Read the Mar. 3, 2008 article in The Desert Sun, which includes excerpts from the following Q&A about the director's film, Tkaronto.
• How autobiographical is Tkaronto?
The story is extremely autobiographical. Every detail? No. Many specifics and broad emotional strokes? Yes, for sure.
First off, on the Ray character, I myself am the son of a white mother and a Metis father, and I look like my mom more than my dad, which has made for a long journey of trying to fit in...on which side? That's been the hard part. Like Ray's character, my wife and I were having a baby as I was putting this together.
As for the Jolene character, her primary search -- "I don't know how to pray" -- is something I also am using from my real life, my own personal struggles for spiritual identity and practice.
The story of this film was I turned 34 in 2007 and my wife was pregnant with our first child. I knew the year was a now-or-never proposition in terms of either making films with my life or having to find something else to make our family float.
So, in eight months we made Tkaronto, from script to final edit, on a shoe-string budget of a personal line of credit. In so doing, I had serous limits on what we could shoot. Basically, I was only able to shoot walk-and-talks for the most part, strung together with a series of locations I could borrow from friends.
I thought maybe the best thing to do was to just write from the heart, write from personal experience and make a really personal film for the first time (everything previous was fiction). I don't think I meant it to come out so autobiographical in the end, but I think by doing that I made a film that other people are really able to relate to. It's scary and pleasing, somehow.
• The conversations are so natural. Was improvisation involved? How did you decide upon the style of pausing the motion as the conversations continue?
I'm really, really big on collaboration with everyone I'm making a film with. At times people stuck right to the script and other times they would hit only the main points but improvise around them. I left it up to them to decide what they wanted to do, so it's really a mix of improv and following the script.
The main thing was that we cast the film without any auditions. We knew who would be perfect for each role and asked them, friends really, if they would be willing to do it for little pay, and they said yes. So, I think that really helped in making the performances seamless.
In terms of using the style of pausing the motions as conversations continue, a lot of the cinema style was trying to figure out how we could make a film that is two people talking 80 percent of the time interesting. I'm a big Soderbergh fan -- and he has his influences so who knows how far down the line this goes -- but I loved his treatment of conversations in The Limey and thought using that from time to time in this film might really assist in making all the dialogue palatable.
• Considering Ray’s impassioned speech about Aboriginal actors, do both of the actors reflect the heritages they portray? How much of the crew was Aboriginal, and was that a conscious consideration?
Ray's impassioned speech about Aboriginal actors does indeed come from the heart of everyone on set. When Ray demands at the end of his journey that Aboriginal people should tell their own stories, it is indeed a reflection of the cast and crew we had on Tkaronto.
Duane has Ojibway (Chipewa) heritage, Melanie is First Nations, and so on and so forth. The crew we had was really small and really Aboriginal. By end of day it was an 80 percent Aboriginal cast and crew production. And this was by design for a couple reasons.
One, I absolutely wanted to have a close-to-as-possible all-Aboriginal crew on this film because of its subject matter and because I think we need to, as a community, create as many working opportunities as possible for each other.
The second reason is because I had to rely on a lot of friends and family to work on this with me for so little pay, and well, that's who my friends and family are.
• What is the significance of your film being part of the Festival of Native Film & Culture? Do you feel there’s a difference in understanding of Native cultures in Canada versus the United States?
Hmm, tough question. It's hard for me to compare the level of understanding of Native cultures in Canada to the United States because I don't have a lot of personal experience in the U.S.. I can say that after seeing other native films from the U.S., Canada, Australia or New Zealand, it's safe to say there is a shared experience amongst Indigenous peoples. So many of the same themes, challenges and humor come through in the stories being told.
Specifically in regards to Tkaronto's theme -- what is it like to be a person of mixed heritage, as a Native person living in a city -- I think it's completely relatable and therefore there wouldn't be any difference between Canada and the U.S. in terms of how the individual feels and struggles through their identity and from the world around them, with the impossible to approach question for mixed heritage people, "So what percentage are you?"
I must say the significance of Tkaronto being a part of the Palm Springs Festival of Native Film & Culture is deeply exciting and gratifying. In terms of fiction, I don't think there has been a dramatic film that had a Metis character in it that wasn't historical or a fur trader with a French accent, if they existed on the screen at all.
Yet there are Metis people in the U.S., but since the U.S. government doesn't recognize them in Montana, Dakota, etc., they're this invisible nation that only the Canadian government and culture recognizes. So, to know that Tkaronto is going to show at the festival seems like a great opportunity to provide some exposure to the Metis nation.
Check out the Tkaronto web site.