June 1990: Montreal filmmaker David Wellington is strolling down St. Catherines Street after midnight when suddenly, passing a parked police squad car, he sees a uniformed officer and a prostitute in a seemingly compromising position.

Wellington has told this story to so many journalists that, today, he is uncertain whether it happened at all. But the filmmaker had been looking to make a feature about authority and, at the time, a policeman seemed a useful vehicle. So he included the nocturnal liaison as a scene in his black comedic parable I Love A Man In Uniform, completed from story inception to screening in less than three years.

August 1990: Wellington approaches Paul Brown with the idea for I Love a Man in Uniform. He met Brown when both were resident students at the Canadian Film Centre a year earlier. Wellington recalls they made a ‘bad’ short together, but got along, liked the same movies and remained friends after graduation.

December 1990: Wellington and Brown submit a treatment to the machinery at Telefilm Canada and the Ontario Film Development Corporation. The immediate response is favorable: both organizations provide just under $15,000 in seed money to write an outline and first draft. Handy pocket money also comes from the Canadian Film Centre.

January-April 1991: The two hire story editor Walter Donohue, who had been at the Canadian Film Centre and worked earlier with Wim Wenders and Peter Greenaway. Although working for book publisher Faber and Faber in Britain, Donohue looks over Wellington’s shoulder as he begins writing the film’s outline, scene by scene and without dialogue. Wellington is now commuting between home in Montreal and Brown’s sofa in Toronto. His computer eventually prints out a 60-page outline.

Brown also sends the film’s outline to Alexandra Raffe (I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing), who is sought as executive producer.

June 1991: Wellington describes writing the initial outline as a ‘drudge’. But it helps when he writes the first draft – ‘a real pleasure’ – in one month. It tells the story of a lonely bank clerk overtaken by the part of a self-righteous cop he plays in a tv series. Soon he wears his police uniform in everyday life, and cannot tell his two identities apart.

By now Wellington has moved to Toronto.

July 1991: The first draft is sent to five trusted people who formerly worked at Telefilm and the ofdc. Wellington and Brown are generally encouraged by their feedback.

September 1991: Wellington and Brown give Telefilm, the ofdc and others the film’s first draft; feedback is again promising. Raffe agrees to come on board as executive producer. The trio then approach distributors, but eventually set their sights on wooing Alliance Releasing and Alliance International to distribute the film in Canada and worldwide.

Alliance is interested and agrees to come on board with a distribution guarantee.

Momentum is building. Donohue steps in to refine the script. Raffe recalls that Wellington and Brown knew how to present themselves to possible backers as auteur-driven filmmakers who could still make their work commercially-accessible.

October 1991: Wellington and Brown formally ask Telefilm and the ofdc for production funds, submitting the fourth draft of the script. They know they are asking the funding bodies to give them more money than normally handed out to first-time directors. But they feel a large budget is required.

December 1991: The ofdc answers yes to production funding. Telefilm does the same in February 1992. ‘So we got drunk and hunkered down,’ says Wellington.

February-April 1992: Preproduction on I Love a Man in Uniform begins. The budget is $1.82 million. More than half the film is to be shot at night, and will feature just over 50 speaking parts. Casting director Susan Forrest brings in actors to play the lead, Henry Adler. Tom McCamus (Beautiful Dreamers), her first suggestion, eventually lands the part.

May-June 1992: Principal shooting takes place over six weeks, with Montreal-based David Franco as dop. Wellington says the production crew worked for less than they usually work for, and much less than they are worth.

Wellington identifies with Henry Adler so much that he has his hair cut like McCamus and has the actor wear the director’s own glasses, carry his briefcase and live in an apartment much like his own.

Finally, when the final day of shooting ends, an exhausted Wellington returns home, falls ill and sleeps for three days straight.

July-September 1992: Susan Shipton conducts editing over 14 weeks. Frequent screenings to the film’s investors gather their comments. Norman Jewison of the Canadian Film Centre offers his own recommendations as fine-tuning continues.

October 1992: Jane Tattersal begins the audio, which takes six weeks in all to complete.

December 1992-January 1993: The film is mixed.

March 1993: The final work is delivered to distributors Alliance Releasing and Alliance International.

April 1993: I Love a Man in Uniform is submitted for consideration by Directors’ Fortnight programmers at the Cannes Film Festival. Then the phone call comes from Alliance: ‘We’re in!’

May 1993: Alliance hires a publicist in Cannes who plasters the Croissette with posters announcing the screening times and locations for I Love a Man In Uniform. ‘They were everywhere, and this is where Alliance is tops,’ says Wellington.

Organizers have to turn 600 people away for the film’s second screening. ‘I came out of my hotel and saw this big lineup, and thought, could this be possible? So I asked someone what they were there to see.’

The resulting buzz produces a host of foreign sales at Cannes for Alliance, and festival offers for Wellington.

Says Raffe: ‘David got a taste of what it’s like for an audience to love your film. That’s taught him a lot.’

June 1993: Wellington and Brown win four awards at an Italian film festival. ‘Had a great week, cleaned up,’ he says.

August 1993: Wellington and Brown screen their work at the Edinburgh Film Festival.

September 1993: I Love a Man in Uniform opens the Perspective Canada series with a gala screening at the Festival of Festivals.