Ready to Retire

When I was in Winnipeg last week I had a chance to sit down with my collaborators and screen a draft of our latest film, Retired. (Yes, we've come to our senses and returned to the traditional spelling. Not sure what we were thinking.) And the film looks fabulous. I mean, it's beautiful. Given the fact that the single location is a tire warehouse, you'd expect it to be drab and colourless with those awful overhead warehouse fluorescents. But it's visually very interesting. There's a depth of colour and texture and atmosphere that I hadn't anticipated.

Director Bevan Klassen came up with some interesting choices, (suggested, at least in part, by the evocative writing, of course). Cinematographer Steven Morrisson really stood on his head this time out, and his work will be done justice in glorious 35mm on the big screen come festival time.

Winnipeg's own Christine Fellows is hard at work on the score, which should be completed in the next couple of weeks. The cut I saw had temp music, bits and pieces, experiments in sound which hint at the final score to come. Haunting cello and her signature piano sound. I can't wait to hear what she comes up with. Should be wonderful.

I've spent a fair amount of time with our producer and director lamenting the state of narrative film represented in Canadian festivals in recent years, which seem to celebrate the edgy and audacious over those that actually endeavour to tell a story. It remains to be seen how this film will be received, but it is more edgy and dark than our last film. In a way. I'd call it a black comedy, if it wasn't so disturbing. It feels festival friendly.

Someone recently asked me if it this film was autobiographical. My knee-jerk reaction was to say, no, not this time. But then they asked me how I'd come up with the title, and I said, "Well, when I was fifteen I worked at the local service station, primarily in the tire shop. And my boss was this very affable man who had little catch-phrases for everything. He knew and loved his customers, kind of like this guy Doug in the film, and if he knew his customer needed new tires he'd ask them if they were ready to retire..."

I may have to adopt Hemingway's retort to a reporter who asked him if a particular story was autobiographical. He said, "Isn't everything?"