A character imagines the downtown core of Calgary suspended and sealed inside a giant dome in Gary Burns's "waydowntown."

May 19, 2010

by Joel Crary

Ten years ago, Canada at large came to know the work of writer/director Gary Burns through “waydowntown,” a film that won the City Award for Best Canadian Feature Film at the Toronto International Film Festival and nabbed Burns a nomination in the Best Achievement in Direction category at the Genie Awards. Burns has specialized in films that feature characters placed under enormous existential stress by their surroundings, which in “waydowntown” take the form of offices, shopping mall stores and walkways that unite Calgary’s downtown core into one giant commercial stronghold.

Burns continues to live in Calgary, where he is about to finish up new film “The Future is Now!” with Jim Brown, his journalist co-director who also helped Burns helm 2006’s “Radiant City,” a nightmarish vision of suburban sprawl that took home a Genie for Best Documentary. I spoke to Burns recently about “waydowntown,” which is screening at the Mayfair Theatre tonight as part of the Lost Dominion Screening Collective’s Canadian Cult Revue, and got some of his reflections on the last 10 years of his filmmaking career.

How are things in Calgary?

Good. It’s the big city.

Getting bigger?

Always, yeah, unfortunately.

The Mayfair Theatre here in Ottawa is screening “waydowntown” on Wednesday as part of the Canadian Cult Revue series, organized by the Lost Dominion Screening Collective. When I mention “waydowntown,” what’s the first thing that pops into your head?

It was a long time ago. I don’t know. It was pretty fun, for me. It was one of the most fun times I’ve had making a film. I have pretty fond memories of “waydowntown.” I don’t think about the topic or anything. I just think that it was a fun experience.

What was fun about it? What would pop into your head to say that it was a great experience?

We made it on a really low budget. We didn’t have any permits or anything. We had permission to shoot in the really large interior mall area in downtown Calgary. We looked like a TV news crew. We were shooting on Betacam. We had a normal sized crew, but we didn’t want to hassle the mall too much, so if you weren’t necessary you would go sit “over there.” We tried not to be too conspicuous, so we had all this freedom. I remember people getting changed in clothing stores. They would go in and get changed in a change room and stuff like that. It was kind of fun.

We didn’t have any trucks. We didn’t have any catering. It was super low key. We had a couple of offices rented. There were two offices we shot in, I think, and we had two other offices that we also rented to do hair and makeup in. But the office next to that one would just be some guy in his office. We didn’t own the floor. When we shot it, Calgary was still like it is now. It’s really hard to get office space, so you couldn’t just go and get a whole floor. We ended up getting this area where people could rent one office and they would all share a receptionist. There were four empty, so we had those four that one month.

Some of the actors were shocked, like Don when he first got there. There was no trailer so they would go back to their hotel, which wasn’t very far away. We just had a room, one of the offices, with some chairs in it. It was low key. By then I’d worked with a lot of people before, and it was just pleasant.

Looking back, what were some of your personal high-point experiences during the film’s release and promotion?

It was pretty well received in Toronto, maybe because Don was in it. We got really good press and the film went over pretty well. I think it was my first film that anybody actually went to see. I don’t know. It was 10 years ago. I was shocked when you sent me that email saying that it’s the 10th anniversary. We shot it in ’99 and it came out in 2000. The best thing about that movie is that we were invited to Tokyo. That’s my number one memory. There was some big Canada thing, so they showed the movie at the Canadian Consulate in Tokyo. We got to go there and it was all expenses paid, in this really nice hotel, for 10 days. It was really great. That was definitely the highlight of that movie, man.

The pacing of “waydowntown” escalates until each character in it seems to be acting out of desperation to hold on to their sanity. Do you recall what the mood was like on set? Do you recall how the actors were able to keep that energy up?

I was surprised by Marya Delver. She was so great. She came to audition just like [her character]. I auditioned her in Vancouver and she showed up and she had a little clipboard or something. She was super efficient. I thought she was actually like that kind of person. I was kind of shocked after the first day of shooting. We went out for dinner and she was a totally laid back Vancouver girl. She was almost a hippie, for Christ’s sake. It was amazing because I had only seen her at her audition and on the first day of shooting.

I’ve always had a fairly laid back approach to actors. I sort of expect them to show up with what they’re going to do. You cast them based on what their audition was like and then say, “Do that. That was good.” And then you give them smaller comments, mostly on the degree of performance: “That’s too big” or “Maybe they’re a little more like this.” I remember that Fabrizio showed up and he wanted to be this really intense guy. And I was like, “No, no, you’re not intense at all. You’re totally just laid back. You’re more of an observer.” And he was like, “Oh, that isn’t how I saw it at all.” But he quickly adapted and he was great. Because of course he’s smoking dope and he’s not as engaged.

