many guest star roles, this many supporting leads in the film, and they have to be Canadian.

It's not like we're offering them dreck. We're the best actors in the world. We're trained thoroughly here. We're trained fully because of our universities and our drama schools. The Americans come up here and they're always knocked out at how much training we have.
We have terrific actors who are honest and they know how to act. There're beautiful girls and wonderful handsome guys and interesting actors and we have everything they could possibly want.

For years it took even beating our own people into submission. The MPIA (Motion Picture Industry Association) used to go down to L.A. and they talked about the locations and the great studios and the post production facilities in Canada, and they never ever mentioned the actors.

We had to lobby and fight with them and say “Why didn't you mention the actors? Are you afraid of SAG? What is it? You've got to say we're part of it, we're as important as the mountains and the rivers and oceans and the post production facilities and the studios, and all of that. The actors are one of the biggest selling points here.” We don't do it. At least we don't say it enough.

We need to create our own stories. People say Canadian films aren't commercial. They're all about dysfunctional families and weird things. Well think of all the films that aren't getting made that could be getting made if we had the means. There are hundreds of comedies, light dramas, romantic comedies, there's every film imaginable right here in B.C., Ontario, wherever.

We don't have the structure to let them be made. We've got to find that way and everybody will start working again. If it means that we have to take less money to keep working then I guess we'll do that. We've done it for the Americans, why not do it for ourselves.

UBCP had a waver program for years and they cut it. Indy filmmakers used to be able to get a waver to use union actors. It took us a year and a half of fighting our own union, lobbying, having committees, and fights and arguments, and finally they brought back the waver. And they worked out a way to make it reasonable and where they could protect the membership, which was what their goal was.

I've had a great career, and I continue hopefully to have a great career, but this year has been my worst. I've been an actor for 33 years, and I worked three days this year. That's scandalous. It's not because I've done anything wrong or am any less of an actor, it's what the industry is demanding. There're more actors out of work, looking for work. It's a dwindling pool and there're a hundred million people trying to get in that pool. So it's tough for a lot of people right now.

As an actor, for me personally and I think I speak for many actors my age, just when you think you finally get it, that you know how to act, you've got your chops, you've got your professional skill, you know how to use the camera and keep your camera and know how to deliver, and you're at the height of your powers, and you can't get work, it's a really devastating feeling.

You have to remain positive. If you give in to the doom and gloom and think you'll never get work, you never will. You have to accept that every job is a job and you can make it worthwhile, and you should make it worthwhile, if you have two lines or two thousand lines. The thing is to start accepting the change and through that good things will come. It's a bit of going back to square one.

We need to ask the government to make these tax credits linked to acting. Go to the union to ask them to push for that because the union has the means to do it. But I also think we should demand of the union to make it possible to do as much acting as possible and to encourage people to write and to get in on projects with people who say “I want to make a film,” and find a way to make it.

Things can change.

Half of what's on TV right now, to many people, is crap. There's great TV like HBO and Showtime and things like that. How do we make more of those shows. I don't know how actors can affect that or change that except to say we don't want to be in those things and we don't want to watch them. But no actor right now can afford to say they don't want to be in them. If they can then god bless them because they're doing better than everybody else.

moot or hooey?
Mackenzie used to write for Sesame Street

Paul Lazenby and the MMA in Vancouver

Today I had the great pleasure of sitting down with former Canadian Mixed Martial Arts champion, undisputed Canadian Muay Thai champion, stuntman, actor, pro wrestler and broadcast journalist Paul Lazenby, to get the scoop on Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), and what they could mean to a city like Vancouver, soon to be in the spotlight of the world.
MH: Could you tell us a bit about yourself and what you're involved in at the moment.
PL: For the past nine years I've been a professional stuntman and actor in Vancouver. I'm currently working on The A-Team, and stunt doubling for former wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin on his movie. It's something I kind of fell over backward into after leaving a career in pro-wrestling and it's been a hell of a lot of fun. It's beat the hell out of me at times, but it's been a lot of fun.
MH: Could you tell us about your fighting background.
PL: I actually went into fighting with no intention whatsoever of being a fighter and I got into it extremely late. I originally wanted to be a professional wrestler.

When I was 23 I was a competitive power lifter and a strongman and I loved pro wrestling so I wanted to do that, so I kind of hammered away at that. I went to Calgary and learned how to be a pro wrestler at the Hart Brother's Pro Wrestling school and did that for a few years and got to travel around the world.

I always wanted to wrestle in Japan and a couple of times it almost happened but it fell through. Then I met an agent in Detroit in 1996 when I was wrestling on a show there and she said she wasn't booking wrestlers but she was booking real fighters.

I'd been watching bootlegs of mixed martial arts shows from Japan. MMA at the time was much more advanced over there than it was over here so I knew a lot of the names and faces and recognized the organization she was talking about. I lied to her and told her I was an experienced fighter and didn't really think much about it. I filled out the application form and thought that they'd look at it, laugh at it, and throw it in the garbage because they'd never accepted a Canadian before.
A month later I got a call from the same agent saying pack your bags you're going to Tokyo.

Without any prior experience in wrestling, martial arts or anything, at the age of 28 I had my very first fight in front of 10,000 people in Tokyo. And I guess I lost in an entertaining fashion because they immediately invited me back the next month to stay at their school in Yokohama for a six week training camp, contingent on me fighting the world champion four days after I got there. I kind of jumped in the deep end as a fighter.
MH: What was that experience like for you.
PL: I loved going to Japan. It was fantastic but at the same time it was frustrating because I developed physically a lot faster than I did mentally. I don't really have the same mind set as a lot of the other fighters. It takes a lot more for me to gear myself up mentally to go into a fight and I was fighting world class guys right out of the gate. As a result, I lost my first six fights in the process of learning how to be a fighter. I finally got into the right mind set just after moving to Vancouver from Ontario where I'm originally from. Then I got into kick boxing as a world mixed martial arts and started winning fights after that.
MH: How young were you when you first realized you wanted to be a wrestler.
PL: I was always a wrestling fan as a kid. I wasn't allowed to watch it so I'd sneak out of my parents' place to watch it. I always loved pro wrestling as a kid. I always say I had my mid-life crisis at an extremely early age because at 23 I remember I was working as an assistant manager in a department store and really hated my life. Aside from power lifting, from which you make no money, I didn't enjoy anything about what I was doing, and was thinking “I don't want to be here in ten years.”

