By Shane Belcourt - writer/director/dp
November 1st, 2007

I want to say that the premiere screening was the most fun I've ever had in my life, that afterward me and crew partied until dawn and woke up in small boarder town the other side of Mexico. It was however, agonizing, painful, and though an insane success, almost impossible to bare.

I don't know if you were like me as a kid, but whenever we went to the theatre one of my favorite parts was the logo and theme song for some California production company. I was always particularly found of the news reel vibe of 20th Century Fox complete with the triumphant trumpets blaring the theme. Another is still the spinning globe of Universal and orchestra telling you upon it's drum march that you're about to witness a global creation. Who didn't love the roar of MGM? Or the superman-like crest of Warner Bros., as they pan over their giant back lots? It was and still is one of my favorite parts of going to the movies. You sit down, after some promos, you begin with this big intro and you get ready for a movie, an event, a feature film. It tells you that it has begun, sit back, you're here now. The movies ...

I couldn't sleep for about three days prior to the screening, and not just because our 4-week-old baby cries and futzes all night long in the bed between my wife and I. Just nights of cold sweat, sometimes jolting up gasping for breath kind of sleeps, "the master tape stopped halfway through, oh God." For days I had that distant far off look on my face, the kind that an inner panic brings on. This World Premiere was exactly that, the FIRST screening of Tkaronto, my FIRST feature film. I've never made one before, let alone shown this one before. Will people laugh? Will people fall asleep? Will people hate it? Will people start talking half-way through, bored out of their minds making phone calls and text messages because they feel like they're trapped and they should be polite and stick around until the end? I guess if I had self-confidence this wouldn't be a problem.

When we got our first VCR when we were kids one of the first movies we rented was JAWS. I have to add that our VCR was strange looking, different from everyone else's. It looked like a ghetto blaster. It had a shoulder strap. My Dad bought it because you could rent a camera that plugged into it and you could videotape direct to a VCR tape. Years later it's what we used to make our first film bits, Duane, Phil, and I. The VCR part strapped over my shoulder, a 100 foot extension cord stretched and tangled across the lawn, the camera on my other shoulder, as we recorded spoof news items. Anyway, this was in the 80's at some point and it was all about JAWS this one night. By the end, holy smokes were we into it, me and my two sisters were standing on the sofa, with our backs against the wall, trying to get as far away as we could from the TV, and carpet, and anything that lurked under the sofa I guess. My Mom was watching it with us, sitting on the sofa, but with her feet curled up underneath her. After the big beast was dispatched with my one sister said, "I'm not going swimming anymore." My other sister said, "I'm not going out in the rain anymore." I followed with, "I'm not going to step in puddles ever again." We finally laughed ... after what felt like hours of holding our guts in our hands. When I think of that now, a family on a sofa keeping their limbs close by ... from a movie ... a movie ...

The day, Sunday October 21st, 2007, began like any other day. I felt "fine" I guess you could say. I was nervous, but okay. Get up, wife and I, deal with the whole breakfast/baby/shower event - everyone taking turns, everyone trying to get it together. My Dad showed up with my step-mom Danielle. We got out to breakfast and I can't really concentrate on anything. I order a big breakfast/brunch item and I take two bites and feel like I'm either going to shit my pants or throw up. I'm ready to go. We all head off in different directions to get ready for the screening. I lie on the bed and have a nap with baby Claire, because what else am I going to do, as Amanda gets dressed and all dolled up. I make some calls to this and that person about tickets and getting there early ... The night before Duane and I talked to the ticket sales guy at the festival. He told us that it was half-sold and should sell out. Duane and I aren't so sure, but we call everyone and tell them to arrive as early as they can ... Finally, from waking up after the 2nd kind of lying-there-watching-the-ceiling-fan-spin nap, I get up and head out. "This is it", I tell myself, "smile a lot and at least pretend to be having a good time". I wonder aloud into my baby Claire's ear why can't her Daddy just relax and enjoy life, "this is a GREAT day!" Her eyebrows furrowed not really trusting what she's hearing ... people say she looks exactly like me ...

