Quick Fix Voodoo Charm
I first met John ("I usually do a phonetic spelling whenever I talk to the press, which is leck-we-ay") L'Ecuyer at his business office cum apartment in downtown Toronto. He was busy taking calls and faxing messages in preparation for the commercial release of his first feature film, Curtis's Charm. As he fed a sheet through his fax machine, he talked with disarming candor about how he had been a heroin addict; although he had no problem discussing it, he was losing patience with journalists who focused on that aspect of his life in their articles, virtually ignoring his film.
Now, here I must break the journalist's rule against self-incrimination and admit: I didn't know L'Ecuyer had been a junkie when I went to interview him. I had accepted the assignment because I liked his film and wanted to know more about it and him.
This tidbit about L'Ecuyer's past did, I suppose, make sense. Curtis's Charm is an adaptation of a short story by Jim Carroll, who himself was a heroin addict. The short story is based on an experience Carroll, who by the time the story starts had kicked his habit, had with a friend of his, Curtis, an addict who is convinced that his mother-in-law has put a Voodoo curse on him. Carroll creates a charm to help Curtis overcome his fear of his mother-in-law; although, at first, it works well, Curtis starts to increasingly think of himself as invulnerable to any threat, with tragic results.
As somebody who had lived the experience, L'Ecuyer would be expected to demand a certain verisimilitude to his film. For instance, as he explained it, the film "begged to be shot in black and white because of its street sensibilities... And, in fact, the grainy black and white cinematography perfectly reflects the grittiness of the story.
This also led to a complicated casting process. According to Sandra Cunningham, producer of Curtis's Charm, "An ongoing series of discussions started at that point because John felt that the only way to make this film authentic was to cast non-professional actors. He wanted real people from the streets. He did not want people pretending that they were former junkies because there was no way that he could make that seem real...and I wanted professionals."
Looking back on casting the film, L'Ecuyer says that he was lucky to choose people with whom he could work, and that in future this will be an important consideration for him. "If I had had a primadonna on the set... he stated, "it would have been so difficult -- I know I wouldn't have the film that I ended up with at all. From now on, my casting is going to be based on a lot of different things, not just about someone's Q rating, [mass media popularity measurement]; they have got to be a really great person as well. That narrows down the field, but I do think it's possible to find a cast that one can work with; and I think that when you have a cast you can work with, you can get so much more out of it. I get all that much more creative freedom by not explaining to somebody for six weeks why they've got to dye their hair a little darker brown."
When you think about it, L'Ecuyer using his drug background to add authenticity to Curtis' Charm is no more remarkable than any other filmmaker using his or her own experience to make a film more realistic. Ultimately, in order to make his film, L'Ecuyer had to make the same creative decisions and compromises with reality which all independent filmmakers face.
The decision to shoot in black and white, for instance, was originally made, in addition to the esthetic reasons, in order to keep costs on the low-budget film down, even though, in the end, it didn't. "...Black and white ended up costing as much as color," L'Ecuyer stated. "Because people don't -- on the technical level, black and white is becoming a lost art. There are very few qualified technicians who understand black and white. It's very, very different from color, and the machines are getting old and dated and people are less interested in working on it."
In addition, the film was not blown up to 35 millimetre; the print distributed was 16 mm. According to Cunningham, this was not at the request of the distributor, Cineplex-Odeon, which was supportive of the blow-up. When first considering the distribution of the film, the producer obtained a list of theatres in which it might appear, and found that they had both 16 and 35 mm projection capabilities. "So, there was absolutely no way that the film was going to be increasing its profitability by more than the margin of the cost of a blow-up," Cunningham explained. "So, we said, let's not spend the money."
This turned out alright at the Carlton in Toronto, where Cunningham and L'Ecuyer could run a test to ensure that the film was projected correctly. In theatres in other cities, however, "the sound was abominable. We had to go in there [a theatre in Montreal] and stop it and make them do a test. That doesn't happen on 35mm. Cunningham believed that the decision to strike only a 16 mm print for Canada affected the number of venues the film could play in worldwide.