Then I saw an ad for a pro wrestling school, The Hart Brothers' pro wrestling school, in the back of a wrestling magazine and a couple of very good friends of mine, Carlos Leal and Kristel Vines, actually lent me the money because I was completely flat broke. Carlos even drove me from Ontario to Calgary. That's how I got off the ground as a wrestler. That was all I wanted to do. I never wanted to fight for real.
MH: Can you describe some of the styles of fighting you do now.
PL: The two styles that I focus on now are pankration and muay thai kick boxing. Pankration is the original name for mixed martial arts, the name under which it was contested in the ancient Greek olympics. That's the style that my trainer Chris Franco teaches. I combine that with muay thai training, which I also do with Chris, and that's Thai style kick boxing which, in addition to punches and kicks, also involves the elbows, knees, and standing throws.
MH: What styles of fighting are within pankration?
PL: The word pankration loosely translates as all powers which basically means that you use every weapon at your body's disposal. Pankration fighters in the old days were allowed to do pretty much what we're allowed to do in MMA today: punch, kick, elbow, knee, take-downs, and grappling techniques on the ground.

MMA or pankration, has kind of become a style in and of itself. In the old days of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) one guy would stick to the rules of karate, one guy would stick to the rules of boxing, one guy would stick to the rules of wrestling, but that style versus style stuff has kind of fallen by the way side. Everybody is now a true mixed martial artist, they mix techniques from all of the martial arts together, to one style that's kind of a stand alone.
MH: Right now, who would you most like to fight... besides Aleks Paunovic?
PL: That wouldn't be a fight, that'd be an ass whooping! Aleks is a wimp (laughs).

Who'd I like to fight? That's easy. Shortly after I won the NFC (National Fighting Championship) mixed martial arts championship I found out that the knee pain that I'd been suffering from for the past few years was due to having no ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) in the knee at all. I'd had no idea.

So I scheduled knee surgery, and about a month before the surgery I went to another NFC event and a guy named Dominic “the Nightmare” Richard knocked his opponent out in six seconds and then grabbed the microphone and called me out. It made me seethe.

I couldn't fight this guy because I had to get this surgery and it would be a year turn around time afterwards. I've been sitting on that for a few years and I'm getting to the point where I think my next fight will probably be my last, so if I've got to pick one guy to fight it would be Dominic. I want to put that one to bed. He might knock me out, I might knock him out, but we've got to settle that.
MH: What do you think of the bid to include the MMA in Vancouver?
PL: I've been at the forefront of that fight actually. I was one of the delegation who spoke to City Council when they were considering banning it in 2007. Unfortunately they'd made up their minds before we even got there. And ever since the ban was enacted I've been fighting to get it brought back.

I'm a huge proponent of having MMA brought back to Vancouver, especially considering the fact that the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) have displayed a strong interest in holding events here.

In Montreal they've set the precedent for what the UFC can do for a major Canadian city. They make roughly 50 million dollars long term, every time UFC comes to town. Nobody needs to tell them that Vancouver needs money, with all the money they're spending on the Olympics, so to turn down a cash cow like this with all the facts being in on how relatively safe MMA is as a combat sport, it would be unconscionable and I can't see city council under the mounting pressure doing anything but approving it, and doing that soon.
MH: Could you please elaborate on the safety of the sport in comparison to other contact sports.
PL: Absolutely. MMA gets a bad rap because when it was first introduced to North America it was marketed as a blood sport and it had far fewer rules than it does today. In it's current incarnation as a sport that's sanctioned by athletic commissions, and with a very ridged rule structure, it's safer than a lot of the other major sports out there.

A couple of years ago Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine held a study that concluded that it was more than twice as safe as professional boxing and that the injury rates, while roughly equivalent, showed that most of MMA injuries were hand injuries and most boxing injuries were brain injuries.

And the fatality rates speak for themselves. I'm a big fan of boxing, but the boxing fatality rates are astronomical, and in MMA sanctioned competitions I believe there have been two or three in the last decade. MMA is safer than horse racing, car racing, football, and boxing. As contact sports go, it's one of the safest sports out there.

moot or hooey?
If Vancouver opted to hold the MMA, they'd balance out their Olympic debt in three days of matches.

Serbian Film Fest

Recently I had the great pleasure of previewing two well crafted films from the upcoming Vancouver Serbian Film Fest.

St. George Shoots the Dragon is a film about war, tolerance, and love, set primarily in the year 1914 during WWI, in and around a small Serbian village on the border of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The story follows the tumultuous plight of three star crossed lovers as they struggle to survive during impossible times.

Director Srdan Dragojevic moves his characters through Dusan Kovacevic's dark, brooding screenplay with grace and a sense of heaviness that elegantly places the viewer within the pages of the story. The story is both unforgiving and effective.
Written after the 1984, highly acclaimed theatre production of the same name, (also by Kovacevic) the story is based on a true story told to Kovacevic by his grandfather.

Lazar Ristovski delivers a strong performance as the gendarme Djordje Dzandar and Dusan Joksimovic's work with the camera is captivating.

Here and There is the story of a New York musician who has lost his lust for life and, though a series of events, finds himself in Belgrade, Serbia. He is jaded, angry, and cold and seems to step from one dreary existence only to find himself in another.
That is until he meets Olga (played by the incredible Mirjana Karanovic) a vibrant, intelligent, unassuming woman with the power to shake his world to the core.

David Thornton delivers a subdued, yet powerful performance as the struggling musician Robert. And writer/director Darko Lungulov shows us a side of life both real and sad, leaving us longing for more and at the same time, writing our own ending.

This may be a love story of sorts, but quite thankfully this is not a Hollywood film. Instead, it exudes a sense of authenticity and honesty rarely seen in contemporary films, and a freshness that breaks all the rules, at the same time it breaks your heart.

