The scene is a dimly lit room. A woman teasingly, erotically dances as her lover lies nearby. Then, she slowly, sensually takes off her clothes and, cat-like, moves on top of him. We watch as her pleasure builds to a climax.
Of course, the room is in a morgue and her lover is a corpse. But she wouldn't have it any other way.
This is the central scene in Kissed, the first feature film by Vancouver filmmaker Lynne Stopkewich. Based on a short story by Barbara Gowdy, the film explores the character of Molly Larson, from a childhood obsession with death and dead things to her explorations of necrophilia as a young woman who works in a morgue.
"I never really personalized" the subject matter, Stopkewich explained "because I was always interested in the character herself. I'm a pretty open-minded person, and I thought that because she was so edgy that this was part of her character makeup and I wanted to move away from my own personal moral stance." It was, in fact, the character that made her want to make a film of the short story: "I liked the challenge of trying to create a sympathetic necrophile... I also liked the fact that she is a very strong female character who is totally in charge of her sexuality, and willing to explore the dark side" (of it).
Stopkewich has an MFA in film from the University of British Columbia. She had done production design for several films, including John Pozer's The Grocer's Wife and The Michelle Apartments. She had previously directed two short films: The Flipped Wig and The $3 Wash & Set.
To adapt the short story, Stopkewich broke it down into its major scenes, using them to create a first, rough draft of the screenplay. She tried to incorporate as much dialogue from the story as she could (often in the form of voice over narration by the main character, an often iffy cinematic device which actually works well in the film because of its poetic quality). In order to get enough material for a feature, Stopkewich had to flesh out incidents from the short story which hadn't been written in great detail, and even invent a small number of scenes (including a scene in the morgue where the funeral director explains how bodies are prepared for burial which is not for the squeamish).
The screenplay had to be written very quickly. "From the moment I had the option on the story to the first principle (photography) was about nine weeks," Stopkewich said. Since she was also busy doing pre-production on the film, she asked screenwriter and playwright Angus Fraser to help write the screenplay. "I specifically wanted to work with him," she said, "because I liked the idea of trying to create as realistic a portrayal of Matt, the male lead, as possible. Given my propensity towards trying to tell women's stories, I didn't want to get so caught up in her story that it would create problems in (the portrayal of) his character."
It was at this stage that Stopkewich decided to change the title. She had two reasons for doing this: "One was pragmatic: most people have a hard time remembering the title of the short story." The other was to give the film its own identity by "creating a little distance between the film version and the short story version" of the story.
According to Dean English, who was part of the production from the start as co-producer with Stopkewich, the budget was just under one million Canadian dollars. In the beginning, they raised approximately $70,000 from friends and family. "It was a small part of the budget, but a very important part of the budget," English claimed, "especially at that stage. That's the hardest part. That's when people have to believe in the personnel, that's when people have to believe in the story."
English described the people they approached to invest in the film as "very interested in how we were going to treat" the subject. "Initially, people came to it with very wide open eyes. 'Please sit down and talk with me now, I'm very interested to hear what your approach is.'"
"I thought that people would be more shocked by the material than they actually were," Stopkewich agreed, "and I think a lot of it had to do with the way [the subject] was treated, and that the voice of this character came through."
Honorifics were given to different investors: you were a Champion if you gave the production $500, for instance, a Hero for $1,000 and a Patron Saint for $5,000 or more. In addition, the producers looked for small ways to reward investors: "A friend of mine who is a local artist, Jan Wade, did a pen and ink interpretive drawing of the film which we framed and printed in a limited edition, which we also offered our private investors," Stopkewich stated. English continued: "It was great to start conversations at cocktail parties: 'Where did that picture come from?' "Well, let me tell you...""
This early funding took the project only so far. According to English, it "covered all our costs for getting the film in the can. But it didn't allow us to actually see our rushes. So, we had a rather nervous period when we had to wait...we finished shooting in mid-October and we didn't actually see any footage until December 24. It was a little nerve-wracking." In December, the National Film Board of Canada offered laboratory services to the production, which allowed the producers to see the footage for the first time.
Other government assistance included Canada Council funding, which helped defray post-production costs, BC Film, which, among other things, funded a lot of the production's promotional materials, and TeleFilm Canada, which, according to English, helped "cover any expenses that we hadn't thought of or that popped up out of nowhere." "BC Film has really championed the film," Stopkewich stated. When she was looking for funding to complete a 16mm print of the film, a representative of BC Film "phoned us up and said, 'Hey. How much are the blow-up costs? Are you guys interested in a blow-up?' And we were completely floored."
"And we said, 'We like that kind of question,'" English added.
After they blew the film up to 35mm, "all the costs down the line in the production process go up accordingly," English said, but he hadn't really budgeted for the difference between that and 16mm. This was the sort of thing TeleFilm's support helped them be able to pay for.
