Thing's young hero is hot for teacher
By Ken Eisner
Publish Date: 9-Mar-2006
It took Amnon Buchbinder more than seven years to get his second feature off the ground. But once he started shooting the quirky ensemble drama Whole New Thing, its 15-day schedule, in January of last year, afforded no time for fooling around.
“It was a fast and furious shoot,” says one its stars, Rebecca Jenkins, who plays the mother of a precocious teenager at the centre of this Halifax-set tale of home schooling, beliefs under duress, and emerging sexual identity.
“Well, it wasn’t furious in the angry sense,” answers Buchbinder, on the phone from his Toronto home. “It was concentrated, but we had a good time. Of course, it helped that we had an amazing crew.”
The director also had the advantage of working with cowriter Daniel MacIvor, who—along with producer Camelia Frieberg—had already shot two Nova Scotia features this decade and knew the local crews. (MacIvor also has a key supporting role.) Still, the film’s million-dollar budget only allowed one afternoon of rehearsal and fewer retakes than one might want, since it was shot on expensive 35mm film. The old-school format was also a blessing, however.
“It was so cold,” the director recalls, “we started having problems with the camera. But digital video is much more temperamental, actually, and probably would have locked up completely. Anyway, something happens with film that’s just different, and not just aesthetically. If you want to make magic, film is still the way to go.”
Another upside is that because of the limited amount of footage, it only took 25 days to edit the finished product, which toured festivals last fall and opens here on Friday (March 10). But a lot of that structure came from a solid script.
“The genesis was Daniel simply saying he had a crush on a teacher when he was a kid. It wasn’t a story idea to begin with, but it just grew from there.”
That triggering event merged with Buchbinder’s own recollection of growing up with back-to-the-land parents. Born almost 48 years ago in St. Louis, Missouri, the future filmmaker ended up spending his teen years on B.C.’s Gulf Islands.
“We [our family] were kind of like refugees. It was a very weird experience because of this advanced political consciousness: here I was trying to get Canadian kids to boycott grapes.”
Buchbinder eventually landed in Vancouver, where he helped program the Vancouver International Film Festival. In 1993 he landed a job teaching film studies at York University, and he commenced work on his first feature, 1998’s The Fishing Trip, also a rural study of interfamily tensions. Along the way, he managed to write an important book on his craft, The Way of the Screenwriter (House of Anansi Press. 2005), while raising a family of his own.
“My desire to tell the story was absolutely influenced by living on Hornby Island for three years. I was influenced by boys I knew who were as likely to wear dresses as pants—and it was not necessarily gender- related. I wanted to incorporate some elements from my childhood, but didn’t want to do a period piece.
“That’s where Daniel’s idea came in. I mean, what kind of 13-year-old kid is going to put a move on his male teacher? It’s a coming-of-age story in which the parents are stuck—they’re idealists caught between ideals and reality. Contrast that with the limitless possibility of a kid who is 13…I wanted to take transgressive subject matter and handle it in a lighter way. Of course, I was generally regarded as being out of my mind for thinking that it would be funny.”
To that end, it made a huge difference to find someone as offbeat as Aaron Webber, then 15, for the lead.
“After I met him, I felt like I didn’t need to see any one else. But he had never been in a movie, so there was definitely a high-wire aspect.”
It didn’t hurt to have players as skilled as Robert Joy and Jenkins as the parents.
“Amnon’s very much into the organic process,” recalls Jenkins, on the line from her Kitsilano home. “As a director, he believes in not getting in the way…It’s nice to feel you have his faith. But it’s also challenging, because he’s an enigmatic guy. So sometime you might wonder how he feels about the scene you’ve just done.”
Jenkins compares this cool-handed approach to that of Tim Robbins, who directed her in Bob Roberts.
“There are some directors like that, who simply leave it to the actors; you have to trust your own instincts in that situation, and they are really saying, ‘That’s your job. That’s why I hired you.’?”