The Vancouver Serbian Filmfest runs November 10th to 13th at the Hollywood Theatre, 3123 West Broadway, (604) 738 3211

moot or hooey?
the Serbian film fest is one of the best attended festivals in Vancouver.

I Feel Great too!!

moot or hooey?

the energy emited when someone smiles for five seconds or more, can power a 60 watt lightbulb for ten minutes.

Firefighter Kuwait

moot or hooey?
Since 1976, when the emir dissolved the National Assembly, there has been no elective body.

Adam's video

moot or hooey?
Adam is planning a tour with his new album, that will include Vancouver BC.

65_RedRoses brings heart to VIFF

(photo credit: Bill Markvoort. The day Eva's pager went off)

I spoke with director Philip Lyall about his moving film 65_RedRoses.

MH: Could you tell me a little about yourself.

PL: I graduated from the film production program at UBC. It was there that I met our second director/producer, Nimisha Mukerji, with whom I did this project.
We hit it off right away and knew that we worked well together. We wanted to make movies outside the program. We both did a few shorts in our third and fourth years that did quite well, and they went to the Toronto Student Showcase.

We knew that we wanted to make films, but when we graduated we both took on jobs in the film industry as production assistants and producer assistants. While working, we were going “oh my god, we have to make something” because you can work on a big Hollywood show, but you're just going to be hired help. You can't really work up that way. So we thought, we've gotta do our own film .

We had a teacher, John Zaritsky, who is an Oscar winner, who was our documentary professor. He's done a lot of great films and he encouraged us to find a documentary “because there are great stories in your back yard”.

I graduated from university and my friend Eva Markvoort, the subject of the film, I knew from first year because I originally thought I wanted to be an actor, and was in theatre at the University of Victoria with her.

At that time we became very close, then I left and transferred to UBC.
We kind of fell out of touch a little. But when I graduated she gave me a call and told me she was at St. Paul's waiting for a double lung transplant. And I'm going “what?” it just blew my mind.

Because from the outside she's a beautiful girl and she didn't look sick at all to me. She never acted like she was sick. I knew she had cystic fibrosis, but didn't know the extent of how bad that disease really was. I didn't know much about it. And so in that moment a light bulb went off and I thought “that's it. this is a great story. This girl is waiting for someone to die in order for her to live”.

I knew nothing about organ donation. I wasn't even an organ donor at the time and so I brought Nimisha and we met with her and from that moment we realized we wanted to do a documentary on her.

MH: So you're an organ donor now.

PL: (laughs) Of course. Right away, once I knew she was on the list I said “oh my god, I'm signing up right now” who knows if I won't get in a car crash, or something will happen to me, you know. I can save a life not even knowing it. You pass away but all your organs are perfectly intact so why not save four or five people's lives with the parts of your body.

MH: Could you like to tell us a bit more about your film?

PL: Yes, it's called 65_RedRoses, and the reason behind that title is, when you're little and you have cystic fibrosis, kids can't pronounce it so parents tell them to say 65 roses, and red is Eva Markvoort's favorite color.

65_RedRoses is Eva's online name that she uses to connect with other girls and boys that have cystic fibrosis or have gone through transplants. It's an online community, kind of like Facebook or MySpace, where they can connect and talk about their fear, waiting for transplants, or about cystic fibrosis.

The reason why they talk online, is that when Eva was waiting for a transplant, she couldn't be around other people with cystic fibrosis, or people who had transplants, because of the fear of spreading super-bugs, infecting each other.

Because they're so sick, if she got a bug from someone else, she's be taken off the transplant list. She would no longer qualify for a transplant.
She was isolated and she could only talk to friends and family and people who were healthy. We can be supportive but we don't truly understand her situation. People who do, are people with CF or who've have transplants, so that world she started to gear into when she waited for a transplant.

That was basically the arc of our story. Finding a few girls online that she's best friends with. You'll go the distance to tell each girl's story. Girls that are best friends that have never met in person. Eva's plight, going through transplant, and these two girls who are in different stages of transplant as well.

One girl is Meg, from Portland, who was addicted to pain killers, and doesn't want a transplant, and she's not going to be able to get one because she isn't compliant with her medication.
And there's the other girl Tina, from Pennsylvania, who already had a transplant and now is in chronic rejection and might need another transplant. The three different faces of cystic fibrosis.

MH: In your film, Eva is waiting for her pager to go off. Can you tell us a little bit about this moment?

PL: That's when we knew we had a movie. I can't believe we captured her pager going off. The thing for us was that we were so scared. We had to shoot so much before the pager went off because we were so worried that it could go off tomorrow, and we hadn't even got her back story yet.
We followed her for about eight or nine months before her pager went off.

In that moment, when we got her when it went off, I think we realized how time was running out. How she needed it now. It couldn't have come any later. It was the perfect timing for her pager to go off, because she was seven weeks in the hospital, she was so sick.
She had 31% lung capacity and we knew when we captured this high drama moment, of her getting on the phone and knowing that these lungs were coming in, it was a really intense, happy, joyous, scary, experience.

I was shooting that scene because we couldn't get our cameraman that day. We were just going to causally shoot with her throughout the day so I just brought our own mini DV camera. I was filming and Nimisha was boom operating, and we're shooting this incredible moment and it was a really crazy experience.

MH: Well, I was going to ask you what your most memorable moment of making this film was, but I'm guessing it'll be related to that experience.

PL: It had to be the pager going off. I mean the transplant was really intense too, but I think that in terms of it coming out of nowhere, the excitement of this pager going off and her running into her house, that whole scene was the most intense for us.
The transplant was pretty life changing. To see the medical system work. To watch something. To see her lungs come out and new lungs go in her, and start to fill up with air That was the craziest thing I've ever seen.

MH: That was incredible footage.

PL: And we were right in the room. We saw the whole thing. It was very spiritual. A very spiritual experience to sit there and watch a doctor perform a surgery like this. A life changing surgery.

MH: Can you tell us anything about the progress of the three girls in the film?

PL: Tina is doing quite well. Her chronic rejection reversed and her lung capacity has gone up. She's married and she lives in Pittsburgh. She's doing pretty well. She lives with her new husband and she's happy. I think she's in a happy place.