I remember the day perfectly, fall day, and some friends and I are playing football on the street in front of where we all lived. I was young, I don't even know how old, grade three I guess. Anyway, for some reason we got into what do you want to be when you grow up. Some people tossed out "fireman" and "policeman" and things like that, I think one kid said "pilot", and when it got round to me I said "either an entertainer, a musician, or the wide receiver for the Edmonton Eskimos." (Two down and one to go ... ) I knew I was going to say wide receiver, that was obvious, but the first two things, its like some other person was saying them, like I was behind my own eyes, looking out through a camera, the way the sun was setting, the magic hour, kids saying these things together ... an "entertainer" ... what the hell was that? If anything was clear to me then it was that I was never going to have a "real" job. And I think I said entertainer then not because I knew who Wayne Newton was, but because to me that was what the whole TV and movie thing was and I wondered why just be around Star Wars in some movie theatre for a couple hours? I went inside after and told my Mom about what I just said, see what she thought about this. "Sounds good, Shaney," is what she said.

We arrive early to the Royal to test the HD CAM tape, Jordan, Duane and I. Amanda comes along with baby Claire to do a feed prior to the screening while the theatre is empty. Bridgette comes along to help Amanda if she needs it. We walk into the empty theatre and there it is up on the screen, projected HUGE. I'm giddy. I'm a little kid messing about with my friends on the field. This is so terrifically exciting ... there it is, up on the big screen. They do some more calibrating, moving the image this and that way, moving the curtains ... I hug Jordan, "This is fucking amazing! Isn't this great!" I look back at Duane standing alone looking up at the screen, he has this weird smile on his face. Duane always tries to hold things back, stay even so he doesn't get emotionally hurt by going too up or too down if it fails, but his face looks like it's going to crack at the seams. He's happy too, I can see it. Okay we're really, really excited and the owner of the theatre, Stacey, comes down to ask up about the volume and how we like things. We tell him we love it, it's perfect. Looks like it's going to be a great screening technically, the tape works, the sound works, the image on the screen is in focus ... we're ready ... Just then baby Claire has a giant poop, like ALL over herself, a total explosion in her jumper. Bridgette runs off for disposable diapers because Amanda and I are new parents and haven't packed properly. Amanda and I wipe baby Claire down as best we can ... the dream was the dream, just as I hoped there for a minute, but this baby shit all over the aisle is, um, not what I had in that image in my mind ... But here we go ... Jord, Duane, and I head outside to hand out tickets to any early arrivers.

Since my Dad ran businesses from our house most of the years I grew up, when I told my Dad I was into making films in grade nine he loved it: free labour. I was immediately roped into logging tapes with our at-home vcr-to-vcr editing station. I had to watch all the footage and write the corresponding timecode onto the text transcriptions. He also had me holding reflector cards on Aboriginal educational videos that he was producing. Soon he had me doing some scores for the videos, things like, "Bill C-31 - How It'll Effect Our Communities." But for all the free labour, what was great about it, was that I got to use the off-line editing "suite" for our own projects. So, Duane and I started making little movies. We wrote a feature film in grade 11 and set out to shoot it. I think we shot 3/4 of it but then everyone got to summer and disappeared. But it was a movie-movie, we talked restaurants into closing sections off so we could shoot the thing with our little camcorder and hidden giant microphone from my music gear under the table. "Yeah," we thought, "let's make movies, lots of movies together, we'll do this forever together, go to NYU together, this is it."

When I felt great seeing the images projected on the screen moments ago, I was about to die now. There weren't just a couple friends outside, there was a line-up forming. Yes, I was excited, but it also meant people I didn't know where going to see this ... and could judge it and not have to be nice to me ... the line up kept growing and growing ... all the way down the block. I'd smile when someone walked by that I knew and said something like, "Isn't this great!" I'd smile and give a high five or something, turn away, and try to swallow down the puke in my mouth ... As I explained to my Mom one time, doing a gig is easy even when you're nervous before hand, because if the audience isn't digging the ballads one night you can switch up the set list as you go along, but a film is like a train, locked on unmovable tracks - it's just going to go and keep going and you gotta sit there helpless and not able to change or adjust a thing. Yes, yes, yes, I was starting to get excited and feeling amazed that as the sun began setting the line up went so far I couldn't see the end of it and that they formed a "rush ticket" line along side it ... The snapshots might show a smiling face but I was getting nervous, here we actually were ... As people headed into the theatre and the people in the rush line watched them with worry on their faces, I figured it was time to head inside ... not ever one was going get in and then what?