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By Ken Eisner
Publish Date: 9-Mar-2006
It took Amnon Buchbinder more than seven years to get his second feature off the ground. But once he started shooting the quirky ensemble drama Whole New Thing, its 15-day schedule, in January of last year, afforded no time for fooling around.
“It was a fast and furious shoot,” says one its stars, Rebecca Jenkins, who plays the mother of a precocious teenager at the centre of this Halifax-set tale of home schooling, beliefs under duress, and emerging sexual identity.
“Well, it wasn’t furious in the angry sense,” answers Buchbinder, on the phone from his Toronto home. “It was concentrated, but we had a good time. Of course, it helped that we had an amazing crew.”
The director also had the advantage of working with cowriter Daniel MacIvor, who—along with producer Camelia Frieberg—had already shot two Nova Scotia features this decade and knew the local crews. (MacIvor also has a key supporting role.) Still, the film’s million-dollar budget only allowed one afternoon of rehearsal and fewer retakes than one might want, since it was shot on expensive 35mm film. The old-school format was also a blessing, however.
“It was so cold,” the director recalls, “we started having problems with the camera. But digital video is much more temperamental, actually, and probably would have locked up completely. Anyway, something happens with film that’s just different, and not just aesthetically. If you want to make magic, film is still the way to go.”
Another upside is that because of the limited amount of footage, it only took 25 days to edit the finished product, which toured festivals last fall and opens here on Friday (March 10). But a lot of that structure came from a solid script.
“The genesis was Daniel simply saying he had a crush on a teacher when he was a kid. It wasn’t a story idea to begin with, but it just grew from there.”
That triggering event merged with Buchbinder’s own recollection of growing up with back-to-the-land parents. Born almost 48 years ago in St. Louis, Missouri, the future filmmaker ended up spending his teen years on B.C.’s Gulf Islands.
“We [our family] were kind of like refugees. It was a very weird experience because of this advanced political consciousness: here I was trying to get Canadian kids to boycott grapes.”
Buchbinder eventually landed in Vancouver, where he helped program the Vancouver International Film Festival. In 1993 he landed a job teaching film studies at York University, and he commenced work on his first feature, 1998’s The Fishing Trip, also a rural study of interfamily tensions. Along the way, he managed to write an important book on his craft, The Way of the Screenwriter (House of Anansi Press. 2005), while raising a family of his own.
“My desire to tell the story was absolutely influenced by living on Hornby Island for three years. I was influenced by boys I knew who were as likely to wear dresses as pants—and it was not necessarily gender- related. I wanted to incorporate some elements from my childhood, but didn’t want to do a period piece.
“That’s where Daniel’s idea came in. I mean, what kind of 13-year-old kid is going to put a move on his male teacher? It’s a coming-of-age story in which the parents are stuck—they’re idealists caught between ideals and reality. Contrast that with the limitless possibility of a kid who is 13…I wanted to take transgressive subject matter and handle it in a lighter way. Of course, I was generally regarded as being out of my mind for thinking that it would be funny.”
To that end, it made a huge difference to find someone as offbeat as Aaron Webber, then 15, for the lead.
“After I met him, I felt like I didn’t need to see any one else. But he had never been in a movie, so there was definitely a high-wire aspect.”
It didn’t hurt to have players as skilled as Robert Joy and Jenkins as the parents.
“Amnon’s very much into the organic process,” recalls Jenkins, on the line from her Kitsilano home. “As a director, he believes in not getting in the way…It’s nice to feel you have his faith. But it’s also challenging, because he’s an enigmatic guy. So sometime you might wonder how he feels about the scene you’ve just done.”
Jenkins compares this cool-handed approach to that of Tim Robbins, who directed her in Bob Roberts.
“There are some directors like that, who simply leave it to the actors; you have to trust your own instincts in that situation, and they are really saying, ‘That’s your job. That’s why I hired you.’?”
Back to articles