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.