Crimes of Mike Recket: An Interview with Gabrielle Rose and Bruce Sweeney

When David Spaner's book Dreaming in the Rain: How Vancouver Became Hollywood North By Northwest, was published in 2003, BC film seemed at a particularly promising juncture. Several new Vancouver-based filmmakers were receiving critical acclaim and beginning what one might hope were long careers in Canadian film. Auteurs dealt with at length by Spaner included Bruce Sweeney, Mina Shum, Lynne Stopkewich, John Pozer, and Reg Harkema; all were cited as rising talents who would put BC on the map of the Canadian film industry, making films that were not only shot in Vancouver, but set here. These films were not just cause for regional excitement, but attracted international attention. Lynne Stopkewich's 1996 film Kissed, for instance, won awards in Spain and Italy, and was widely distributed on VHS; I remember my pleasure at regularly finding copies of it on the shelves of video stores in Japan--once in a section labeled Canadian. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Cut to 2012, and much of this sense of promise has dissipated. Filmmakers one might have hoped would rise up to become international figures in cinema--Canada's next Atom Egoyans or David Cronenbergs--have all but stopped making feature films. Since 2003, Mina Shum, Lynne Stopkewich, and John Pozer have worked in TV or made shorts; according to IMDB, their last feature films were, respectively, made in 2002, 2001, and 1995. While the shift to television is understandable--as Gabrielle Rose said after my tape stopped rolling, you have to work!--it's also somewhat sad that arts funding and the Canadian film industry are such that filmmakers with such talent and successes behind them should have to seek employment elsewhere to stay solvent. The ongoing collapse of video rental chains, which could usually be counted on to stock the occasional Canadian indy title, has made the situation even more complex, as it has become increasingly difficult for the general public--especially those who live in areas at a remove from arthouses and film festivals--to access what BC feature films have been made. The situation is not entirely grim. Both Lynne Stopkewich and Mina Shum have new features in development--Shum makes mention of two on her Facebook page, and Stopkewich, contacted for this essay, says she is researching and writing her next film.1 Reg Harkema has made some highly visible films since 2003, like Monkey Warfare (2006) and Leslie My Name is Evil (2009)--although both were made after he relocated to Toronto, making him less visible as a regional voice (his upcoming film, a BC-shot and--set adaptation of Vancouver punk/ writer John Armstrong's book Guilty of Everything, re-titled The Rebel Kind, may help change that). Tom Scholte--dealt with only as an actor in Spaner's book--directed an excellent, Vancouver-set feature, the 2008 Dogme film Crime, though it would remain low-profile, making a few festival appearances and, aside from some Super channel screenings, getting little in the way of distribution; it remains unavailable on video2. Carl Bessai, who is barely a footnote in Spaner's book, has been very active in Vancouver the last few years, making several features, including Mothers & Daughters (2008), Fathers & Sons (2010), and Sisters & Brothers (2011)--though all are also somewhat challenging to see. Perhaps most excitingly, a few new BC filmmakers have risen up in the realm of genre and exploitation fare, with Panos Cosmatos (Beyond the Black Rainbow, 2010) and Jen and Sylvia Soska (Dead Hooker in a Trunk, 2009; American Mary, 2012) making particularly strong impressions, and getting notice outside BC (American Mary has been picked up by Universal Pictures International for distribution). However, these films are not explicitly set in Vancouver; Beyond the Black Rainbow is deliberately crafted to have no regional identity whatsoever, while American Mary is shot in Vancouver but set in Seattle, with various details of life Americanized. …

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