Director/screenwriter: Andre Forcier – Producers: Nardo Castillo, Claude Leger, Jacques Dorfmann, Brigitte Germain – Diary by: Leo Rice-Barker

1990 to early 1991: Director Andre Forcier’s sixth feature, Une Histoire inventee, has just opened the prestigious Quinzaine des Realisateurs at the Cannes Film Festival. He begins sporadic work on Le Vent du Wyoming, his seventh feature film.

Forcier describes his films as exercises in the unraveling of his unconscious. ‘I’m not interested in reality at any price,’ he says. ‘Reality is not the objective. I’m trying to organize my unconsciousness. But when I make films, the characters have real roots, there is credibility.’

Summer 1991: By mid-1991, Forcier has ‘scrapped almost the whole thing.’ The project, under the working title Ababouinee, is being developed by Cleo 24 producer Nardo Castillo.

December 1992: The first of many drafts is completed. Forcier’s new film is described as a dark comedy, a surreal story about the machinations of sex, love and a Quebecois boxing clan. The central character, Lea Mentha, played by Sarah-Jeanne Salvy (Club des 100 Watts, Tinamer) is an assertive teenager who deals contraband cigarettes out of the back of a car. Martin Randez plays the boyfriend, an up-and-coming prize fighter who runs off with Lea’s 50-year-old mother, played by France Castel. The Mentha family patriarch, played by a much older looking Michel Cote (Cruising Bar) is the trainer of the two-timing boxer boyfriend.

Much of the story’s action takes place in the gym and at a sleazy joint called Motel Oscar, where top billing goes to a scheming hypnotist called The Great Albert, played by Marc Messier.

Added to the mix is actress Celine Bonniere (Million Dollar Babies) in the role of Lea’s mystical sister who is rejected in her love for a man she has never met, a writer from Arizona played by French actor Francois Cluzet (Trop belle pour toi, L’Enfer).

Spring 1993: Forcier and a core team of three – cinematographer Georges Dufaux, noted film poster artist and production designer Yvan Adam and art director Serge Bureau – set the shooting schedule and look of the film. The director continues to make modifications to the dialogue throughout the summer.

June 1993: sogic and Telefilm Canada officially greenlight the production.

September 1993: With the exception of French actor Cluzet, the principal roles have been cast.

Forcier says the best way to avoid disaster during principal photography is to have a long, rigorous preproduction period with a limited number of key participants, ‘before opening the machine.’

The director and Castillo, who has left Cleo 24 to set up Productions egm, decide to approach Transfilm producer Claude Leger (Agaguk, Highlander iii) after Telefilm asks for a second producer. Leger brings in Paris-based coproducer Jacques Dorfmann of Eiffel Productions. Dorfmann’s 20% participation triggers French public and Canada/France coproduction mini-treaty funding.

November to December 1993: Le Vent du Wyoming is produced for $3.83 million. Telefilm comes in at the maximum, $1.5 million; sogic’s investment is just under $500,000; and the Quebec tax credit accounts for 18% of the budget. Malofilm Distribution advances $350,000, ‘the maximum for a French movie,’ says Castillo. Malofilm acquires all rights to the film worldwide except France.

After a short delay in production, the film is shot on 35mm over 37 days – from early November to the end of December.

Patrick Rousseau is the sound recordist, Irene Litinsky is the pm, Georges Jardon is the post supervisor, Michael Williams is the first ad, Micheline Trepanier and Muriel Baurens do the heavy-duty makeup job, and Francois Laplante is the costume designer.

Three-quarters of the $100,000 allotted for film stock is used. Forcier says he prefers not to use video assist because actors are happier when he’s around, and he doesn’t like the extra ‘security take.’

Twenty-four-year film veteran Castillo feels the film is Forcier’s best effort to date. ‘It has the strong storyline of Bar Salon (1973), the poetic bursts of Au clair de la lune (1982) and the sparkling wit of Une Histoire inventee (1990).

Mid-January 1994: Editor Jacques Gagne completes the first cut using a Lightworks system at Sonolab. Forcier asks Gagne to do the fine cut right away. It’s the director’s first experience with digital, non-linear editing. ‘Roughly speaking, I loved it,’ he says.

Spring 1994: Final edit is ready by April and Forcier travels back and forth on four exhausting flights to Paris for the post synch and sound mix, an experience which leaves him down and edgy.

Aug. 27-28, 1994: Le Vent du Wyoming screens in official competition at the Montreal World Film Festival. Nineteen of 20 reviews are positive. A review of the film in Montreal’s Gazette describes it as ‘scruffy, almost sleazyÉ(a) jaundiced but hypnotic view of love.ÉThe film’s a knockout. An emotional knockout.’

Sept. 2, 1994: Malofilm opens Le Vent du Wyoming with half a dozen prints across Quebec. The film is invited to the Vancouver International Film Festival, and to festivals in Mexico, the u.s., France and Belgium.

Sept. 14-15, 1994: Forcier’s film has its English-Canada premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.