Looking back on it, L'Ecuyer also thought he should have spent more time on the screenplay. "I really wish I had taken a pause for a month and got some sleep and rewrote the script - another draft of the script. I think the script is 80% there, but I could have made it so much better. And now I sort of live with watching the film and going, "Gee, I had those other jokes, I didn't put them in....I took this out....why didn't I leave that in....why did I leave this part in... And it was like my anxiety and my yearning to want to just get the film made... But ultimately, going back to the script, it's really key to everything. I know everybody said it ad nauseum, but it's so true. You have to live with the film for the next 60 years. And there were certain things that I didn't put in because I didn't have time to think them through, and now I really regret it because I know they would have worked quite well."
As for the actors, although they did audition some non-actors, they also auditioned many professionals. Maurice Dean Wint (a pro whose credits include the role of The General in Clement Virgo's Rude), who eventually got the part of Curtis, initially didn't seem to fit. As Cunningham recalled: "This incredibly fit, tall, swarthy, very handsome gentleman walks in, and we're asking him to read for the part of a delusional drug addict who looks like he's probably spent several nights on the streets. But Maurice, being the pro that he is, became that part. He became it through body language. And then, when he came back, he'd shaved his head, he had a gold tooth, he'd dirtied himself up -- and he won John over. Just another film story with a happy ending.
"Initially I was worried [about comparisons to The Basketball Diaries], then I wasn't. When I saw the film, I realized the comparisons would be favorable to us...in essence, Jim Carroll's quote for our poster... 'I couldn't have asked for a more brilliant adaptation,' says it all." John L'Ecuyer
L'Ecuyer began his film career as a student at Toronto's Ryerson Polytechnical University. In 1993, his first year, he made a short called Lowlife, which was accepted into the Brussels Film Festival and won an international student film award. ("I was very lucky with that," he comments.) In his second year, he made Use Once and Destroy, which won the Jay Scott Award for Best Overall Production. In his third year...well, actually, he didn't make it to third year: "Instead of going back to third year, which I couldn't afford to do, I made Curtis's Charm. It wasn't that he had a problem with Ryerson, which L'Ecuyer stressed was a "great school. He had simply run out of money. He had applied to the Canada, Ontario and Toronto Arts Councils for funding of the film in the fall, 1994 grant period, but initially went back to school because he felt that it was unlikely they would give him money. By October 15, L'Ecuyer got a call saying his OSAP had been cancelled because one of the plan's officers considered money from a drug plan, which he used for medication, to be income, even though it went from the government to his doctor and he never received a cent. Losing OSAP forced him to drop out.
Two weeks later, the first Council told him his application for funds had been accepted; within a month, the other two followed. "The timing was perfect for everything," L'Ecuyer stated. L'Ecuyer had been a fan of Carroll's writing since he was 11 years old, so the idea of adapting one of Carroll's stories appealed to him. He chose Curtis's Charm, one of two screenplays he wrote during his second year at Ryerson, "first and foremost because it felt authentic -- it was a truthful and sincere story. He also admits that one of the attractions was that "the jokes were funny -- I laughed when I read it. The story also had the advantage of having only two main characters and four primary settings. L'Ecuyer "knew that this would have to be down and dirty and follow all the principles of independent filmmaking, which is keep your characters to a minimum, keep your locations to a minimum."
When the Councils agreed to fund Curtis's Charm, L'Ecuyer realized the film had a real potential to get made, so he asked Cunningham to consider producing it. Cunningham had been a programmer at the then-named Toronto Festival of Festivals when he submitted Use Once and Destroy, so she was familiar with his work. By submitting his two short films in the package for her which featured the screenplay for Curtis's Charm, L'Ecuyer "gave me a sense of his voice as a director," Cunningham said. She was also very impressed with the writing: "I know very little about addicts and former addicts -- I just loved these characters. And I thought it was some of the best dialogue I'd read."
Within 24 hours of receiving L'Ecuyer's material, Cunningham told him, "I have no idea how we're gonna do this, but, yes, let's go...I will produce your film."