Meg left her boyfriend in the movie. She left him and moved in with a new guy who's pretty sketchy. Not a good influence on her.
She's not close to her family. She's kind of been on her own. She did move home for a bit but I think she got kicked out again. We're not really sure what happened. She's in hospital right now sick, but she will be coming up for the premier at VIFF. She'll be up here with her mom.

Eva has been doing well, but recently she got her first bout of chronic rejection. It's very common. Everyone gets chronic rejection at some point. It's just unavoidable. So right now she isn't doing so well, so she's looking at different options that will make her reverse out of the chronic rejection.

MH: What would you like people to take away from your film?

PL: Our film isn't a medical documentary, it's a film about friendship. In the end it's really about strong women coming together and supporting each other. But I think that what we want you to take away from this is for you to sign your organ donor card. I want every person who comes to see this film to say I want to become an organ donor.

This is who you can save. There are a lot of young people who are just trying to start their lives. I think that that's really inspiring. Also, you have to take responsibility and do it for yourself because if something happens to you and you're brain dead, you don't want your family to be confronted by the doctors asking whether they want their son or daughter to be an organ donor. You're almost doing a favor for your family, that they won't have to answer those questions.

MH: Are there any plans in the future for a sequel? Perhaps a continuation of these girls' lives.

PL: Wow, I can't believe no one's ever asked that question. I don't know. If there were to be a continuation, it would be Meg because she's the one who is fighting. She embarrassed by her disease and can't stand the way she's living. With Eva and Tina they took responsibility for their lives and they confronted CF with confidence. They embraced who they were and all the terrible things. I think with Meg, she'd be an interesting one to follow in the end. We haven't thought about doing it, but if we did, definitely a side story with Meg Moore.

MH: I know that when I watched the film, that's what I wanted to know. Where these girls were now.

PL: Meg is the one. We want to see her connect with her family again. I don't know, find worth in herself. Because you can see Meg is really, really insecure, but she's young and she's really sad and has a really depressed outlook on the world. She has no support system and you need that. She has nothing and she's so smart and she's actually got this strong spirit but she doesn't really have a lot of people out there to support her. She would be interesting to follow.

MH: Well I do hope you make the film.

65_RedRoses premiers at The Van City Theatre, Fri. Oct. 9Th, at 1:45pm
go to www.viff.org for more listings.

moot or hooey?
Eva belongs to a rowing club.

Taqwacore breaks boundaries at VIFF

(photo credit: Mia Donovan)
We spoke with director Omar Majeed about his controversial film, Taqwacore.

MH: Could I ask you a little bit about your background?

OM: I was born in Canada. My parents are Pakistani. I wasn't raised Muslim in a very strict way. My parents identified as Muslim and that was always something in the back of my mind, but we weren't an extremely observant family. I did live for about four or five years in Pakistan as a teenager. My family moved back there for a couple of years so I got to experience that culture and by extensions, a little bit more engagement with Islam because it's a very big part of that culture. I have a particular attachment to being Pakistani as well as Canadian.

MH: Could you tell us a little bit about your film background?

OM: All my life I wanted to be a filmmaker. From a really early age.
Out of film school I went into television. I lived in Toronto for a long period of my life and worked for CityTV. I started off as an editor, eventually producing, in particular, short form half hour documentaries, but I really wanted to make something a bit more narrative and cinematic.

So four years ago I moved to Montreal with my wife, and decided that it was time to pursue different job in television and I would just try to kick around an idea I had in my head about making a film about what it was like to be Muslim in the post 911 world.

That was all I had at the time. That sort of notion that I knew I wanted to do something about that because I had certain feelings about it and wanted to get something out.

After doing some research, I connected with this idea about Taqwacore. I found out about what was going on and just decided to go for it.
I really tried to do a film in the way that I envisioned it, and take a more narrative approach to it, and here we are.

MH: Could you tell us about your film Taqwacore, the whole idea and how that formed.

Yes, well, as I was mentioning, I was doing this research just trying to find out what kind of interesting Muslim voices there were because my feeling was that we weren't hearing from those kind of people. We were hearing from very, very mainstream Muslim organizations that would apologize a lot for the fundamentalists or we were hearing from the fundamentalists themselves. We weren't hearing from anyone in the middle, in the gray zone. People who lived lives in between.

That was really important to me, so I was talking to all sorts of Muslim academics, Muslim artists, people like that, and time and time again they would ask me “have you read this book, Taqwacore?
It's really interesting considering what you're taking about. It's this novel by a man who converted to Islam, became a fundamentalist for a while, pulled back from all of that, and now, has written this very rebellious and challenging novel imagining what it would be like if there was such a thing as punk Islam.”

So I was like, that sounds a bit wacky (laughs) but you know, I'm going to give it a try. I got the book off Amazon and I read it and it blew my mind. On a personal level as a Muslim I was like, wow!

First of all, the kind of references that he was making, the language was so exact both in terms of his Islamic language and his punk language. I mean he really got the right references in there and the characters were really rich, full of contradiction and complexity, and a lot of the characters and the situations in the book really spoke to me.

So based on that I decided I had to meet this guy. So I made it happen. I emailed him and asked him to meet. He agreed, he's very amiable, so we met and from that point on I was hooked because he basically told me his life story which I found very fascinating.

The ideas in the book had already gripped me and then on top of that he was telling me, in our very first meetings, that he was starting to meet people who had read his book and were telling him they were Muslim and punk. I thought to myself, wow, this guy's written this fiction, this fantasy, and now life is imitating art. And that's just fascinating to be here on the cusp of that happening. I just jumped in and was sold.

MH: What was the most challenging thing about making this film.

OM: (laughs) Working with punks. The most challenging thing? The very origins of it date back to about three and a half years. By the time I actually got Michael and all the other guys, I'm assuming you've seen the movie...

MH: oh, yes.

OM: ... by the time I got Michael and all those guys involved in the thing, it had been about three years. And I think the most challenging thing with a film like this is you have very small, very astute, very media savvy subjects, people who understand the media. They're artists themselves so it's not as if we could script a lot of stuff or stage it.