It sounds like everybody was pretty committed to the project.

Yeah, of course. I paired [Tobias Godson] up with this other local actor who played the security guard. [Derek Flores] had never acted or anything. He was a Loose Moose Theatre guy. When [Tobias] came to audition in Vancouver, he seemed like a pro to me. So I teamed him up with this guy who had never acted and thought, “He’ll bring that other guy up. He’ll keep that guy in line.”

When people walk up to an actor on set and ask them what they’re up to, they’ll just tell you what they’re working on. They’ll go, “Oh, I just did this play.” [Tobias] said, “I was up fishing with my dad and I was helping him work on his truck.” And I realized this guy had never acted before. Oh no. Here are these two guys who have never acted before and they’re playing off each other. I thought I was screwed. But they were really good.

The film has a lot of small, everyday observations about the way people behave. They say “hello” or “sorry” when they don’t really mean to or want to, they don’t move aside for other people. These elements are sprinkled throughout most of the films you’ve done. What sort of larger picture do you think these little observations of human behaviour paint?

That’s a good point. I co-wrote it with James Martin, who was sort of a comic writer guy. Some of those observations were his. I’m not really a screenwriter who’s all that proficient. I don’t really know what I’m doing as far as having a normal three-act structure, making sure there’s some conflict and all that kind of stuff goes. I find I’m more capable of working in tone and thinking in terms of setting up an idea. There are so many elements that would go into that—characterization and everything, but also that idea of little things and observations. Tone is a hard thing to get your hand on. It’s everything. It’s the little things as much as the big things. It’s one of those things you try to do, but you may not even be conscious of it.

You mentioned that you worked with a co-writer on “waydowntown.” It seemed to mark the beginning of a collaborative process for you. You’ve worked with different writers and you most recently shared directorial duties with Jim Brown. What about the collaborative process has been beneficial for you?

The problem with filmmaking when you’re the director is that everyone just stands there staring at you. “Hey, what’s next?” I co-wrote “A Problem with Fear” with my wife. Normally you have people around you and you bounce ideas off them. Unless you’re really collaborating officially, there’s a burden to ask, “Do you want to read my script and give me some ideas?” Jim and I are just finishing another project. We’re in post. It just takes the load off, to some degree. Two minds are better than one, it seems.

How does that come together, when you find somebody else who’s in tune with what you’re trying to do?

It’s just luck, really. I’m always trying to have a couple of projects going at one time, because you never know what’s going to go. In fact, I have a lot of scripts that just flounder. I’ve always got a bunch of things going. I won’t try to manage it and I’ll get five scripts going at one time. I was working with James on another script. “waydowntown” was weird because I had never worked downtown. I had never worked in an office and James had. I knew James. He was a friend of mine. He had a column in a weekly here called “Mr. Smutty.” It was really popular and he was really funny. So it was kind of like, “Hey, I’m working on this other project. Do you want to work with me?” It takes the load off. I had another thing I was already doing.

With Jim, it was different. I’d never done a documentary. I didn’t think I could do any interviewing. I’m not a journalist. I don’t know how you go about that kind of stuff. He was a journalist who worked for the CBC. I had a New Year’s party at my place. I was really interested in the suburban sprawl concept. I said, “Man, we should do a documentary on this.” And he said, “Yeah, sure.” That was it, basically. We met a few times. You feel people out. Actually, there’s a script that I’ve been trying to get a rewriter for. It’s hard finding a total stranger, calling up agents and asking to see a sample of their work. It’s a lot easier if it’s somebody you’re already hanging around with. I haven’t done too much work with anyone that I didn’t already know socially.

You worked with Patrick McLaughlin on “waydowntown” and “Radiant City” among other films. How would you describe your working relationship?

He just shot the new thing we’re doing, too. It’s called “The Future is Now!”. We’ll probably go to Toronto with it in the fall. Patrick and I went to film school together at Concordia. He was in my first production class. He shot one of my shorts that I made at school. Everybody who worked on my first feature and first shorts was somebody I went to school with. Everybody’s at the same level as you. Everybody wants to be a filmmaker. I had friends come out from Montreal on the films for nothing. That’s just what you did, because you wanted the experience.

After “The Suburbanators,” I went to Patrick and he couldn’t shoot “Kitchen Party.” It was really stupid. We ended up shooting in Vancouver. We got a bunch of money in some form from the B.C. government and they had a crazy rule where all the heads of the key departments had to be from B.C. Patrick would have shot “Kitchen Party,” but he couldn’t do it. Anyway, he’s shot a bunch of my stuff. I’ve known him for a long time. He lives in Calgary now.

Do you find that you’re on the same wavelength when it comes to tone and the visual representation of the ideas you’re trying to put forward?