Cunningham started out in the industry 12 years ago in the press office of Montreal's Festival of New Cinema; she also helped distribute experimental 16 mm films. She spent six years as "a lower level production assistant" on feature films in Italy before coming back to Canada, where she has worked as a line producer or production manager for the likes of Patricia Rozema (When Night is Falling), Atom Egoyan (Exotica), Jeremy Podeswa (Eclipse) and Srinivas Krishna (Masala). Cunningham has also been a programmer for the Perspectives Canada program of the Toronto International Film Festival for the past two years. She had been looking at scripts since 1993 "and basically working myself into a position where I felt there was a project I really wanted" to produce.
When she came aboard, approximately half of what would be the film's $100,000 budget had already been raised by L'Ecuyer. Cunningham immediately developed "what I felt was a realistic budget" so that they could determine how much additional money they needed to raise. She also phoned around to various film labs and creative people to see if they would help her work within what would be a very tight budget, "And I got nothing but very favorable responses. They also formed a company, Eastside Film, specifically to produce their work.
L'Ecuyer and Cunningham then set about to snag private investors in order to, in Cunningham's words "top up the budget of the film. Filmmakers Rozema and Egoyan put up an undisclosed amount of money (L'Ecuyer will only say that all the private investment added up to about 20 per cent of the budget), and were each given the title of Executive Producer. While a student at Ryerson, L'Ecuyer had interviewed Egoyan;
over the years, L'Ecuyer had stayed in touch with him, and they had developed a friendship. (And, in an odd coincidence, Egoyan was the presenter of the Jay Scott award which L'Ecuyer won for one of his short films.) Cunningham had, of course, worked with both Egoyan and Rozema.
Having private investors was important to L'Ecuyer because "it makes you more fiscally responsible. You can't make films in a vacuum. You can't make films that no one wants to see just because you got council [government grant] money and a few people on a jury think, 'Oh, there's an interesting artistic project that no one's going to see but we want to support.' We feel that we don't want to make projects that people aren't going to see and that don't turn back some money. It has to be a circle that comes back on itself in order to keep making films. And the private investors' quotient of our budget meant that we had an extra emphasis on making sure that the film was viable, was releasable and was something that could potentially make its money back."
"[Our audience is] people who like to read, people who understand film...people who aren't afraid of films with subtitles -- who don't think it's too much reading -- or people who know what the French New Wave was -- who don't think it was a musical movement. We're looking for people who like film, who go to films because they understand the shared experience." John L'Ecuyer
Egoyan and Rozema also "acted as mentors," according to L'Ecuyer. As Cunningham put it: "As colleagues who I had worked with in the past, and now friends, they were, also, a good resource, the two of them, both having produced films and made films in this country. It was great to have access to the Patricia Rozema or Atom Egoyan Hotline."
Although it drove up the cost of the production, the actors were paid ACTRA rates. "We did not want to expose professionals to any kind of potential penalty from their union to their future livelihood," Cunningham explained. (Other key members of the crew such as musician Mark Korvan, who put together the soundtrack, were given a small part of the film as partial payment. "[T]here really weren't, strictly speaking, deferrals on this film," Cunningham said. "Our key creatives have points in the film. So he [Korvan] got a little bit of cash up front, because everybody was paid something, and then went on a point system and participated that way. I have to say that only people that could afford to do that at that point could really participate in this film...")
Rehearsal was intense, and, according to L'Ecuyer, "the actors were really into it. He claimed that rehearsing was a vital part of preparing the production, "So that when we were shooting, and we were shooting everything off the shoulder, moving from location to location, we didn't get bogged down."
Ah, the shoot. First time director. First time producer. Twelve days for principle photography. You would expect all sorts of horror stories, right?
"We met with more serendipity than problems... nothing went astray, nobody stole anything," L'Ecuyer stated. They anticipated potential problems before the shooting, he claimed. "Curtis's Charm was the smoothest production I've ever been on," Cunningham agreed.
They had one day of rain cover, she explained, one day when they could shoot interiors if it rained outside. Reports that rain was a possibility on one day during the shoot put them in a bind: should they shoot interiors that day and hope it didn't rain any other day during their shooting schedule? Or should they shoot outside and hope the weather forecasters were wrong? Either way, if they guessed wrong, they would lose a day of shooting on their tight schedule. They chose to shoot inside, and, as it turned out, that was the only day during the shoot that it rained. "So," Cunningham admitted, "it was luck."
