GM: Counting jump cuts, and things like that, probably 800. But actual shots, there’s only 400 or so. A neg cutter’s nightmare.

GM: So I actually skipped the neg cutting process by, scotch tape and all, just re-shooting the movie, so that I could bypass the neg cutter and save my producers a $7000 neg cutting bill for a five minute movie.

GM: Yeah… well, I was told the premise of the whole thing would be that these movies would show a lot. And that there’d be no way of avoiding them. I remember from watching movies at film festivals with audiences how much an audience would groan after seeing the festival bumper more than two or three times and I just thought man, my movies aren’t always audience friendly at the best of times. So I’d better make something that maybe is a little confusing the first couple of times, and then maybe you get it the third time. So that at least you aren’t groaning the third time. And I also wanted to make a movie that maybe had a chance of standing on its own, outside the festival. But other than that… I don’t know. I had a script kicking around, an idea and I love Abel Gance, the French director who made Napoleon, and a lot of his movies haven’t been available to me and one in particular, The End of the World, La Fin du monde, was horribly mutilated by his producers, and released in America as a science-fiction picture when it was an impassioned melodrama. And so I read two and three sentence long plot descriptions of it and I sort of used that as the starting point. Changed it quite a bit, because mine’s a love triangle about the end of the world. I just thought you know, if I’m ever going to be able to see these Abel Gance pictures, these lost and cursed and damned films by one of my favorite fevered crazy directors, I’m just going to have to make them myself to watch them. So that was sort of the premise.

There’s one other genesis. Just being invited to make a film that pays tribute to the person that’s inviting you to pay tribute… but it was a very gracious invitation. I was honored, and Piers (Handling, fest director) is fantastic. But I’d been watching a lot of Soviet pictures, and it reminded me of stories about how Soviet artists were ‘invited’ to write or film tributes to Josef Stalin. And I guess if they didn’t make the tributes heart-felt enough, they would disappear to Siberia.

GM: Well, I fantasized that there was. And I already lived in Siberia, or in Winnipeg anyway. So I decided it would be fun to make a fevered, crazy propaganda picture in the spirit of those old agit-prop things. After that it simple, just a matter of sitting down and writing it.

GM: And the further back you go, the more close to me you get.

GM: Yeah, I think I made a horrifying discovery, and that’s that you don’t need ninety minutes for melodrama, and that I’ve been wasting a lot of people’s time. (laughing) I think maybe I should really go back and re-edit my pictures-

GM: Yeah, or even four, you’re being very generous.

GM: They’re starting to work out more nicely now. For one thing, DVD has occasioned a re-release, a re-mastering of Tales from the Gimli Hospital and Careful. And then some of my short films are being included on there as well. But just getting an opportunity to master the colour properly on Careful is great, with digital technology to get it right. And then there’s this odd internet distribution for Twilight of the Ice Nymphs and Archangel.

GM: I’m very curious about it. Nobody has told me anything about it really… someone just faxed me their little teaser, and that’s all I know.

GM: They’ve got some other interesting titles on there-

GM: But I’m not even online. I don’t even have a DVD player yet. It would have been nice to talk about Archangel, to do a director’s dialogue track, because I feel as a storyteller I dropped the ball in so many ways on it… make no mistake, it’s my favourite mutilated offspring by far, but it really doesn’t tell the story as clearly as I want. So I want a chance to do those director’s tracks where I’d say, “OK, so this is the part where… what’s really happening is this…” And then there’s two women characters who are always confused so I go, “No, that’s Veronkha, and that’s Danchuk… no, that one, the one on the left. So don’t confuse them, no, they’re not the same woman… and don’t forget, a few scenes ago this is what happened…” It would have been a great opportunity for the most apologetic, mealy-mouthed director’s commentary ever.