As a filmmaker sometimes you kind of push and you prod to try to edge the story along in certain ways and sometimes you do that with people who are not as comfortable on camera as these guys are. Because they're performers, it took a long time to break through their distrust they have of the media and what the media could possibly do with their image and the message of what they're trying to convey. And like it or not, for a while I was considered part of that media.

First it took a long time to build trust, and even when we did that it was very hard to find very vulnerable, very real moments. The only thing you could do was to stand around. You just had to basically spend a lot of time with these guys, all of them, and be attentive and observant to capture moments that were very raw and personal. There was a lot of hanging around, waiting around, going with the flow, (laughs) a kind of Zen concentration in the end.
Sometimes I wasn't up for it, and neither was my crew, but I think that over that couple of years we got what we needed.

MH: How is your film being received so far?

OM: Last night was our world premier here at VIFF. It was surreal. This is my first feature length film. First of all, VIFF is awesome. I'm happy to go on any record and talk about how amazing VIFF is. They fly you out here, they feed you. I don't know any festival that feeds their filmmakers (laughs), so that's amazing. Everyone's really friendly and very helpful. It's incredible and I really get the vibe that the audience here is really in to going out and seeing interesting offbeat films. It doesn't seem to be about stars or industry. We're over indulgent in the industry side of things.

It was a well attended screening, which I was pleased about, but more important to me than that, was it was a screening of really thoughtful people. We had an excellent Q & A afterwards where the usual cliché questions weren't asked. I got really in depth questions from some of the Muslims in the audience, challenging me at some points, and some of the non-Muslims talked about things they found difficult or challenging as well.

You know at times I kind of felt that I really wasn't representing the punk side of things well because I was kind of pontificating. The Q & A ended up a discussion at the end, which was really nice. And it really made me feel like the film was working in terms of engaging people in ideas, which was my intent all along.

MH: What would you like people to take away from this film?

OM: That's interesting. Some people kind of challenged me yesterday asking if I was trying to make a definitive statement about Islam, was I trying to make some heavy handed point, and I totally don't think I am. I don't think that's what these guys who I portray in my film are trying to do either .

I think really in the end what Taqwacore (the book) is about, and what the film is endorsing as well, is this idea of being Muslim on your own terms, finding your own path, and that being ok. It's ok to be a complex human being. It's ok to have contradiction, we all do, let's just be up front about it and don't hide away from that.
If you don't feel like you can conform to your parents' Islam, if you don't feel comfortable with everything that's going on in the western world and the way you're getting stereotyped, don't be comfortable with it. Speak out against it where you can, express it in healthy ways like through music and through art, and through satire.

The ultimate thing for me is that Taqwacore is about a new space. It's not a movement, it's not an ideology, it's not trying to sell you something. Let's create a space here for all of us who feel like the labels don't work. I think the film is just asking for the right of that to exist.

MH: Where do you go from here? Is Michael writing another book? Are you going to make another film?

OM: Michael is one of the most prolific men I know. He's one of those people, as far as artists go, that just constantly inspires my jealousy, deep jealousy. He's younger than me, fitter than me, and has already published five or six books, and he's going to Harvard right now to study Islamic studies.
So the guy is just one of those guys that's got that kind of mind. The book, Taqwacore, is truly an incredible piece of writing. I urge people to read it. Michael's writing in general is quite vivid, and quite an amazing insight into Islam and the North American experience. And of course the bands and their music, all of whom people want to find out more about, you can find on the web site we just put up. (ww.taqwacore.com) We're trying to make that into a one stop resource.

There is one final screening of Taqwacore at the Granville 7 theatres this
Mon, Oct, 5th, at 1:15pm

moot or hooey?
there is a Taqwacore movement in Vancouver, BC

My Tehran for Sale, at VIFF

Today I had the great pleasure of speaking with director/poet Geranaz Moussavi, about her debut feature film, My Tehran for Sale, a poignant and unique look at life within the largest city in Iran.

We sit in the lobby of the Westin Bayshore and Ms. Moussavi is confident and relaxed.

ME: Could you please tell us a little about yourself?

GM: I was born in 1974 in Tehran and I went to primary school and secondary school in Tehran. When I was sixteen I started publishing my poetry relatively widely in magazines and newspapers: literary newspapers that were available back then. When I was in grade eleven, I acted in my first feature film. I had been active in school theatre and all that, but nothing professional. That was the first time I experienced cinema professionally. I did my second feature film when I was nineteen.

I was born to TV/film parents. My mother was a video grader and my dad was a sound engineer for film and TV, so I was raised amongst all these sorts of people.

I enrolled in science at university because when you're a good student and you come from a middle class family, you are expected to become a doctor or engineer, or something along those lines. I knew that I wanted to be active in the world of literature and cinema.
I miscalculated and thought that I could study science, so I wouldn't live a poor life, and could continue filmmaking and acting as well. This, of course, didn't work because I was always busy in drama classes while I was supposed to be studying science. Inevitably, I had to drop university half way through.
I was simply more focused on acting and drama school and writing.

Just after high school, I worked as a book reviewer and editor for a literary magazine.

When I was twenty-three, I immigrated to Australia with my family. It was then that I made up my mind not to be an actor, but a filmmaker. So I started with a bachelor degree, and graduated with honors in screen studies at Flinders University in Adelaide, and then went to the Australian Film Television and Radio School in Sydney, and did a post graduate degree in editing.

After that I did my doctorate in the field of filmmaking and screen studies, with a theme of poetic cinema, at the University of Western Sydney.

Meanwhile, this film happened. I was writing scripts all throughout these years, one thing lead to another, and I was able to make this film.

ME: Could you tell us about your film, My Tehran for Sale.

GM: I had had the idea for years, in my head. I wanted to tell a story of my generation. Un-said, and un-told Iranian stories. For some reason, mainstream media isn't interested in them. They are only interested in the hectic side of Iran, the political side of Iran, and not really focused on individual stories, the stories of middle class Iran.
It was always showing Iran poor, deprived, rural, or Iran upper class, politically run, and the whole tension between these two classes.