There are beautiful moments and painful moments of doing things out of the system, learning on your own as you go. One moment that I thought was beautiful was when we were finishing up our first short film for the 2005 ImagineNATIVE film festival. I was checking the final copy of The Squeeze Box with my laptop hooked up to my TV so I could double check the colour. Then I found out that you could drop the overall colour a bit and make it more flat. AWESOME I thought. In the last minute I did it to every clip, hit render, and brought it into the dub house. Then on the world premiere as it screened guess what? Dropping the overall level of the image is NOT the same as bleach processing film stock. Instead the image comes out half illuminated and, um, kind of really, really dark on screen, and thus it renders the film more of a radio play than anything else. First comment we got that year was, "hey man, great score, who did it?"

So, the place was packed and people we're sitting around pleasantly waiting for the start of it. We were supposed to begin at 6:30 but it was 7:10 before anything started to happen because of the amount of people standing outside hoping to get in. I was thrilled to see the place so packed, with all my family and friends scattered around me and the cast and crew and new friends from the festival. We were all there together. People had bags of popcorn and sodas in their hands, like a real movie at a real movie theatre ... feeling great ... only they're about to see "my" film ... feeling like I'm going to throw up ... my daughter is so cute ... feeling great ... do you know what you're going to say when you get up there? ... okay, going to pass out, time to dive into the washroom ...

Finally it all began. A few nice words from the festival director Kerry Swanson, who has been so amazing the whole entire process, so, so, so, supportive. Feeling amazing. Then the IFC intro to the evening from Rachel Fulford. Wow... I had given her a copy of the film prior to the screening and never heard back about it so I so confidently assumed that she hated it and was staying email silent because she was trying to be nice about it and I wasn't going to go fishing for bad news. But hearing her really explain that she loves this film and that she is excited to present it on behalf of IFC ... I thought I was going to die ... I was getting worried that as she told the audience that the film is great that we'd never live up to it, that before the screening people were expecting an okay closing night film, why not, should be fun, but now after her set up they're expecting a real honest to god movie-movie ... how was the film going to live up to her introduction ... Then I had to walk up and say a few words ... Usually I'm goofy and an idiot but the room had changed by her introduction, it was serious now ... oh god ... I thanked some key people and the festival that had been totally amazing and took my seat. Then there was a song sung and it was gorgeous and I was so thankful for it as it allowed us to get the words out of our minds, and to now get our hearts and spirits into a good place ... okay here we go ... the front of stage mic is placed off to the side now as the lights dim ... here we fucking go ... I try to let go of my wife's hand since mine are so disgustingly sweaty and clammy - she holds on.

I can recall every person that we talked to prior to shooting this film who either heard about how fast the script came together or who had read one of the early drafts of the script that I was moving forward with in production. They would all stop me, maybe place a hand on my arm to really get my manic attention. "Shane," they said, "you only make a first feature film one time. You can't do this again. You have to make this first feature great. Don't do it like this. Take some more time." I'd smile and tell them I'm doing this no matter what, I don't care. If it sucks, it sucks and I'll just burry it on a computer hard drive someplace, but I am going to do this. Why? I had to. I just flat-out had to do this. I had to complete this film, I had to make a feature film, and I wanted to make THIS "last minute" film my first one. It's funny that we call it a last minute film considering that I would argue that I'd been making this film for the last 34 years trying and stumbling and trying again to get a feature script together. The best thing for me I thought was to get out of my own way and just let it happen as it will, whatever it may be, as I'd done way too much of second-guessing, notes upon notes, re-writes upon re-writes of every other script and where had it gotten me except bored and moving onto another idea. This was going to happen no matter what. I think only the day before wardrobe check that I had a panic of "this is going to suck, what the hell am I doing?" But even then it was, "well, what else are you going to do, you're a failure either way, may as well go down spending all of your wife's line of credit ...."