GM: A lot of people have planted the idea in my head, for various lengths of time, but… well, you never know. Who would have predicted that something as lo-fi as the Blair Witch Project could have been successful? Who would have predicted that Peter Greenaway would have had an art-house crossover hit? So every now and then something breaks through. And then one thing’s for sure- I don’t know any more about the marker that the so-called experts or the ignoramouses. So I’ll just keep making things that are psychologically plausible, and visually implausible, and just hope that they move along nicely and at some point they might intersect with something in the air and trigger a mild crossover. I still hope for that.

GM: I think it’s very important that I choose the correct way to die. If I die in a really intriguing and lurid fashion, and if Kenneth Anger were still around to-

GM: Yeah, but if he could only outlive me-

GM: Yeah! Or even just a late addition to the Hollywood Babylon web page or something, speculating even further on my death, perhaps maybe… I’m really counting on Kenneth Anger, or whoever his successor is…

GM: Oh. I guess.

GM: Black and white’s a walk in the park for me. I have my old Victor Anamatograph (ANTON NOTE: Man, I hope I got that right) camera which came with a box- I picked it up at a garage sale many years ago- with the instructions for f-stops, it said “At 4 p.m., open up one stop.” That sort of thing. And then it said depending on what season it is… you know, “In autumn, 4 p.m.-

GM: (laughing) …in summer, wait until 6 p.m.” So the set is crazy. I have someone yell, “4 o’clock!” and I get out a big wrench and open up the aperture one stop, and then we proceed again. And it’s hand cranked, and things like that, and I can load it standing on my head, I’ve done it so many times. I gave myself the luxury of having a very trusted assistant load it this time, so that I could collect my thoughts

GM: Yeah. And out of the hundred or so rolls of film, there was maybe only one roll that may have been off, where the sprockets didn’t engage properly or whatever… And then there were a couple of neat accidents that I used in the movie anyway- where the sprockets weren’t aligned properly, so the image would start high and then jerk down. Or you get a streak, and get that damaged film look… Obviously these aren’t nuggets that thrill mainstream audiences…

GM: That was my worst fear. I think I made this out of fear. Plus the other nine Canadian directors all have pretty active careers, unlike me. This call came in at exactly the right time. I had lots of time on my hands, so I worked pretty hard on it, I won’t pretend I didn’t. But it was crazy, and very liberating. Our producers were in Toronto for one thing, and beautiful for another- they restored my faith in the species of producers.

GM: Well, I’m in the pre-, pre-natal stages of a couple of scripts, feature scripts, and I’m determined- I’ll flip a coin if I have to- to shoot one early in the new year. I’ll shoot it whether I have $100,000 or $10 million. So somewhere in between there will be the budget. If it’s really low budget, I’ll get out the old Victor Anamatograph and load it myself…

GM: (laughing) I know. I was kicking myself, because this was an amazing golden opportunity- it was all free film, free processing, free neg cutting, free sound mix. I could have at least, with all that free film and free lab, shot a couple of other movies. Out there in Winnipeg no one would have noticed. I could have had free set building… so if I’d really been on the ball I could have had about seven pictures done. The one time I had the most wonderful, most perfect producers, I could have screwed them over totally.

GM: Exactly. A little investment. I’ve heard of a real maverick Canadian director- he’s down in LA now- who once did that to Telefilm. He got enough money to shoot a modestly budgeted feature, and went and shot two. Common sense would say that would be great, but I think it just embarrassed everybody, and probably involved a lot of lying on the bookkeeping, and he basically just had to move out of the country at that point, no way he was ever going to get another penny. I think he staged a sit-in, and then a strip-a-thon, in an office, in an attempt to wake them up to his filmmaking, um, energies. But I don’t think the bureaucratic edifices stand for that kind of mischief, so I’m just going to obediently, quietly trundle along with my old hand-cranked camera. Some of my favourite filmmakers are the real masters from the early days, and I want my films to smell as musty as theirs, but to be as brilliantly written and executed as theirs too. But I’m nowhere near there yet. I have to be more active. I feel like a baseball prospect that’s still in AAA at age forty. If I can just have a couple of injury free seasons, I’ll be in the bigs.