The Iranian industry was somehow dismissing the middle class story. Maybe because the market was more available to the exotic sides of Iran. Maybe that was what was being offered in a more kind way to Iranian filmmakers. I don't know the reasons. I've got my ideas, of course, but I can't be completely sure about them. The important thing is that, as a result, the Iranian films grew to be known to international audiences as rural films with no rhythm, landscape films, films for children or about children, or films with marginalized characters from the outskirts of bigger cities like Tehran. Rarely films concerning middle class people, urban life, contemporary life, and the complexities of these paradoxical lives within the city.

That was the main thing that got my attention because a lot of other stories existed that needed to be told.
Because the culture and society of Iran is so diverse, it seemed to me that that piece of the puzzle was missing.

I got to thinking about it, trying to collect stories using my own experiences, as well as my friends' stories, and my observations of society.
I lived in Australia for ten years but was never disconnected from Iran. I went back there, I lived there for a year, a few months, every now and then, and I was always filming, taking pictures and talking to people. I was collecting all these stories for the story I was going to tell in a film.

I had had an idea for the main actor in the film, Marzieh Marzieh Vafamehr. We'd been close friends for years, and we went to the same drama schools when we were eighteen and nineteen. We were very much aligned on the same page when it came to telling the story of our generation and had long conversations when I was in Tehran. She was the back-bone to the whole process and I wrote the script based on her acting in the film. That's why she uses her real name in the film.

It's my opinion that this story is not only authentic because it shows a truth that hasn't been seen, but also because it's coming from our hearts. It's a collective work of a few people who have poured their hearts into this project. People who participated in the film as writer, director, actor, assistant, and crew. They really helped in forming the ideas. It was interesting that people wanted to tell this story.

ME: Where was it filmed? Was it filmed primarily in Tehran?

GM: Yes. The whole pre-production and production happened in Tehran, and the post production was in Australia.

ME: How did it go throughout the filming process? Did you run into any obstacles?

GM: When it comes to Tehran, everything is so complex. There were a lot of problems, a lot of obstacles. This is why we have made this film. This is why the whole tension is there. When it came to our film, because it's a land full of contradictions, there was smoothness when you didn't expect, and problems and obstacles when you never expected. The whole situation was never predictable.

When I went to Tehran to film, I expected the whole process of filming to be a lot more problematic. But what I had, maybe I was just lucky, was a comparatively smooth, easy experience in terms of filmmaking.
It doesn't mean that we didn't have common issues that everybody has in Iran. We had electricity cut off every day for two or three hours, we had traffic, we had problems getting the gear in time, getting the right gear. These are common issues when it comes to the Iranian film industry.

Whether you have permission, whether you don't have permission, the whole film industry in Iran happens in a spectrum of gorilla filmmaking. Not because of the political or social situation, just because the whole film industry is not as organized as in other countries. We had to hire our equipment from individual people. There's no big organization that you can go to and order your stuff. You make your films through personal and individual contacts in a smaller system.

I was working with a very professional, experienced crew. It was small, so managing was not a big deal. And we tried to keep things small. We filmed low key. We didn't want a lot of press on set and articles being written about our film before it came out. We didn't want things to get out of control. We wanted to tell the story in our own way, without interruption.
I really like things to be more improvised and I care about this interaction between people. I wanted them to be part of the creative flow.

ME: What was your relationship like with your editor? There are a lot of poignant moments in your film. Was it a challenge to edit?

GM: Yes. We filmed the film in a free way and just let things happen and we tried not to self censor while filming. We left the editing to the editor.

Of course, while filming in Iran you have to be cautious. I respect the culture and situation there, and of course I want to challenge the boundaries, but we've seen the culture of the film industry there, and I had to consider the safety of everyone too. I didn't want to take my camera there and film everything in a way that you would film outside Iran, take the camera out, and leave people there with the consequences.
I had to be very thoughtful of how I wanted to tell my story. I wanted to take risks, but calculated risks, not go wild. The film isn't all about me. I am also dealing with people who are living in Iran, same as myself, and we have to think about our tomorrow. That's partly why we left it to the editor. We wanted to be safe, but not compromise the story for the sake of safety either. We wanted to find a balance.

I learned this from the Iranian director, Abbas Kiarostami's cinema. It is possible to challenge things in a proper way, and at the same time, say what you have to say. Everything comes through subtlety as well as risk taking.

My editor Bryan Mason was very quick and knew what he wanted to get out of those images. Because I did my post graduate in film editing, I made this film with an editor's mind. The rhythm and a little bit of the vagueness and openness to interpretation, I already had in my mind. Bryan was very quick in grasping that and being able to get all those nuances.

ME: What is Iran like for up and coming film makers?

GM: It's very difficult to say, but I think when the pressure gets high, and restrictions go beyond what is tolerable for filmmakers... there are a lot of restrictions. Very few people get permission for their script. Very few people get permission to be filmed. Very few films get permission for general release. Things become more and more difficult every day, not only in the area of filmmaking, but also in the field of literature, book publishing, galleries, visual arts and all that.

The situation has become so suffocating, in terms of restrictions and limitations imposed on the artist, that it's beyond tolerance. I believe Iranian artists and filmmakers have been so patient and still make beautiful pictures and beautiful works, against the odds.

I think that for young Iranian filmmakers, the future of filmmaking will be more unofficial. More home video style, more digital film. Iran is one of the countries that will most benefit from new technology because this is their situation. It's not so easy to make an unofficial film with 35mm. You need smaller cameras, something more portable. It's not possible to go full crew, full gear, because that requires proper permission.

ME: With your poetry, you stood in front of crowds and read your works. Did you read your script to anyone for feedback?

GM: No, not for this script. That was part of the improvisation. I think there is a better vibe when it's improvised. Not for everything, but there are certain things I am more comfortable with, improvised.
When you do this, it gives more of a documentary vibe, and that was part of the feel I wanted to have with this film. The film travels a fine line between documentary and fiction. I wanted to play with that line.

ME: How has your film been received? It played at TIFF, yes?

GM: Yes, that was the world premiere. We had the film at the Adelaide film festival, but that was more of a local film festival. I was really amazed by the warm reception of the film by the audience. There were three completely sold out theatres for the public screenings. It was really amazing.

ME: What would you like people to take away from this film?

GM: I'd really like them to take away a fresh and different picture of Iran. Something different from other Iranian films.