Pressed, Cunningham tells the story of Director of Photography Harald Bachmann, who disappeared for a couple of weeks just as the production was gearing up for the shoot: "...while we were all going frantic in the production office, coming down to the wire and getting all nervous about the schedule, and tensions are building because time is running out, everybody was saying 'Where's Harald? Where's Harald? Doesn't he know where the locations are? Isn't he preparing for this? How come he's not here?' Everybody was feeling uncovered.
Finally, I had to call Harald in and say, 'Well, geez, I don't know what's going on, Harald. Don't you realize we're only a week away from shooting? People are really feeling like you haven't been around here very much.' Meanwhile, Harald was doing his own preparations. He knew that with the equipment package we had that he would be holding this camera on his shoulder for probably 12 days.
"He was out at the gym working out, every day, and just quietly going out in his very Zen-like approach knowing 'If I'm going to pull this off, I have to be in top notch shape.' And he [ended up] doing five minute tracking shots -handheld - during this film. Single takes. Repeated takes. He was a master. We called him The Human Steadicam. So, it was just a matter of everybody, in fact, doing everything they needed very quietly, and that was...Harald's approach and he was right. He was absolutely right. That's what he needed to be doing."
Not exactly a Living In Oblivion type of mishap, but some shoots are smoother than others.
In hindsight, L'Ecuyer believed he should have allocated his time differently. "[I]t's hard to know when you are making your first film where you should be expending your energies," he said. "Just to illustrate - in some ways I think I spent tons more time with wardrobe, making sure their [the cast's] stuff was perfect. I think I went way overboard. Even when things were decided I was still going over the stuff....I think on this next film what I'd like to do is just really make sure that where I'm spending my time is the very best thing to be spending my time with. You get bombarded with 1001 questions every day and that's part of the job. What I have learned from CC is how to categorize and subdivide each department and also try to understand who needs what..."
L'Ecuyer also stated that if you have a bare bones budget, you will not allow yourself time for much creative work, because that could jeopardize getting the shots you need to finish the film. In the future, he intends to incorporate enough time to shoot his films properly right into the first draft of his budgets.
As well, he pointed out that some first time directors may be so happy to be getting their film made, they may be tempted not to push their actors as much as they should in order to get the best performances out of them. "With CC, there was a shyness that came from how grateful I was to be able to make this first feature film...everyone had more experience than me - and when I was in that situation it was very hard to sort of demand...[but] I've realized that everyone really wants me to demand a lot because it is good for them as well. They want it courteous, but they don't want me to lay off them because I'm grateful they're working with me. They want it to be the other way around, they want to feel grateful to work with me and they want me to push them as hard as I can...
It took L'Ecuyer four months to get the rights to Carroll's short story (the screenplay for which, "a little ass-backwards," he had written first). "It took several months of sending faxes every day," to Carroll's agent at William Morris, L'Ecuyer stated, "flowers to receptionists...[hoping they would] put it on the desk of the personal assistant of the guy who was going to make the right decision."
(Actually, L'Ecuyer originally intended to make Curtis's Charm "to prove myself" to Carroll so that he would be allowed to write and direct the more ambitious The Basketball Diaries. When he was negotiating the rights to Curtis's Charm, L'Ecuyer was disappointed to find that the rights had already been taken, even though few people knew about it because "it was very downplayed.")
In addition, it took him eight months to get the rights to the music he wanted. "It's a long, drawn-out process. L'Ecuyer plans to clear whatever rights he needs on future projects much earlier in the process than he did for Curtis's Charm, and he recommends that anybody else working on a film get their rights as early as possible.
The film was distributed by Cineplex-Odeon in Canada; Alliance Releasing International has been its foreign sales agent, while Strand Releasing was its American distributor. Curtis's Charm, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (where it received a Special Jury Citation in the Toronto-City Award For Best Canadian Feature Film category), opened in Toronto February 9, a mere 8 1/2 months after the start of principal photography, which L'Ecuyer noted is a fast turn-around time for an independent film. After that, the film "fanned out" to other individual Canadian cities, playing until June, with a particularly intense period between March and April. Not doing a broad release saved money because the advertising could be done locally, not nationally, and only one print of the film was supposed to be struck, although Cunningham said there ended up being two. "A good strong box office in Toronto generally leads to more interest and a stronger box office in other parts of the country," Cunningham added. (It is of interest to note that L'Ecuyer received two Special Jury Citations during the 1995 Toronto festival; the other was for his short Use Once and Destroy.)
