DIRECTOR LOOKS BACK IN DOC
McDonald explores his big flop
On paper, Bruce McDonald’s 2001 film Picture Claire should have been a high water mark for the Toronto filmmaker.
He had a healthy $10-million budget. His lead was Hollywood star Juliette Lewis, who was on a career roll having done From Dusk Till Dawn, Strange Days, Natural Born Killers, The Basketball Diaries and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. The talent pool was further deepened with a call sheet including Gina Gershon, Mickey Rourke and Callum Keith Rennie.
Produced by the powerful Robert Lantos, on paper this film was a winner, money in the box office bank.
So why haven’t you ever heard of this film?
That is precisely the question McDonald, the director behind the successful Canadian movies Roadkill, Hard Core Logo and Pontypool, attempts to answer with his documentary film Claire’s Hat. The forensically motivated film is making its world premiere on Saturday at the Whistler Film Festival.
Right from the beginning of the film, McDonald takes full responsibility for the failure of Picture Claire.
“I f-----d up my own movie,” he says in a voice-over.
“This is not a weird documentary about the film business. This is a bonafide disaster, my own personal Heaven’s Gate,” adds McDonald referring to the 1980 Michael Cimino movie that earned the reputation of being one of the biggest failures and worst movies of all time.
Written by Semi Chellas, Picture Claire follows Claire (Lewis), a woman from Quebec who gets in trouble with some really bad guys. They send her a fiery message. With apparently nowhere safe to go, she heads to Toronto to find a photographer with whom she had a brief affair. However, Toronto turns out to be far from a refuge and soon cops and gangsters are looking for her. Oh, and she doesn’t speak English.
The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 10, 2001. Yes, one day before 9/11, so again what could go wrong ?
“Lantos came to me after the screening at TIFF and said ‘Bruce the cash registers are not ringing,’” said McDonald in a recent phone interview. “It was all over right then.
“Often when you are doing something you have no idea. You’re inside the bubble,” added McDonald. “You know it is a handsome production. You knew it was well performed. But there is this sort of mercurial thing. The bird sings or the bird does not sing. In our case the bird didn’t sing. You just hope till the very end that people say, ‘oh it’s great.’”
Watching the new documentary, it’s hard to believe any theatregoer could have suspended disbelief when it came to Lewis as a nonEnglish speaking Quebecer. It’s like watching a valley girl doing the oral part of her grade 11 French final.
“They were like: ‘ We don’t buy it,’ McDonald said about the original audiences for the film. “It was all over in the first five minutes.
“You know you are thinking maybe if we get a movie star, that will make more people see it. But then that can kind of bite you on the ass too as people go ‘we don’t believe that movie star is character.’”
Yup, that’s it in a very obvious nutshell and that leads you to wonder why nobody else noticed this when they were shooting. In fact, it seems the complete opposite as Claire’s Hat delivers an excruciating clip of Lewis doing a scene where she is eating a scone and drinking a pop while holed up in a tiny, grimy bathroom for what
seems like eternity. This is indulgence at its best, or rather worst.
“Love is a mysterious thing,” said McDonald laughing a lot about this scene and admitting that he has a tendency to fall for his female leads. “How could you not?”
Another “oh, ouch” moment in the film about the film is how a behind-the-scenes issue between Rennie and Lantos draped over the set like a large heavy, uncomfortably itchy blanket.
McDonald tells viewers that Lantos found out Rennie had been having sex with Lantos’ exgirlfriend. That leads to a professional pissing match that could have put out a three-alarm fire.
So here we are now and McDonald has a 100-minute entertaining and nerve-racking movie that is a combination mea culpa, therapy session and a tombstone. You literally see the original film dying on the screen.
Claire’s Hat was “secretly crafted” by McDonald and editor Jeremy Munce and was shown to some filmmaking friends.
As word of the movie got around to others in the film community, McDonald arranged for Lantos to screen the film.
McDonald invited Lantos to come see the film at Munce’s apartment.
“Lantos arrives at midnight clearly a bit freaked out as he comes from the better side of town,” said McDonald. “We sat him down and showed him and he didn’t hit us or anything.
“Sometimes he would say: ‘well, it didn’t happen exactly like this.’ I’d explain that this was still a movie. I’m playing a part; you’re playing a part. I’m the crazy director. You’re the controlling producer. Yes I might be exaggerating here and there. Then he was sort of weirdly OK with it, but he was a bit confused. He left thinking are we making fun of him or are we making fun of me. I think once he realized I was making fun of everybody, he didn’t feel so much that he was the villain.”
Some back and forth later, Lantos finally signed off on Claire’s Hat. Now it is ready to hit the big screen and McDonald is happy and a bit nervous as he knows he has pulled back the curtain not just on one project but also on the very social art of filmmaking.
“Everybody is playing their parts. We all have f---ups and we are torn between desire and danger,” said McDonald.
McDonald says going back and breaking down the experience was cathartic and even after all his years of filmmaking he felt a light bulb go on as he watched his darkest time unveiling in front of him.
“My take-away from this was spend more time with your partner — whether you are the producer or the director — before you bring everybody else in,” said McDonald, who feels the director and producer are like the Mick and Keith of the film world.
“You need to get to know each other, the script and look in each other’s eyes and ask ‘are we making a film noir or what do you really want to make?’ Once you establish, yes we are writing the same song here, then everybody else, it is clear for them. You don’t have as much debate, crisis and confusion.”
That is the front-end fix McDonald proposes. And yes he is bookending it with a back-end plan. He thinks it is paramount that people face their failures. He says it is so important that every film budget should have built into it a line item for a post-mortem so everyone can talk about their screwups.
“If you don’t, it just evaporates and people go their own ways and take their illusions with them, or they carry resentments with them,” said McDonald.
To be clear, what McDonald is proposing is not a team-building exercise or some sort of shamebased therapy followed by weirdly exaggerated cheering. This ain’t no Tony Robbins trip.
“Nah, more like dinner and drinks. Lots of good wine” said McDonald once again laughing.
Claire’s Hat is part of the 18th annual Whistler Film Festival, packed with 85 films representing 12 countries. The festival ends Sunday.