I actually played with that in the film. I opened the film in a way that for the first one or two minutes people might think “oh, another Iranian film” but instantly it changes. I'd like people to take this fresh image from Iran as something more authentic to the true lives of people behind the walls and behind the closed doors. I hope they take the feeling with them when they leave the theatre, that finally, they got a glimpse of the private, intimate places of real people who are living there today.

ME: What's in the future? What are you working on now?

GM: I have a few ideas in my head and two scripts that I'm working on at the moment. Again, Iranian themes, Iranian stories, urban, and I'm writing these hoping I can develop these scripts and get proper funding for making those films.
Of course, I have to stand by this film and make it more accessible to more audiences and hope that I can get to more festivals and theatres, because that is the main thing for me, especially with a lower budget, risk taking film. I want people to come and watch this film and this is a very good time for it. People are curious about the Iranian people they hear about in the media.

moot or hooey?
all the characters used their real first names in the film.

Heliopolis at VIFF

Ahmad Abdalla: “It all started with a failing love story”

I had the great fortune of contacting director Ahmad Abdalla, via email, to discuss his feature debut film, Heliopolis.

Abdalla gives us a compelling look the trials and tribulations of modern Egyptian life. The film beautifully intertwines the stories of a host of characters living in the neighbourhood of Heliopolis, Cairo, allowing us a deeper look at the common struggles of ordinary people.

ME:
Could you please tell us a little about yourself. What made you want to be a film maker, and when and how did that begin?

AA:
As a teenager, I spent several years trying to approach the local film scene in Egypt with no luck. I even failed to obtain admission in the only film school in Egypt. That's why I turned to another art-related subject instead. I graduated from the faculty of music in Cairo in 2001.

While I was in college, and thanks to that devil called the internet, I began to learn about non-linear editing. It was new in Egypt, and I played with it until I knew enough about it to actually edit. It occurred to me that I could work my way into film making by editing short films for students. That was a good way to meet young filmmakers from my generation while making some money at the same time. Later, I found myself editing commercial spots and eventually working as an editor.

Just when my name was starting to look familiar in the editing field, I discovered that I was only doing this to make my living, and not for the passion of cinema. I therefore took a radical decision; to stop my editing career immediately and to start working on my own projects.

ME:
Could you tell us a little about your film and why this subject matter resonated with you. What inspired you to make this film?

AA:
I don't consider myself a film director yet. I am just a film editor who happens to have a very personal story to tell: Heliopolis is my first feature film. I believe making it independently was the best choice, not only for financial considerations, but mainly for the experience of having people work with a fresh and different mentality, one that does not conform to the mainstream film making mindset.

It all started with a failing love story. This personal tragedy has inspired me to tell other related personal stories, about my life and my friends, and to put it in the context of the stunning Heliopolis neighborhood in Cairo.

I believe Heliopolis is the only remaining district in Cairo that still struggles to preserve its cosmopolitan spirit. This neighborhood is still home for people from different ethnicities, religions, cultures, and social classes, while Cairo, the mother city, is witnessing a rapid elimination of its multicultural character. I wanted to search for the sources of such transformations and to tell, in the process, my personal stories in Heliopolis.

ME:
How has your film been received so far? Is there anything that stands out that you may not have expected?

AA:
Vancouver International Film Festival is our world premiere. The film was officially selected to participate in Toronto International Film Festival, but it was withdrawn by the distributor.

We had a small screening of an early working copy at Cannes Film Festival's market. Several of the journalists and critics who attended this screening liked the film. Consequently, we received a very positive review from the respected Variety magazine.

I am hoping that people in Vancouver will like the film, especially that it is related to Canada somehow. But you have to see the film first in order to recognize this relation.

ME:
What would you like people to take away from this film?

AA:
I don't make films to convey specific messages nor to convince people of my beliefs. Films are just films. Heliopolis expresses questions rather than answers. I don't think I have any answers, and to be honest, I don't admire films that tell their audiences what they should think or do. I only hope to make the audience think with us, and see our lives the way we see it and the way we show it in the film.

ME:
What is in the future for you? What are you working on now?

AA:
Honestly, I am currently overwhelmed with film festivals and screening in different parts of the world. But I am trying to watch other films, to learn more about people and cultures, and most importantly to learn about my mistakes in this film.

My main concern now is to make this micro-budget film Heliopolis available to the largest audience possible, not for the sake of receiving awards or for personal publicity, but for the sake of proving to myself and to my small crew that it is possible for a crew of seven people, all volunteers, to make a film that can be recognized as such and watched in different parts of the world. Proving this to ourselves will help us continue to make the films we love, with the support of film lovers around the world.

moot or hooey?
absolutely everyone who worked on this film, did so as a volunteer, even the cast.

best correography ever!!

moot or hooey?
these two are listed as two of the top dancers in the world.

Rocaterrania rocks!

Director Brett Ingram's documentary Rocaterrania is a journey through the incredible imagination of the brilliant artist, writer, and visionary, Renaldo Kuhler.

Kuhler works as a scientific illustrator for the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.
He grew up in Germany and in 1948, when he was 17, moved to a remote ranch in Colorado. Introverted as a child, Kuhler found the isolation unbearable and retreated into his imagination, creating the fantasy world of Rocaterrania, “a little world made up of Eastern Europeans”.

Though Kuhler's father himself was an industrial illustrator, he didn't approve of his drawings and told him to burn them all. It was at this point that Khuler began to draw in secret. He's been doing so for over 50 years and has created a world complete with maps, alphabet, language, government infrastructure, revolution and executions.

For Kuhler, Rocaterrania has been a life long obsession. “I am Rocaterrania” says Kuhler. It directly tells the story of his life and his battle to be true to who he is as a person, and not to bend to conformity. “the ability to fantasize is the ability to survive” says Kuhler.

Rocaterrania is a film for the entire family. A fascinating must see for anyone who's ever chanced to dream.

Check out www.viff.org for tickets and screening times.

moot or hooey?
the language in Rocaterrania is Rocateranski, and the main body of the language is corrupted Spanish.

