A SERIES OF COINCIDENCES
Curious set of circumstances leads to eventual career in film business
Circumstances lead to eventual career in film business.
A dog’s dislike for the smell of a fish dinner is partially responsible for Andrew Dryden Mortimer’s burgeoning career in television and film.
And the Whitney Pier native is fine with that.
“One day my dog ran away,” said Mortimer in a recent phone interview from his present home in Birchy Head. “I was cooking something that was smelly, I think it was fish and it was stinking up the house so I opened up the cottage door to let some fresh air in and he took off.”
The scent-sensitive pup ran to a man walking in the nearby woods who also had a dog and Mortimer eventually caught up to them.
“We made small talk and he asked me what I did for a living. I thought, this is just some stranger in the woods — I can be whoever I want to be there’s not going to be any followup questions — I told him I was a screenwriter because I had just finished the draft of the script I had written … and he said, ‘no way, I’m a cinematographer.’”
The cinematographer in question was Kelsey W. Smith, a camera operator on the set of “The Mist,” a Stephen King series being shot in Nova Scotia. Smith asked if he could read Mortimer’s script.
“Sure enough he read it and liked it and a couple of weeks later I got a call to work on the Stephen King series, “The Mist,” as a production assistant.”
Since then, the 27-year-old who once worked in artist management in the music industry has worked on several other Andrew Mortimer, left, is shown working recently on a film set.
productions and now considers being a production assistant a full-time career.
While he loves his present profession, he was recently named as Screen Nova Scotia’s first recipient of that agency’s screenwriter internship program. It means he will be leaving Friday for Toronto where he will be joining the writing room of the hit TV drama “Mary Kills People.”
When Mortimer learned he had been chosen for that series, it seemed especially ironic since he had at one time been working on a short film with Smith on doctor-assisted suicide. Mortimer had planned on doing a longer version pilot script on the same subject matter but stopped when he learned of the “Mary Kills People” production.
“I was like, ‘that sucks, someone beat me to the punch, I’ll write something different,’” he
said. “I used that pilot as the writing sample to apply for this internship, not knowing that the show is ‘Mary Kills People’ so when I got the news that I was selected, that took away my nerves.
“Because it’s that show, it told me that everything is playing out the way it’s going to play out. I think when you’re on the right track, the universe gives you signs.”
Even when the signs weren’t so good, Mortimer found they eventually led to something better.
A few years ago, thinking he could help his cousin, actor David Mortimer, land more lucrative roles, Mortimer decided they would make their own movie featuring David Mortimer.
After all, how hard could making a movie be?
“We just tried to tell the story with no real money or resources — it was called “The Undertow” and it took place on this island. I didn’t really know the tricks of the trade and that we could film an island to establish it and then go film on any beach somewhere … we thought we had to make this movie on an island. We borrowed a speedboat … and we took off in the speed boat and went on this island and shot for several hours and when we came back the boat was under water and we had to be rescued by a boat that was passing by.”
Eventually they did get back safely to land but the project was abandoned when the project ran out of money. Two weeks later, his fish-hating dog got his career back on track.
“If I had cooked something else or got takeout that day, I would never be working today in this industry.”