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Production Notes (2)

Eaton turned to Gina Carter (HEARTLANDS, BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS) to produce the film. Carter had worked extensively with Revolution in the past and loved the script on first reading. Eaton and Carter thought Rhombus Media (Academy Award-winning THE RED VIOLIN, CHILDSTAR, SLINGS AND ARROWS) was in perfect creative sync with Revolution and asked Niv Fichman and Jessica Daniel from Rhombus to come in as co-producers. Canadian Producer Daniel agrees, saying “I think we both share a real love of films and a real love for filmmaking. There is a complete ‘meeting of the minds’ in terms of the type of films we both like to make, and both companies have an independent spirit which spills over into the filmmaking process.”

The question of who would direct this tiny perfect script was an absolute given – Marc Evans, the brilliant Welsh director behind MY LITTLE EYE, TRAUMA and RESURECTION MAN, was the first and unanimous choice. Carter had worked with Evans before and says, “I just immediately fell in love with the script and wanted to do it. And my very first thought was Marc. I went back the next day and had a meeting with Andrew. We talked about the script … Andrew asked me who did I think could direct it, and I said Marc. And Andrew said totally, Marc.”

The ‘vision thing’ is a subject with particular resonance for all involved in the film. Evans says, “I felt like this script was really a gift, that I had to look after it and not mess it up. It’s got a real humanity to it.” As a producer, Carter says, “you read a script and you have a vision. As a writer, you write a script with a vision. Then you give it to a director and to a degree you have to cut loose slightly what your vision is, because the whole reason for choosing a director for a project is because you believe that somewhere along the line they’re on the same wavelength as you are … Marc and I know each other so well, we talked so much about it (the script) that we were really only ever going to come up with something that we both felt was right.

“Whatever my original vision for the film was, what I’ve got is way beyond any vision I could have wished for,” Carter concludes.

The uniqueness of the script clearly seeped into the day-to-day making of the film, engendering in the cast and crew a sense that they were involved in something extraordinary. “The story was so distinctive and the script and the cast attracted such an amazing crew,” Daniel says. “Canadians don’t often get the opportunity to make films like this, and I think most people felt they were working on something pretty special. And Marc Evans is a passionate filmmaker with sharp instincts as both a storyteller and a visualist. He had a very strong connection to the material and knew what the priorities were.”

It was Fichman’s idea to shoot in Wawa. “As Fargo is to Fargo ..” Fichman says about the symbiosis of town and story. “The name (Wawa) is a big part of its mythology. It kind of symbolized to me the isolation of the character (of Alex) … and (there was) also an iconic symbol, which I think the goose is. On the one hand, it’s a Canada goose and it is a great symbol. On the other hand, let’s face it, it’s a 30 foot goose, so it’s kind of funny. I just thought that it would be a great opening image to arrive in for this character who is lost, trying to find some grounding.” Shooting it around Toronto might have been “too pretty and too kind of Victorian” Fichman insists, and would not have conveyed the remoteness, the beauty and the sheer isolation of the place. Lake Ontario could never be mistaken for Lake Superior.

On the subject of casting, Eaton says the screenwriter had her own ideas about who would be suitable. “When Ang wrote the script, she did a thing that usually annoys me,” Eaton says. “On the front page she wrote down her ideal cast and her ideal cast for Alex was Alan Rickman. But we thought we had nothing to lose, we thought we might as well send it to him and we did.”

Carter adds, “Marc and I put an hour aside to persuade (Rickman) to do it. We walked in and five minutes later, that was it. He said ‘if this was a house, I’d ask you to take it off the market’ and he was on board, and we spent the rest of the hour chatting!”

It was Rickman who suggested Sigourney Weaver for the role of Linda Freeman. They’d worked together on GALAXY QUEST and Rickman says had “an absolutely hilarious time” filming in Green River, Utah. Weaver says “he (Rickman) told me the story and I said ‘wow, they’ll never think of me for that.’ And he said get your agent to call, so I did. They sent me the script which I thought had such a wonderful balance of, first of all, comedy and romance and I think some real truth about a rather rare subject, which is … autism.

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