GOING EXTRA MILE FOR A BUCK
Hummingbird Project opens VIFF
After the celebrity-packed circus that is the Toronto International Film Festival, and just before heading out here for the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF), Quebec filmmaker Kim Nguyen took time for a bit of a breather — well, sort of — in a Montreal bistro.
“I’m trying to pound out a script over a glass of red wine. It’s one of the best moments of life,” said Nguyen, whose latest feature the Hummingbird Project is the opening film for VIFF on Sept. 27- Oct. 12 at various theatres around the city.
Is the red wine and bistro vibe versus the usual coffee shop and laptop scene a sign of success for a screenwriter?
“No, it’s an investment. I’m more inspired,” said Nguyen before breaking into laughter.
Nguyen is a bit cagey about the new screenplay and will only say it involves artificial intelligence and the “birth of conscience.”
“I’m trying to keep it on a human level. That’s my main problem right now,” said Nguyen, again adding a laugh.
The laughing is a constant with this affable Montreal creator, so it is no surprise he has managed to generate some humour in a film that revolves around the seemingly chuckle-free world of highspeed stock trading.
“We did this over-the-top oneliner where we call it an existential heist comedy about the madness of our financial system.” said Nguyen.
Set in 2011 and 2012, the Hummingbird Project follows two cousins from New York as they attempt to disrupt the trading world by laying a 1,600-kilometre fibre-optic cable underground in a straight line from Kansas to New Jersey. The plan is the new line will be a millisecond faster than what is being used.
The tiny advantage would mean huge profits.
Starring Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgard as the cousins, this film is of course a cautionary tale about greed and the extent people will go to in the pursuit of increased profits.
The fibre-optic plan is gargantuan in nature: dig a tunnel in a straight line through mountains, bodies of water and under an unimpressed Amish farmer’s field. It seems like you couldn’t make this up. But in fact Nguyen did just that, but only after learning about the lengths profiteers were willing to go to earn an edge and another dollar.
“It is a fiction, but it is based on what people have done. So many people have tried to do crazy things to gain a single millisecond off the stock market,” said Nguyen, adding that he and his production designer Emmanuel Frechette went deep into the physicality of the plan and met with experts in horizontal drilling and quantum physics.
“We even went to a high-frequency trading platform in New Jersey and it was insane the amount of weirdness that there was,” said Nguyen. “Basically we just related the actual engineering process that is actually true.”
The Hummingbird Project is Nguyen’s return to VIFF after being here with the Academy Award Best Foreign Film nominee Rebelle back in 2012. He followed that film with Two Lovers and a Bear and Eye on Juliet. The Hummingbird Project is Nguyen’s third English-language feature and his biggest film to date boasting the A-list cast of Eisenberg, Skarsgard and Salma Hayek.
While Eisenberg plays a familiar Eisenberg character — all fasttalking and New Yorky — Skarsgard is a very long way from his usual tailored, dangerously goodlooking self. In this film, the once eight-pack Tarzan with the flowing mane is now the tire-waisted and follicly challenged brains of the operation that is clearly on the spectrum.
The idea to cover up Skarsgard’s usual suaveness was a decision Nguyen and the actor made together, a decision that didn’t go over so well with the people signing the paycheques.
“It was a little bit of me and Alex, but it was not from the investors, not at all. They totally freaked out when we sent them the picture,” said Nguyen. “(Alexander) got hooked on the idea and went all the way. He liked the idea. He’s been so often cast as a gorgeous hunk.”
Rounding out the top-line casting is Hayek as the ruthless, almost cartoonish boss of the highspeed trading company. Eva is a large and in charge Latina woman, something Hayek said recently in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter “was unimaginable” when she started out in the business.
Nguyen agreed with Hayek’s take, but because he’s a nice guy he wasn’t willing to pat himself on the back.
“I would love to say it was a bold political statement to do that, that it was intentional. But the truth is I just thought it was a cool idea,” said Nguyen, about the character
of Eva.
He added that he noticed at one point his film had become a bit of a sausage fest, so he made the boss man a boss lady.
That was a really smart move as Hayek’s Eva — with silver hair, shiny clothes and serious threats — brings a pop of complicated and clever colour to the often-dreary landscape of office tech talk and the wintry Quebec outdoors where a lot of the film was shot.
“She was very involved in the creation of her character, she was 10 steps ahead of me in the actual visual design of her character: her wardrobe, her look, her hair,” said Nguyen.
The timing of a powerful woman character is on point, as is the idea of stock market manipulation and greed. However, putting those stories on top of a tech-themed foundation is a risky move. How do you make tech inside baseball interesting to civilians? Will the technology you are working with go the way of the dodo or Google Glass by the time your film is finished?
“You are hurrying up to write things. It’s OK, I’ll fix it as we go, but let’s get actors signed on. Let’s get interest so that we don’t lose the purpose of it. To make sure it is still something that is useful to put out there,” said Nguyen.
But the good news is his timing held up and his film’s bigger ideas fit well into the landscape of our daily discussions.
The film isn’t in wide release until March 2019, but early festival support — like landing the opening gala film spot at VIFF — has been positive.
“It’s very much an honour,” said Nguyen about the VIFF nod.
“You are in a vulnerable place when you put your movie out, so to get this kind of thumbs up it is really great.”