Jackie in the box
Director brings film home for debut at local fest
Intense. Raw. Gritty. Edgy. Sexy. Horrifying. Polarizing.
Those are the words local filmmaker Cody Campanale uses to describe Jackie Boy, his featurelength debut, premiering at the Ottawa International Film Festival on Oct. 18. Did he mention the film’s dark, twisted climax almost made someone throw up during a test screening? Yes, actually, he did.
“This is going to be a polarizing film,” he admits. “It’s a good film if everyone feels differently about it … art can help open a discussion.”
Jackie Boy begins as a character drama about “bro culture” and today’s technology-fuelled “hookup” scene — one that often puts sex ahead of intimacy — but it takes a sharp turn into horror, Campanale explains. It centres on Jack, a selfdestructive womanizer who falls for the mysterious Jasmine. She is secretly part of a revenge plot hatched by Sasha, a young woman Jack humiliated by revealing intimate photos on social media.
So is the audience supposed to root for the women? Not so much. No heroes to be found here — not even anti-heroes: “I personally don’t like movies that are black and white, where you have characters that are really good or bad. ... You may not like (these people), but there is depth and complexity to them.”
Jackie Boy was shot with handheld cameras, often in uncontrolled environments — with minimal makeup and lighting. It intentionally echoes the pseudodocumentary style of two previous cinematic lighting rods for controversy: Kids and Sex, Lies, and Videotape.
That choice seems to have paid off. The film’s world première is slated for Oct. 17 at the New Orleans Film Festival and its European premiere will follow on Oct. 23 at Germany’s Hof International Film Festival. In April, Jackie Boy also took home an Ottawa Independent Video Award for Best Director— Narrative.
“There were a lot of (local) people on that jury who were really engaged by this film,” he says. “I think (this city) is really going to like it because it’s unlike a lot of things coming from Ottawa filmmakers.”
Campanale based the script on his play, Fragile Minds, set in Ottawa, which premiered in 2008 at the since shuttered Ottawa School of Speech and Drama.
The stage production wasn’t explicit — the sex and violence was largely inferred — but the live show was interspersed with pre-shot scenes and monologues.
“People kept telling me I wish the whole the thing was filmed because it’s so cinematic,” the 27-year-old says. After several false starts, Campanale took them up on their advice in 2013 during a one-month, $200,000 shoot. The original plan was to film in Ottawa, but producer Jeff Hanes’ connections were in Hamilton and the GTA. Those communities stand-in for “smalltown Ontario” — an anonymous place that helps magnify the story’s universal themes.
Casting the leads involved auditioning over 1,000 people in five Canadian cities — all intentionally non-union actors or first-timers, Campanale says. That process started generating some buzz.
“What they’d been hearing about in the indie community is it was this filthy movie,” the director explains. “We went with actors that are new and (therefore unafraid) to deal … with intense subject matter.”
His cast of relative newbies was encouraged to improvise on camera, and spent four weeks in rehearsals. Campanale says that period was critical for the actors to explore the script and get comfortable with one another — especially Alino Giraldi (Jack) and Chloe Van Landschoot (Sasha), due to their intense, sexual scenes.
The cast includes Ottawa’s Edward Charette, Christina Bryson and Cameron Rufelds — who was in the original stage play.
Charette, in particular, was a revelation as Kal, Jack’s spiteful friend — and the only out-and-out antagonist of the film. It’s Kal’s criminal actions that catapult the film into pure terror territory.
“A lot of (people) read the script and said, ‘Nope. I can’t be seen doing this,’ so I have to commend his absolutely bravery as an actor,” Campanale says. “His performance was incredible.”
At least Charette had worked with Campanale on one of the director’s early plays back in high school, so he “knew what he was getting into.” Campanale’s company, Lesser Men Productions, is also named after a short film he produced as a teenager — another brooding tale of “bro culture” gone wrong — about teenagers “wasting their lives away” drinking and bragging about girls.
“It shows where my tastes were,” the Canterbury graduate says. “It showed I had an interest in pushing the limits.”
Campanale grew up longing to be filmmaker. When his dad took him along to construction sites as a boy, hoping to inspire a building career, the younger Campanale would just spend the whole time drawing posters for movies he wanted to make. Today, he’s filming them.
And the themes in his original play have only become more relevant in the age of Twitter and sexting. Hook-up culture and voyeurism — especially among younger generations — has been amplified by rampant use of social media and smart phones, says Campanale. Sexual moments are digitalized and shared at the click of a button. “I don’t know how to fix it,” he explains, adding he just wants to explore the motivations behind unhealthy and hurtful behaviour.
He makes no apologies for the emotional intensity and explicit aspects of Jackie Boy’s finale.
“There’s no sugar-coating it…. My hope is that, at the end of this movie, we can have decent conversations on these topics.”
Campanale’s next mission is to close a distribution deal. After that, Ottawa’s prudish may want to duck and cover if they spot the director accompanied by a camera.
He plans to shoot his next film in the capital — a father-son political story.
“Ottawa is a complex city,” he says with affection. “We like to think it isn’t, but it has a lot interesting people in it and interesting ideas — and there are very smart audiences here.”
A lot of (people) read the script and said, ‘Nope. I can’t be seen doing this,’ so I have to commend his absolutely bravery as an actor.