The opening date was chosen, in part, to capitalize on the February 2nd Toronto reading which had been separately arranged for Carroll. As Cunningham noted, the audience for the reading would be similar to that of the film. "It just seemed fortuitous that he would be coming," Cunningham stated. "And he let it be known that he wanted...to know whether we could use his time in Toronto at all to help promote Curtis's Charm, because he's very supportive of the film. So, the timing just seemed right."
One page flyers for the film, which included a still which had been on the film's print ads and press materials, were placed on all the seats in the theater where Carroll read. In addition, booths were set up at the venue where tickets to the opening of Curtis's Charm were sold; if you bought two tickets, you were given a free CD with the film's music which included Carroll reading the short story on which the film was based. L'Ecuyer was asked to introduce Carroll (whom he kept referring to as "My hero"), and, in a nice gesture, Carroll read Curtis's Charm for his audience.
Negotiations for the music had only been for its use in the film; Cunningham had not negotiated the rights for a commercially released CD. So, the thousand copies of the CD they printed had to be used solely for promotions and not sold. According to Cunningham, this didn't work out too badly: "They have been used internationally and domestically. The domestic CD's were used to help launch the Canadian release of the film; in every center, Cineplex was able to send CD's for radio play, and we were able to send them out as part of the press screenings of the films, so they were sometimes used as a perk and sometimes used actually to give radio play and exposure to the film. [As well,] John and I have spoken in a lot of film schools and student settings, and we occasionally give away a CD for the proper answer to a very difficult film question. Internationally, they have been at all of the film markets, and apparently the CD has been a really hot item. I guess people like those kinds of things."
Cunningham claimed that Carroll's reading at the Bathurst Street Theatre had a substantial effect on per-screening ticket sales: "I would say that we clearly had an almost sold out first weekend because of the Bathurst Street show. I say that partly because we sold, I don't know the exact numbers, we probably sold close to a thousand tickets - so it was partly that, in a concrete way. But it was also the word of mouth that went from the Bathurst Street show...I would say that a huge part of that weekend was Jim Carroll's presence, and the awareness we were able to gain from that. And Cineplex's adventurous support of our crazy idea to go and pre-sell tickets at the Bathurst Street Theatre."
The film played at the Carlton for four weeks. Given its warm reception, Cunningham and L'Ecuyer felt, looking back, that they could have pushed for more screen time; but they had decided that four weeks would be a good run, and they were satisfied with that. There were rumours that the film had been moved out of theatre to make room for Oscar-nominated films which were being brought back for screenings, but Cunningham didn't believe it. "I looked up at the marquee as Curtis's Charm was playing last February," she commented, "and said, 'My gawd, look at that competition' and then on the other hand said, 'Wow, what wonderful company we're in.' And I think it was really an illustrious crowd of films. I think that also enhanced Curtis's Charm's profile there. I think we did well by it."
L'Ecuyer and Cunningham have a "hands-on" approach to marketing. "Either you're in it to make money," L'Ecuyer said, "or you're in it because you love film. And if you are a filmmaker because you love film, you do whatever you have to in order to make your film succeed. In addition to Toronto, they did many interviews and went to screenings in Montreal, where they are both from. As it turned out, this was necessary to counteract the political bias of many Montreal reviewers.
"The only downside in Montreal," Cunningham stated, "which we hadn't predicted was we forgot that no matter how much John is from Montreal, this film was perceived as a Toronto Film Festival success. There is the competition between the two cities. So occasionally in the French press, "well they really loved the film in Toronto, but we're going to really be hard on it. We still got positive reviews, but it was still something - I thought that there would be more support for the Montreal boy."
L'Ecuyer also did interviews for a partial benefit screening of the film for the James Street Recovery Centre in Ottawa, the place he had come out of. Even where neither of them could go to the city where the film was being screened, Cunningham and L'Ecuyer made sure the posters and CDs had arrived in time.
