Take One (Dec 2003 - Mar 2004)

Emile is the final installment in a trilogy that began with Bessai’s 1999 film Johnny, about a charismatic 18-year-old who takes to the streets to lead a band of squeegee kids. His second film, Lola (2001) which screened at the Toronto and Berlin film festivals, follows a young woman who abandons her unhappy life and sets out in search of a better one. Emile is Bessai’s most personal film yet, although on the surface it seems to have little to do with him. It’s the story of an aging professor, Emile (Ian McKellen), who travels to Canada to receive an honorary degree from the University of Victoria and reconnect with his niece Nadia, played by Deborah Kara Unger, who lives there with her daughter, Maria (Theo Crane). For Emile, the visit unleashes a torrent of memories of his life in Canada before he moved abroad. The film, which bears more than a passing resemblance to Ingmar Bergman’s art-house classic Wild Strawberries, grew from a box of old letters given to Bessai when he was in film school. They were written to his father, who died of brain cancer when Bessai was four. “Reading all this mail, just because I wanted to get to know him, started the wheels turning,” he says. What emerged was the tale of two lonely people yearning for a sense of family. With the screenplay finished, Bessai turned to the business of selling it. Telefilm rejected Emile, while British Columbia Film and CanWest Global agreed to back the film only on the condition that a major star played the lead. Bessai had already discussed his dream list, which included actors John Hurt and Richard Harris, with a U.K. production company. The man who topped everyone’s list was McKellen and, in the spring of 2002, they sent him a script. “That he even read it was just entirely fluky,” Bessai admits. “He did because he was moving here and it was the only script he had in this enormous pile that was from some guy who was living in the city where he was going to live while doing X—Men 2.” When McKellen called two months later to say he’d like to meet, Bessai could barely believe it. “I was terrified,” he says. “I really was. But, because I feel like I’m better live than I am on the phone or on paper, I thought ‘if I can just get in the door then I have a fighting chance at convincing this guy.’” “AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR, IHADA BUT NO BUDGET.” In a Toronto interview to mark the premiere of Emile at TIFE, McKellen admits that he had serious reservations about the part. “Although I thought it was a story worth telling,” he says, “I didn’t think that it was something I should get involved with because the character was Canadian.” Bessai asked for a week to rework the script; three months later the two were still negotiating. “We were having a great time getting to know each other,” Bessai recalls, “and it was all very charming. But I was starting to get a bit fed up. So I said, ‘Look, dude, are you doing this movie with me or not? I just think that we both need to know.’ And he said, ‘Did you just call me dude?” Bessai laughs. “But he loved this sort of Canadian informality. And he had been in Vancouver for long enough to feel that he needed to leave something behind.” McKellen insists that his decision to commit to the film had more to do with the filmmaker. “Dude! Dude!” he says, mimicking Bessai. “Carl is a force of nature. There he was trying to make films with no money in Vancouver where he lived and no ambitions to take them anywhere else. How could you not fall in love with that?” Bessai had him write a note on McKellen letterhead committing to Emile, and immediately faxed the letter to the funding agencies. With the star on board, British Columbia Film and CanWest Global upped their support, and ‘Telefilm reconsidered the project. But Bessai was running out of time. He had promised McKellen that they would be finished production before Christmas, and it was already October. Then, in what seemed like the death knell for Emile, Telefilm rejected it for the second time. “At the TAKE ONE