STORIED STORYTELLER
Documentary producer Scorgie’s story is almost as interesting as the ones he works on
Indie filmmaker Adam Scorgie has made a name for himself without the need to relocate to L.A. thanks to his gritty documentaries on the illegal pot trade and the culture of NHL enforcers. His latest film is Making Coco: The Grant Fuhr Story.
Adam Scorgie is pulling off the seemingly impossible, making it big as a film producer while being based not in Los Angeles, New York or even Toronto, but Edmonton.
Scorgie, 38, has produced a number of critically and commercially successful documentaries, including two on the business and culture of cannabis and Ice Guardians, a compelling piece of journalism on the misunderstood culture of National Hockey League enforcers.
He’s now completed his new film, Making Coco: The Grant Fuhr Story, which will appear on Sportsnet this winter.
For all his successes, Scorgie’s life could easily have gone in a vastly different direction, one that speaks to Scorgie’s fascinating with morally murky topics like the cannabis trade and the world of violence and intimidation in the NHL.
When he was 23, Scorgie’s father, Buddy Scorgie, became ill. Adam Scorgie had grown up as a teenager in Kelowna, B.C., but had gone to New York to get into show biz. He was successfully grinding out a career as a fitness model and soap opera actor but came home to care for his dad, who was hospitalized.
His dad soon died and Scorgie took over the family business, Cheetah’s, a lucrative strip club in Kelowna. He had to suddenly deal with a business, staff, a biker gang and drug dealer clientele, a difficult business partner and a lawsuit over his father’s estate.
“I went from 23 to 35 in like six months,” he said.
At the time, the illegal marijuana trade was at its peak in Canada, due to the low Canadian dollar. Guys that Scorgie went to high school with were now biker drug dealers throwing away cash in his bar’s VIP section.
“Other guys I knew were lower level guys that were donkeys and they had like $70,000 trucks and they were buying houses and they had $50,000 Harleys. I’m like, ‘What are you guys doing? You could barely spell your name in high school?’ And they were like, ‘Well, we’re in the Union. We grow dope.”
The Union was code for anyone in the pot trade, which Scorgie quickly found included all kinds of seemingly upstanding trades and business people in town, real estate agents who specialized in finding out-of-the-way houses for grow-ops and tradesmen who specialized in putting in the necessary electrical and water purification systems.
For a time, Scorgie felt attracted to business and planned to buy a house with a partner for a grow-op.
But at last he decided to make a documentary about the pot trade, rather than risk joining the business. “I finally felt like my dad was looking down on me and I had this reflection that I can’t break the law like this, I’m not going to do that.”
With $100,000 from his inheritance and $250,000 from his stepfather, Scorgie joined with Vancouver director Brett Harvey to produce a documentary about the cannabis trade.
The 2007 documentary, The Union: The Business Behind Getting High, became a cult hit due to its fearless look at what was then an illegal and controversial business. Scorgie followed up with The Culture High in 2014, which was funded by $240,000 in two days from online crowdfunding.
“The producer is the guy that gets s--t done,” Scorgie says of his role. “You need money to shoot, he finds the money.”
Scorgie chose to do Making Coco because Fuhr had such a dramatic story. The title, which Fuhr signed off on, comes from his nickname to this day, Coco. A major junior teammate dubbed Fuhr that decades ago, saying to him one day: “You’re the most tanned guy on the bench.”
“To have a great doc you have to have all the elements, conflict, resolution, celebration,” Scorgie said. “You have to have that roller-coaster ... Looking at Grant’s personal story — adopted child, black kid with two white parents, first black guy in the Hall of Fame, the (drug) suspension — he had all the stuff.”
I should say I respect Scorgie for his work but even more for being an avid hockey parent. I coached his daughter last winter. I have rarely seen two parents more dedicated to their child and their minor hockey team (which we called the Ice Guardians) than he and his wife Lauren Scorgie.
“I really like the Edmonton angle,” he said. “I can raise my kids really well here. I can come back to kind of just a regular community. Take my kids to hockey. I can be a fundraiser on the team. I can do the things a parent should be doing. For me to miss my kids’ stuff is not an option.”