Heartland director reflects on 10-year run
Dean Bennett reflects on the highs of 10 years of directing Heartland
It’s not surprising that Dean Bennett relates so strongly to Jack Bartlett, a.k.a. Grandpa, in the long-running CBC series Heartland.
As played by Shaun Johnston, Jack is the gruff patriarch of the Bartlett-Fleming clan on the series. He is described as the “glue” of the family and has helped gently guide granddaughters Amy and Lou through various rites of passage over the past 10 years on his sprawling Alberta ranch as they experienced love, loss and motherhood.
Bennett, who has directed more than 40 episodes of the CBC hit, has always felt a kinship with the character.
“My roots as a young man was as a hired hand on farms in eastern and central Alberta,” says Bennett, in an interview from the Calgary production offices of Heartland. “I would get on a horse and go out and check the cows in the morning and that sort of thing. I became aware of the personality of, not all by any stretch, but many of the ranchers that I met. I was so interested (in) the quiet, man-of-few-words people who came along. When we did the pilot it was something that Shaun and I talked about. He created a character who really is the rock and the anchor of the Heartland series.”
Bennett could hardly be described as gruff and he is probably far too modest to ever formally compare himself to Grandpa Bartlett. But as the most prolific director of Heartland, it could be argued that he has served a similar role behind the scenes, where he has gently guided cast and crew through a decade of family-friendly melodrama, horse stories and romantic adventures. This has included overseeing some of the series’ most pivotal,He was at the helm for the 2007 pilot that introduced Canada to the then 16-year-old Amy Fleming (Amber Marshall), who moves to the Bartlett ranch with big sister Lou (Michelle Morgan) after the death of their mother. Bennett received a Gemini nomination for directing the 2010 TV movie A Heartland Christmas. He was in the director’s chair for episodes that featured the engagement of Amy and Ty (Graham Wardle), their long-anticipated wedding a few years later, the birth of their daughter, the birth of Lou’s daughter and even a heart-tugging outing that dealt with the death of Paint, Grandpa Jack’s trusty, long-serving horse.
These all became momentous episodes, not only for fans, but for Bennett as well.
“The expectation is very high at the production level in terms of the audience,” he says. “So it just raises the bar and causes a person to reach as deeply as you possibly can to be very special: to look special, to feel special and to honour the scripts as completely as possible.”
Through it all, Bennett has managed to work with teens, preteens and babies and more than a few occasionally unco-operative members of the animal kingdom, thereby ignoring that old showbiz adage “never work with children or animals.”
“I’d think you’d have to call us all fools, and yet it has worked out,” Bennett says with a laugh. “Never work with children or animals if you’re not used to working with them, is how I would qualify that.” The kids haven’t been a problem. He has high praise for the young cast members, including a teenage Marshall in those early years and Alisha Newton, who joined the cast in Season 6 as Lou’s headstrong 12-year-old adopted daughter Georgie, for possessing wise-beyond-their-years levels of professionalism and leadership.
Horses, on the other hand, take some getting used to.
“It’s realizing that training is necessary and how important the people who work with the animals are,” Bennett says. “And then you start to get quite remarkable results. Not that every day is perfect, there are the days when the horse decides to run off. But the vast majority of the time, it works as close to clockwork as could ever be expected with animals. That really falls into the hands of the trainers and wranglers. We have a top crew of some of Canada’s best, which puts them among the world’s best.”
Born in Three Hills, Bennett was familiar with horses long before he had to ensure they hit their marks on set. But after a few years working ranches in rural Alberta he turned his attention to film and TV production. His first gig was operating a generator on the fairly obscure, Golden, B.C.-shot 1983 French-Canadian adventure film Le Ruffian. He worked as a gaffer and camera operator on various productions before moving into directing. That included an episode of crime series Tom Stone in 2002, which was produced by Calgary’s Tom Cox and Jordy Randall, whose Seven24 Films is also behind Heartland.
Bennett eventually became a prolific commercial director, creating ads for Chevy, Ford, Dodge, Subway and Telus before he was enlisted to direct the pilot and a block of early episodes for Heartland’s first season.
In March, he was made a producer of the series, which kicks off its 11th season on Sunday.
“It’s a very strange thing,” Bennett says. “Creatively, a person should be jaded after 10 years or so the thinking goes, and so I would have thought 10 years ago. What is amazing to me, and yet somewhat strange, is how inspired I am with every script that comes along to do my best and raise it as high as I possibly can. I don’t feel the least bit jaded. Now in this new position, I think that has paid off because I just feel like something of a cheerleader.”
Heartland airs Sunday on CBC.