Lantos does this one just for fun
Canadian producer focuses passion on The Right Kind of Wrong project
Veteran Canadian producer Robert Lantos is taking a walk on the light side, after a decades-long career of literary adaptations (In Praise of Older Women, Fugitive Pieces) and serious films with challenging directors (Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg).
He was at the Vancouver International Film Festival for screenings of his screwball comedy The Right Kind of Wrong, which opens in theatres Friday.
“I made this film just for fun, no attempt to change the world, no ideological motivation,” Lantos said during a break inside the Sutton Place lounge.
The Banff-filmed movie stars Australian actor Ryan Kwanten (TV’s True Blood) as a lowly dishwasher who falls in love with a woman (Vancouver’s Sara Canning) on the day of her wedding to another man.
It was based on a little-read novel called Sex and Sunsets that Lantos spotted several years ago.
“I really liked it,” he said. “The central character is this fearless loser who has no awareness of social convention, and falls in love, doesn’t take no for an answer, and goes on this seemingly impossible pursuit.”
Several screenplays were written and discarded before Lantos opted for Canadian writer Megan Martin’s adaptation.
“At this point in my life, I only make films that I care about for various reasons,” he said. “This one I care about because it made me smile.”
These days, Lantos divides his time between homes in Toronto and Los Angeles. He isn’t as busy as he was when he co-founded and ran the TV and movie distribution company Alliance Communications for two decades.
It’s partly by choice — he’s 64 now — and also because the movie landscape has changed since the indiefilm boom that pushed his career in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s.
“My career began concurrently with the rise of independent film, dozens of companies in America mushrooming, that were operating outside the studio system, breaking the old models, taking chances,” he said. “That’s long gone.”
With today’s fractured audience even the big studio movies don’t dominate the entertainment landscape the way they once did. When I get to the lounge to meet Lantos, he’s chatting with Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, who was heading out of town after his VIFF appearance.
Lantos cocks a thumb over his shoulder at Gilligan to make a point.
“Here’s a perfect example, at the Toronto film festival, the conversations at every party and every social gathering, were rarely about the movies. It was mostly about the television shows, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Ray Donovan, Homeland. Movies collectively only command a shrinking sliver of the audience’s attention.”
Which is why half a dozen bigscreen comic book, video game or teen novel adaptations dominate the multiplexes each year.
“It’s hard getting any independent movie made, it’s harder than it’s ever been.”
Lantos first met lead actor Kwanten over lunch in L.A. with director Jeremiah Chechik.
“We were sitting on a restaurant terrace in Venice and we see Ryan coming along on his bike. He doesn’t have a car, he goes everywhere by bike. He gets off his bike, puts a chain on and I thought, this is the guy. Our character also doesn’t have a car. In the movie he goes everywhere by bike.”
Lantos and his director met Canning in Vancouver, where she stood out during a long day of casting sessions. They rounded out the cast with Canadian comedy stars Will Sasso and Catherine O’Hara, and American Ryan McPartlin (Chuck).
Filming happened in and around Banff last fall.
“Shooting is always the easiest part of making a movie, once you’ve developed it, financed it, found distributors and cast,” Lantos said. “Actually shooting, that’s the fun part. It doesn’t take very long and that’s the vacation, the pleasure.
“Out of this whole convoluted process, years from beginning to end, shooting only takes about eight weeks. The rest is so much harder.”