The shoot took 30 days, five weeks of six hour days. Production wrapped in October, 1994, and the film was still waiting for the finishing touches in August, 1996. Financial considerations caused a delay in post-production of several months. "We took a five month hiatus last summer because our credit cards were completely maxed out and we couldn't pay our rent," Stopkewich stated. "So, we literally shut down the office and took time away from the film. This was actually a good thing, in retrospect, because it gave us some distance from the particular cut of the film we had arrived at. We cut the film on a Steenbeck in the basement of John Pozer's mom's house -- the old-fashioned way. Pozer Studios. Although it was frustrating for me at the time, because, of course, you want to get your film out there, in retrospect it was a really great thing. And I know that, in my next project, I probably won't have the luxury of that kind of time because we'll have specific delivery dates."
Kissed will have its world premier at the Toronto International Festival of Film. Stopkewich decided to screen it first in Toronto after a positive experience at the Festival with The Grocer's Wife. "I was really impressed by the way there was a specific Canadian section at the festival," she explained. "I was really impressed by the attention that the Canadian films got and the care with which they were programmed and the enthusiasm of the programmers."
English pointed out that Toronto's film festival was a good place to get international exposure: "People come from around the world, and you're very lucky to have that opportunity." The film has also been accepted into the Canadian Sidebar of the 1996 New York Independent Feature Film Market. English hopes that, after the exposure of Toronto, the film will be able to secure a distributor, which it currently does not have, in New York.
Stopkewich has an ambitious promotional plan which would kick in at this point: "If we do get a commercial release of the film, we would like to have a concurrent release of the soundtrack album. One of the great things about Nettwerk Records' association with the soundtrack is that they're pretty much tapped into the latest technology -- they have their own Web site, they're interested in releasing a CD-ROM with the album whereby we can include clips of the film and interviews, perhaps a music video we may shoot for one of the songs that was written specifically for the film. Given that our market is within the same age range as the market that they're hitting with their music, I think it's basically a win-win situation. It gets our film out and it gets their artists heard and seen."
The soundtrack for Kissed will be the second release of Unforscene Records, a new label headed by Sam Feldman, Bruce Allen and Vancouver's Nettwerk Records which will specialize in movie soundtracks. Their first release was the soundtrack for The Brother's McMullen. The soundtrack will include a song by Nettwerk star Sarah McLachlan, as well as an original composition by Kristy Lee Thirsk, lead singer of the Rose Chronicles and Delerium. According to English, the company agreed to do the soundtrack after seeing a copy of the screenplay.
Then, the work began. "I went through hours of listening to all kinds of music from the Nettwerk library, which is quite substantial," Stopkewich claimed. But she felt the effort was vital to the success of the film: "When it comes to low budget filmmaking, you spend all of your time and energy trying to get the images together, and by the time the soundtrack comes around, you're so exhausted -- you've run out of money and you've run out of time -- and you sort of go from there. So, given that it was my first feature, given that a large percentage of the funding came from private investments, we were able to maintain a lot of control and we could take as much time as we wanted to complete the film... In terms of the music supporting the character and supporting the story, I thought that was really crucial... We really wanted to put something together that was different than your classic wall-to-wall symphonic score. We really wanted to create something that would reflect the inner life of the character and bring the audience a little bit closer to her inner state."
The role of Sandra Larson was awarded to Molly Parker, who has had roles in Bliss, Jean-Jacques Annaud's Wings of Courage and several television programmes. "She was really excited when she read the script," claimed Stopkewich, "because she tends to -- as most female actors do -- get a lot of parts sent to her like the prostitute...girl next door -- you know. She was really, really excited about the script because the character was three-dimensional and fully fleshed out. And it was a really challenging part for her to consider."
Stopkewich believed that a large amount of pre-production work was necessary to prepare Parker for her part: "We worked together before we shot for quite a while just going over the character and talking about scenarios and back story and all kinds of things just to prepare. We knew that, given that it was such a low budget film, during production chaos would probably be the order of the day and we wanted to already have that shorthand between the two of us. And I knew for myself that, given that this was her story, she would basically have to carry the film."
When it came time to do the lovemaking scene in the morgue described above, Parker had two requests: that the set be closed and that the corpse be played by an actor she knew. Stopkewich had no problem with either.
The single scene took about 16 hours to shoot. "It was an extremely long day," Stopkewich stated, "and it was probably the most difficult scene of the entire film for me to go through. But at the end of the day it was also the scene that -- if I had to pull a single scene out of this film on which to base my experience on in terms of pride of my work -- I would say that" was the one.
This article first appeared in Reel Independence, Volume 4, Number 4, September/October 1996.