Pretty much. Patrick and I have different sensibilities to some degree. Patrick likes to be really prepared. He wants to meet and talk. I think we’ve worked together enough now that we can have some shorthand. It’s a good relationship. He just had another baby, man, so he’s got to keep working.

How has your relationship with the NFB been recently?

It’s pretty good. We’re doing another show with them right now. I think like every friend you make, people all have their foibles, but you need them and they need you. The NFB is pretty good. We go to the Edmonton office and they do great. They just put money into our new thing and they’re co-producers on it. They were good on “Radiant City,” too. We had CBC involved on “Radiant City” and they were a bit more trouble. I think the main thing is that you’ve always got to be really clear about what you’re making. Make sure everybody knows exactly what you’re doing and don’t try to sell people on something different. Of course, you may change your mind. Some new things arise and you want to mix it up. Then you have to keep people up to speed on what your thought processes are. People don’t want to be surprised, basically. I think that’s the main thing.

Are you referring to the fact that “Radiant City” wasn’t necessarily a straightforward documentary?

CBC had a bit of a problem with it, but we were very straight on what we were doing. The NFB was cool with it in the end. It worked out. CBC dumped it. They hated it. We had problems there, but there were some personal issues going on. I’m not sure. The NFB and CBC—we were pretty straight up with everybody. They were all cool with it.

The main concept for “Radiant City” was to have a couple of actors, or maybe just one. We always knew we were going to have a short shoot. We were going to find real people, but we were going to put maybe one or two actors in just so we could manipulate it a bit. It ended up happening that we used a lot of actors, because once we cast the actors it just seemed like that was the way to go. They were all from the suburbs. For the auditions, we wanted actors that lived in the suburbs. If you’re an actor living in Calgary, you generally live in the suburbs because you can’t afford to live downtown. You live out in the boonies. It wasn’t hard to find actors who lived in the suburbs.

So we did change it slightly. We got the money for our original proposal. By the time we started shooting, we were using all actors, but they knew that at the time. We didn’t surprise anybody. We didn’t go, “Let’s use all actors and not tell anybody.” They were all cool with it.

Let me ask you about “The Future is Now!”. I’m looking forward to seeing your next collaboration with Jim Brown. Can you tell me anything about it?

We’re just finishing it up. It’s based loosely on a French documentary from 1950 that followed this guy who was having a hard time adapting to post-war France. It was called “Life Begins Tomorrow.” There are actors in it, and some real people. It’s similar to “Radiant City,” to some degree. The idea is that a journalist meets this guy who is hitchhiking to Paris. The guy going there is a tourist. He’s sort of a middle-class businessman. He’s having a hard time adapting to modernism. He doesn’t like modern art or modern music. He doesn’t like modern architecture. This journalist takes him under his wing and introduces him to the leading minds in Paris of the day in the arts and sciences—an artist, a philosopher, an architect, a scientist—to turn him around, change his point of view and make him open to new changes that are coming.

I wouldn’t say it’s a remake, but it’s pretty close. We basically have a modern version of that. We have a guy who’s more of a libertarian. He’s a bit of a shut-in. The journalist, a woman in this case, takes him under her wing and does the same thing. But instead of just French intellectuals, she introduces him to people from around the world. There’s an artist, a philosopher, architects, a couple of scientists, an author, and a poet. It’s the same deal. The journalist and the main guy are actors, but all the people they meet are real people.

You seem really attracted to characters who feel burdened by the world and are trying to find their individuality in environments that try to prescribe it onto them. I’ve read a few reviews of your films and I’ve come across the term “soul-crushing” a lot. It’s used to describe the circumstances that the characters in your films are experiencing. Are our souls any better off than they were at the turn of the millennium, when you were making a movie like “waydowntown”?

That’s a good question. I don’t know if I’ve kept up. I base almost everything I do on what I’m interested in at the time or what I’m going through, to some degree. I live in Calgary. Calgary has its moments, but the problem with Calgary is that it suffers from doing everything really fast. It’s a brand new city and it’s growing super fast. There have been a lot of bad decisions made. I’m sure it happens everywhere over millennia, even in Rome. I’m sure they were growing their city too fast and going, “Oh my God, look at that.”

Calgary’s got this cool experiment. I grew up here. When I was born, I don’t think it had even 300,000 people. Now it’s a million. Just in my lifetime, the city’s gone from a small city that was also agrarian, almost like a farming community for the most part. Oil and gas had been discovered and that was pushing the boom, I guess. Since then it just hasn’t stopped. I’m sitting in my backyard right now. I can see the new Norman Foster high-rise that’s going up. It’s only a mile from here. It’s amazing how the downtown skyline changes. It’s unbelievable. I’m kind of living in the middle of it.

