Q&A with Joshua Jamieson
The creative process behind ‘Waiting Outside…’
Joshua Jamieson, a St. John’s based writer/director/producer, has made several short films in his emerging career.
His latest work, “Waiting Outside…,” has received great acclaim at a couple of film festivals and has been added to a third, in Scotland later this month.
The following tells how Jamieson was inspired to create the project and how it went from that vision and message to the screen.
Q
: What, or who, inspired you to pursue this project?
A: “My day job is doing communications, social media and event planning for our provincial arts council, Artsnl, and one of the events Artsnl does every year is the BMO Winterset Award — it’s one of the largest literary awards in eastern Canada.
“In 2014, one of the finalists for the award was Carmelita Mcgrath for her book ‘Escape Velocity’ (Goose Lane Editions). In that book, there’s a poem called ‘Outside Clinic 2B’ and it describes a man sitting in a waiting room and the anxiety and boredom that comes with it. It talks about how he’s watching the clock and pondering filling out a mail-in card for information on a luxury vehicle that falls out of a magazine, throwing caution to the wind and chasing a dream. He’s drawn into his family memories by the ‘No Postage Required if Mailed in the U.S.’ that you see on mailer cards — remembering a vacation to Florida. That’s paralleled with lines in the poem about his big thick folder somewhere beyond the doors, that tells the ‘secret of his cells’ and moments before a nurse calls his name, he retreats from the notion of filling out the card, feeling foolish, and he tucks it into his coat pocket.
“So, I extrapolated a bit from that and made some decisions to frame up how I wanted to tell the story. It got me thinking about how many people are dealing with a lot underneath the surface. And that you can learn plenty about people by watching what they do and how they behave. I decided that the ‘secret of his cells’ reference was in relation to a cancer diagnosis and that the person
was there waiting for an update on his health. That was my starting point, and then I built the narrative around that — creating the man’s backstory, the family around him and so on.
“Being a gay man myself, I wanted my main character (Simon) to be gay as well and, given the family vacation flashback in the poem, I decided I wanted him to have a family, too — one that went beyond just having a partner.
“On top of giving Simon and his partner an adopted daughter, I also made Simon’s partner, Felix, be enlisted in the armed forces. The intention there was to raise the stakes of the situation even further, along with being a touchpoint for the idea that LGBTQ people are important members of any workforce, including the military.”
Q
: How did this project compare/differ to your previous work?
A: “The other film projects I’ve worked on followed different creative paths. My first short film, called ‘Fate,’ was done as part of my post-secondary education. It was fun, and a challenge in its own right — to tell a story without words. Another of my shorts, done for Choices for Youth, had a social and community focus. It’s more of a short
documentary. And, the other film I did was a full-length documentary that I was a producer and director for called ‘Just Himself: The story of Don Jamieson.’ That particular one was personal, as it told the story of my grandfather’s life and career as a broadcaster and politician in the years Pierre Trudeau was Canada’s prime minister.
Q
: The topic of cancer touches everyone, so is there a personal message you want to get out there based on this film?
A: “For this project, because cancer factors into the storyline, I had to do a lot of research. I had to make choices about the type of cancer, how developed it was, and I wanted to make sure that the language being used was accurate and reflective of real life experiences. I did that in a number of ways. I talked to a friend of mine who’s an internal medicine doctor (who’s actually an extra in the film), and he helped a lot with terminology.
“Another member of the production team also had recently faced their own battle with cancer and has since overcome it, so I relied on that person heavily for the experiential side of hearing things from a doctor.
“And, last but not least, I approached the Canadian Cancer Society’s Newfoundland and Labrador office to talk to them about the script. They actually felt it was so well written that they wrote a letter of support for the project that said the script accurately reflected the experiences of the clients they support. That meant a lot to me. All of the advice I received from these folks meant a lot. I wanted it to feel as real as I could, so the weight of these situations drew out the right emotions.”