ROSS MUNRO
A Legacy of Whining April 5 at 6: 30 p.m. | Vancity Theatre Tickets and info: $10 at viff.org
In the new movie A Legacy of Whining, two high school friends reunite after decades apart. Unfortunately, Mitch (Ross Munro) is determined to try to find the old magic with his friend Dunc (Robert David Duncan), and his mission leads the duo into a comical all-night journey on the streets and in the brothels of an unspecified city that looks a lot like Vancouver.
We talked to the 52-year-old Munro, born and raised in Winnipeg, about influences, buddy films, and shooting at YVR.
Q The world premiere of A Legacy of Whining is coming up on April 5. Is that nerveracking?
A Yeah, it is, actually. We’ve been really promoting it. Plus, I’m not just writing and directing, I’m acting in it too. I’m on the screen so much that I’m very nervous about looking at myself for all that time.
Q Since you wrote the film as well as acting in it, did you feel like you could improvise, or did you stick pretty close to the script? A We actually stuck pretty close to the script because we were so tight on time. We’d be on a location, a lot of times we’d do two and, if we were lucky, three takes. It would’ve been great to get what we needed in the can and say, “OK, now let’s try a couple of different directions here.” And because the movie takes place in one night, every little piece of the whole evening had to fit together.
Q One movie that seems like it might be an influence is Martin Scorsese’s After Hours (1985)? A Yeah. I wanted to do an evening-journey movie, a from-dusk-to-dawn kind of movie. I was trying to go for an After-Hours-meets-WoodyAllen approach. Q Plus there’s the whole buddy aspect. A I grew up watching movies in the ’70s and I remember these non-stop buddy films, like Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Freebie and the Bean. I always kind of wanted to do that kind of a buddy film. And now with Facebook, it’s amazing how easy it is to contact people I haven’t seen since high school. Suddenly I’m meeting somebody, the last time I saw them they were 17 and now they’re 50. Those inspirations came together in A Legacy of Whining.
Q Were there any complications in getting the locations you wanted?
A When I wrote the script I thought, “I’ll just started the film off at the airport. That’ll be cool. People shoot at the airport all the time — it shouldn’t be a problem.” But we had to shoot at the South Terminal and we had to wait ’till they closed at 9 o’clock at night. By the time we got in there, we brought 30 people, cast and crew, and we had one shot at it because it was an expensive location, so we had to shoot until five in the morning. We were kind of scrambling to get everything. Then, in the sort-of bordello scene, we had to build that from scratch in the studio. It was fun featuring Vancouver though. There’s a shot where we’re driving around and you can see the SkyTrain. Without naming Vancouver, people can still pick up that it is Vancouver.
Q What was a big take-away from making A Legacy of Whining?
A Originally, I was a little terrified about writing, direct- ing, and acting. Then I threw myself in there and it made me realize that if you really have that vision or desire, you should do it.
When I’ve made other films, sometimes in the middle of production I think, “I really wish I could get to the end of the shooting.” With A Legacy of Whining, I was trying to enjoy the journey. Every day I was on the set I would take a few minutes to look around and go, “Wow, I’m really going to enjoy this and take it all in. This is a great experience and opportunity, and I don’t want to look beyond it.” Q Your wife Maria (a former graphic designer) produced. Will you be working with her again on your next film?
A At one point I couldn’t find a producer and I turned to her and said, “Look, why don’t you produce?” and she said, “OK.” She learned everything from scratch. Then there was our short film that she produced, Broken Palace, which went into (the Vancouver International Film Festival), and now we have A Legacy of Whining.
The two of us are going to be a team now. We’re going to continue on with hopefully bigger budget projects. I have some scripts I’ve written that we want to get funding for and take to the next level.