One thing about writing fiction is that it’s so much easier to be a complainer, someone who’s pointing out all the faults. It’s more interesting, obviously. If you’re just going, “Wow, what a great place,” there’s no story there. I’ve always been a critic of Calgary, but that’s just because I’m in it. It’s an easy thing to pick on, to some degree. Whether things are better or worse, I don’t know. The thing is that I find it exciting, too. It’s cool that I can see the Norman Foster building from my backyard. Things happen pretty fast. We’re putting in a new bridge across the river that’s designed by the Spanish architect Calatrava. It’s only a few blocks from here. It’s kind of exciting. Right now, they’re building a new bridge and you can see it every day. It’s cool.

What’s your favourite building in Canada?

That’s a good question. I haven’t thought of an answer to that, actually. I’m kind of keen on the new AGO. I know some people have been critical of it. I’ve only been in it once. It had just opened, so they were having some problems with compensation. The jury’s still out on that, I think. The Art Gallery of Ontario seems pretty cool, but I’ve never thought of a favourite.

Your two most recent projects have overlapped the two modes of style that define a lot of Canadian cinema: the documentary and the experimental film. Do you think there is anything essentially Canadian about “Radiant City” and “The Future is Now!”?

No, I wouldn’t say. Obviously the sprawl thing is going on. I always do that. I think Americans watching “Radiant City” could probably say, “This doesn’t seem right. There’s something going on.” They don’t buy it. They can see that there’s something Canadian going on, maybe. It’s probably just the way the actors talk, the kids and the adults. Other than that, we tried to make that film a universal North American kind of experience.

Our main actor in “The Future is Now!” is Quebecois and you can really tell. He’s got an accent. I think it’s going to feel pretty Canadian, even though we shot all over. Obviously, I think if you’re from Canada and you’re Canadian, your films are going to reflect that to some degree. Even in “waydowntown,” you can see the Calgary Towers in there very briefly. The idea is to not make it seem too Canadian just because you’re always hoping you can sell your movie to the States. If you make it too Canadian, they won’t buy it.

For “The Future is Now!” I actually thought about that. What’s more important, the Quebec market or the American market? I can see problems with being able to sell it in the U.S. because our actor’s not French. I don’t know if you can tell. If you’re American, you’d just go, “Oh, he’s a French guy.” You’re not even going to think he’s from Quebec. It will be interesting to see.

At the end of the day, it’s the film that you want to make, right?

Yeah, of course. And that’s the beauty of Canada. It’s a little easier to make something that’s off the wall or a little different. But I don’t know. I’ve just never played the American financing game. People make movies there, too. Whether or not I could even do it down there, I don’t know, but at this point I still rely on Telefilm, the NFB and Canadian TV stations to finance films. I’m sure decisions differ.

When I was starting out, Chris Smith was a guy I knew a little bit because we bumped into each other at film festivals. He was always flabbergasted by the amount of support we get. Film co-operatives don’t even exist in the States. The idea that you can just go and rent equipment really cheap, that you can join and have access to all this stuff for basically nothing—that stuff doesn’t even exist in the States. To him it was like a dream. “Wow, you can do that? You get money from where?” But he’s always popping movies out. I don’t know where he gets his money now.

How did Don McKellar go about stapling the motivational messages to his chest?

We just put a little pad under his shirt. It was just a piece of tin, really, that I think was taped there. He would staple it and it would stick. Staples aren’t that strong, you know. They bend like they’re supposed to. We just put something under his shirt.

“waydowntown” turns 10 this year. How has Gary Burns developed as a filmmaker over the last 10 years?

I’m more comfortable now with actors. Even on “waydowntown,” I was totally terrified of actors. I didn’t know how to talk to them and I’d just avoid them. I just didn’t know how to approach them. Now, after doing a few more shows, I think I have a better rapport.

I don’t think I’ve changed that much. It’s not like I’ve done tons of stuff. I’m still making a film about every three years, which isn’t really that productive. I just find it’s very hard to make more than a film every three years.

That’s more than some people get to make in a lifetime, so you’re lucky in that respect. I think you’re improving as the years go on. I’m really looking forward to this next project of yours.

It’s dynamite. This week, Jim and I are just waiting. E1 is our distributor and the National Film Board’s our co-producer. We’re trying to get them to sign off on the fine cut, so we’re not doing anything this week. We’re just waiting for the word, basically. There will probably be a few little changes to make and then we’ll be finishing it in post. We watched it a week or so ago, and we both went, “Wow. This is great.” We feel really good about it. It’s really different. People are either going to love it or hate it. I’m not sure.

My profound thanks goes out to Gary Burns for the gracious donation of his time for this interview. For more information on Gary and Burns Film Ltd., visit burnsfilm.com.