Before the film opened in New York, L'Ecuyer attended press screenings, one of which was also attended by Carroll, who also did enthusiastic interviews for Curtis's Charm. Ironically, Carroll's participation may have been responsible for the film's largely negative reception by the New York press. "I realized while reading some of the reviews," Cunningham commented, "that there are journalists who have obviously been such Jim Carroll fans and [their attitude was] like 'Nobody will be able to touch him - let alone a schmuck from Canada.' I remember reading a review in the paper where it was talking about how Basketball Diaries was unsuccessful and this is only partly better in terms of really epitomizing and representing Jim Carroll; what was really funny was on the same page, there was an ad for Curtis's Charm with the quote, 'a brilliant adaptation. (Jim Carroll)'."
According to Cunningham, Curtis's Charm has been sold in South Africa and Australia, there has been some interest in Germany and the British rights are being worked on. The film will be screened at a festival in Singapore, but she felt its future in Asia was uncertain: "There is a feeling that it might not pass the censor for theatrical release because of the subject matter. However it if does, the ideal, apparently is if it just barely passes the censor, because then you create a cult status and you can do quite well. But that is an unknown right now about whether the subject matter is too taboo to talk about on Asian screens."
The film has sold a respectable 750 video units in Canada, and is expected to be released on video in the United States in the fall. For its video release, Cineplex put the film into a package with L'America and Kaspar Hauser and marketed them as a "contemporary world film" set. This got Curtis's Charm into video outlets that a small film would ordinarily have difficulty being seen in.
Ultimately, Cunningham thought that it was just a matter of time before Curtis's Charm found its audience. As independent film god John Pierson had told her: "This is a really good film. This is a film that will find...its market and it's going to have 'legs' and it will -- it's the kind of film that's going to take a while to build its market, but it will do that."
The film has not broken even yet, but Cunningham claimed that it was just matter of time. "There is a real time line of when sales are made," she stated, "and money actually comes in and when reports are made -- it [the film] is just starting its television run. It hasn't even finished its theatrical sales run, internationally. It has had a good start at its video run -- it's only been released on video in Canada. So I would say that it is only part way through its run and yes, it will recoup."
In the meantime, L'Ecuyer has started work on a documentary about street kids and drug problems called Confessions of a Rabid Dog for educational broadcaster TV Ontario. As well, Cunningham and L'Ecuyer are working on an adaptation of the Richard Ford novel The Ultimate Good Luck (is there a theme developing in their work here?). L'Ecuyer wrote the first draft of the screenplay in anuary, 1997, and is currently working on a second draft. They have received two rounds of development funding from TeleFilm Canada and are currently negotiating with Alliance, where they have a first look deal. They are hoping the film will go before the cameras by the end of 1997 or in early 1998.
L'Ecuyer also has a spoken word jazz album coming out in April, and has written a book.
While developing their new works, both L'Ecuyer and Cunningham had to work on other projects to put food on the table. "Yes....... ..You always do," Cunningham admitted. "You have to have a second script in your back pocket, developing, while you are doing the first one. But I think that that can almost never happen with your first one because all of your energy is going to the first one. How many others do you have at that point? So it is true that John and I have spent the past year working outside of our own company to basically put money in the bank and be able to do the next project. We are developing the next project, but we are also here looking at other projects. I think that's everyone's goal - to get to the point where I always have something on the go. And as much as seems trite and everyone says it, you always have to have three or four things going. It's good to have things going at different stages because you never really do control the timing."
At this point, you might say to yourself that the film Curtis's Charm is itself charmed. I wouldn't, but you might (certainly, a lot of headline writers did). The fact is that it took a lot of hard work: a screenplay that was good enough to inspire confidence in potential investors and co-workers; enough preparation so that the shoot went smoothly -- meaning a whole heck of a lot of preparation; developing the right connections in the film industry; etc.
With Curtis's Charm, L'Ecuyer should move beyond his reputation as a former junkie and into the next phase of his life: a talented filmmaker with a promising career ahead of him.
This article first appeared in Reel Independence, Volume 4, Number 2, March/April 1996.