I don't think I really saw the film as everyone else was able to and just sit back and watch a film. Every time someone got up from their seat I was thinking, "yep, they hate it, I fucking failed. They're starting to walk out." Then that person would return with a snack or something and sit back down and I was confused and tense again. Then the quiet parts would come on, just some silent parts in the movie, and no one was talking or doing anything ... silence ... they hate it. A funny part comes on and they laugh - a success. Then another funny part but it's not playing as funny as planned, it's, I think, emotional? Failure ... failure ... failure ... oh god ... The movie ends. Some clapping and such ... I think it was okay, but no one is jumping out of their seats ... a mild failure ...? Then the closing credits over black a few people are up and out of their seats, but most sit and watch them, silently, no one talking to one another ... fuck, a failure, everyone is just sitting there being polite ... a failure ... then they call me up for the Q&A and it's kind of quiet and all I've been able to see is the backs of people's heads as they've sat the last couple minutes in silence ... a failure ... as I walk up to the front people turn face me as I go up, politely applauding ... Oh shit, I think as I look at them, what have I done? People are quiet because some have been crying, they feel emotional now and are quiet with themselves ... oh shit, what have I done? I guess I never thought about this part, the end of the movie and how it effects people. I only thought about the feeling of satisfaction for me and ours that we completed the film, that we'd reached an end point, not what an audience would be in ... Okay, I've never told a story or made a movie that had this kind of emotional response to it, most of my stuff in these realms is funny ha-ha, and not this. This emotional stuff is more like what happens in the music stuff we do ... weird ... humbling ... okay, time to stand up there in the front like a man, like an artist, and not like what I think of myself as more often than not, a goofy kid just trying to keep trying to keep trying to make and do things ... I was suddenly in very new waters.

When I went to Australia for a whack of time in my mid-twenties I dove into the ocean and surfing. I had found a place that finally shut my head up. Just me, the board, the ocean, the waiting, the sun, the terror, the joy, the no time to float off mentally, just time to be present and for me, with God. It was bliss. I was thinking of staying and surfing forever, maybe living in a tent my whole life ... I never let myself off the hook, here was a place and a task that I could just be, no pressure about anything, nothing to do except float around with the sea ... then through some friends and friends I get a script in my hand and someone asks to read it and offer any ideas on it. I read it, it's a period piece about Australia's history and it has an Aboriginal character in the background of a few scenes. I'm not into how this character is written at all. All of my notes are about building this character up, if you're going to have a piece on the formation of Australia I thought, you HAVE to have the Aboriginal character be front, centre, and vital, it's a voice that HAS to be heard. My notes were taken with a smile but a "you're a kid, you don't get it do you?' look. It wasn't long after that that Duane and I starting writing something via email to one another, me in Oz, him here in Toronto ... It wasn't long after that that I flew back home. As much as there is a desire to be quiet and be still and be peaceful and calm and just sit there on my board in the ocean there is a fight in me. There has been a fight in me since I was born. I grew up around a fight, all kinds of fights. I can't watch JFK or Malcolm X or any film about a fighter and NOT get completely riled up from the tips of my toes to the last hair on my head. Fight, fight, fight ... its more me than anything else. Even if that means I can't ever sit back and enjoy things totally, always a touch on edge ... restless. There is work to do, things to know, things to make better, things to try ... And I saw that in my daughter only a few weeks old, this furrowed brow, this look where I'm making happy go lucky faces and she's looking right through it wondering something, thinking about something, some question that is just in us ... yes, she does look like me ...

It's been a couple weeks now since the screening, the world premiere. I cannot believe the good fortune we had to have been given the opportunity to be the closing night selection in a film festival that I truly love, a festival that feels like family, in ImagineNATIVE. Just being closing night was a huge success, an honour. Then to have a great venue like the Royal to screen it in, and to sell it out ... pinch me (I just knocked on wood). And for people to tell me afterwards that the film touched them? An honour. A very humbling honour. I got more stories, more work to do, and I'll probably never be able to sit back and just enjoy what happen on that night ... well, maybe when I'm old and just lying there thinking back on the good stuff, the great stuff, the lucky stuff ... am I making too much of this? I'm not. Seriously. It was a dream come true. A feature film on the big screen with a bunch of people sitting back eating popcorn and watching and laughing together at something I made with my friends. Lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky ... and though I'm thankful beyond reason, I figure if I stand still it'll be taken away from me, struck my lightning or something, so I gotta keep moving, I gotta keep working, there is more to do ....

Chi Miigwitch