Haiku contest

a haiku is a short Japanese poem based on a pattern of five beats, seven beats, five beats.

for example:

/ / / / /
I love drin-king beer
/ / / / / / /
eve-ry night I dance and drink
/ / / / /
oh my ach-ing head

moot or hooey?
moot will mail a fabulous gift to the 100th haiku submission

A Groovy Strip of Celluloid

With Taking Woodstock, Director Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain) takes us back to August of 1969, for a behind the scenes look at the infamous concert known as Woodstock, where thirty-two of the biggest acts of the time performed to an audience of over 500,000.

This isn't a film about the concert itself, rather than events leading up to the infamous three days.

It follows Elliot Teichberg (Demitri Martin) as he attempts to help his parents save their family business, as well as help get a local theatre troupe off the ground.
Teichberg holds his own small scale music festival every year, so when he gets word that a large outdoor concert that was scheduled not far away has been cancelled, he recognizes a business opportunity, contacts the promoters and the seeds for Woodstock are planted.

A word of warning though: if you're hoping to see footage of Joplin, Hendricks, and The Who, you'll be sadly disappointed.

Lee slides past some of the biggest names on the bill, to hit all the right chords with his awesome soundtrack that includes Richie Havens, Ravi Shankar, Melanie, Ultimate Spinach, Arlo Guthrie, and a host of others that give the film a truly original feel.

Lee attempts a fresh take on a very old subject, and the result is lovely.

Avy Kaufman does an amazing job with the casting.

Imelda Staunton delivers an exceptional performance as the intensely hilarious Sonia Teichberg, Leiv Schreiber strikes the perfect balance with his character Vilma, and Eugene Levy as Max Yasgur, right on! Jonathan Groff (Michael Lang) and Paul Dano (guy in VWvan) deliver smaller yet poignant performances. We'll be sure see a whole lot more of them in the future.

Huge kudos to the production design, set decoration, and costume design teams. Not an easy job by any stretch, but they captured this era down to the last fringe, giving the film that extra credibility.

Taking Woodstock may not be the rock and roll film the title suggests, but it's an entertaining, uplifting film that satisfies on so many other accounts.

moot or hooey?
Jonathan Groff has never acted before but he's written a multitude of stuff for the TV industry.

Inglourious Basterds

Quentin Tarantino has done it again.
At least that's what many have been saying.

Tarantino is known for his edgy, gloriously gory revenge fantasies, and his latest work, Inglourious Basterds, delivers on all accounts.

What it doesn't deliver however, is a great film, and for someone who's a big Tarantino fan, this is extremely disappointing.

Christoph Waltz is uncanny. He absolutely steals the entire film with his take on the brilliant and chillingly sinister Col. Hans Landa. Melanie Laurent (Shosanna) and Diane Kruger (Bridget) are both awesome and believable. And we don't see nearly enough of the amazing Til Schweiger as the brooding Sgt. Hugo Stiglits.
However, Eli Roth should never have been cast in this film, the talented Mike Myers was wasted entirely, and Brad Pitt, though I didn't mind his acting, sounded like he'd stepped out of a Three Stooges film.

It's like Tarantino couldn't quite figure out what he wanted to do. Like he had three different films he wanted to make, couldn't decide which one to focus on, so threw them all together.

Having said that, the biggest beef lay with the platform he chose.

Who was he making this film for?
Does he expect his audience and cheer at the slaughter of the Nazis?
Wouldn't that parallel them to the nauseating Nazi audience watching the “hero's” film?

Tarantino missed the mark this time around. His films are generally enjoyable for what they are, and yes, it's a well written revenge fantasy, but this one blended in a very real piece of history that doesn't work at all with his genre of film.
It was presumptuous and sad. And at 2hrs and 33 minutes, much much too long.

moot or hooey?
Christoph Waltz won best actor at Cannes, and is short listed for an Academy Award.

District 9

what would you do if someone handed you 30 million dollars and said “here, make a movie, and do whatever you want”?

Peter Jackson did just that for lucky up and coming director Neill Blomkamp, and boy did he deliver.
Blomkamp's highly anticipated action film, is a captivating 151 minutes of onscreen magic.
Co-written by Blomkamp and writing partner Terri Tatchell, District 9 is a compelling original story that will keep you at the edge of your seat.

28 years ago a space ship settles over Johannesburg. Three months later, humans find a way to penetrate the ship and discover close to a million starving aliens. Not knowing what to do, the government cloisters them in an area they name District 9.
Almost three decades later, the area has become a slum filled with violence and corruption.

The film opens as a documentary following our protagonist Wikus (Sharlto Copely) on the first day of his newly appointed assignment of heading the government's resettlement of the aliens 200 kilometers outside, and out of sight, of the city.

Part of the “resettlment” includes the searching for and collecting of weapons.

Things go horribly wrong for Wikus when he discovers a mysterious vial of fluid. He accidentally sprays himself with what turns out to be DNA altering liquid.
Now everyone wants a piece of him and the film turns into a massive manhunt.

There are definitely a lot of things to keep us talking about this film for a very long time.
Most notably Sharlto Copely. He glides in and steals the film completely. Not bad for someone who never aspired to be an actor.

The story does take it's liberties with a few borrowed ideas:
-Pairing an alien with a human to make a commentary on racism (Alien Nation).
-Wikus pulling off his fingernails (The Fly)
-The larger than life exoskeleton (Aliens)

And it's not without its flaws and plot holes:
-Where were the female aliens?
-Why didn't he just tell the gangster how he got the arm?
-Inter galaxy prostitution? You saw that guy pee, right?
-Wikus thought he'd hop in the space ship and figure out how to fly it as he went along?

This is an ambitious film, to say the least. The topics it touches on are innumerable and difficult, and certainly unsolvable in 151 minutes, regardless of the amount of CGI.

Take it for what it is, and go see District 9!
You're going to want to have seen it on the big screen. Especially once the sequel comes out. And there will be a sequel. In about three years.

moot or hooey?
Sharlto Copely was a film producer who Blomkamp roped into playing the lead after he used Copely a couple of times as a stand in.

best underwater camera ever!!

moot or hooey?

the Olympus 1030 SW, Olympus PT-043, Fisheye FIX M46 52 Wide Lens, & Sea & Sea YS-17 was rated the best camera package in the world, for 2009.