Gary Ledbetter was almost a lumberjack.

As a high school student in the Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont. area, a somewhat free-spirited misfit who regularly bounced from school to school either by necessity or choice, Ledbetter already knew he wanted to be a writer, ‘but I couldn’t figure out a way to make a living at it. So then I thought, maybe I could make a living in film.’

He enrolled in a grade 11 film class, and turned out a strange little Super 8 film called Evolution, about a person who is self-destructing. It received the highest mark in the class, and was a runner-up in the local Charlie Awards, but the film was so weird, ‘my old teachers still won’t talk to me.’

With some doubts about the viability of film as a career, Ledbetter applied to, and was accepted by Lakehead University’s Forestry program. ‘I figured being a lumberjack was a good job. I could log for nine months, and write for the other three.’

He couldn’t find the money to live and study in Thunder Bay, Ont., however, and instead took the year off. He recut his old high school films, and got himself into York University’s Fine Arts/Film program. For his third year 16mm film, he started a short called An Act of God based on his father Ken’s short story about an autistic child named Verlin, but pulled the plug after two days’ shooting. ‘I realized we weren’t as good as the story.’

Ledbetter disbanded the crew, went on to work as a lighting technician on another student’s film, and then dropped out of school.

‘I was having a hard time mixing academics and my film obsession. My film obsession always won.’ (That was eight years ago, and he still hasn’t bothered to go back and find out what his final marks were.)

Shortly after leaving York, he received a grant from the Ontario Arts Council to further develop the script for An Act of God. When the money inevitably ran out too soon, he found a job as a Winnebago driver with a shifty fly-by-night film company.

‘They paid $50 a week, a six-day week. They never paid their bills, and had to leave townÉ.’

Ledbetter quickly discovered that if he volunteered to help the lighting crew, he didn’t have to clean the Winnebago, and soon graduated to working in the business full-time as a lighting technician.

Meanwhile, he’d been trying to arrange a broadcast agreement in order to shoot his film. He suddenly realized, though, that it’d be quicker to simply save up the money he was making than to gather together enough grant money, and soon he and a small crew were on their way to Ottawa. Since he was using his own money, he shot only at the magic hours of sunrise and sunset – doing nothing else all day. ‘I wanted a calling card that had great production values.’

Back home, he found an old Steenbeck with wonky sound and began cutting the film in his kitchen. He quickly realized that if he kept at it alone, ‘I would have gotten down to that one shot that explained it all.’ He brought on an editor and they cut until, of course, the money ran out.

Ledbetter went back to work, lighting shows such as Hitchhiker and t and t. He wrangled a finishing grant, and suddenly found himself immersed in 20-hour days. ‘I’d do a 14-hour day on Hitchhiker, then six hours of sound editing at night.’ On top of that, he was trying to write a feature script based on An Act of God, called Henry and Verlin.

By the end of it all, with An Act of God finally finished, and a first draft of Henry and Verlin completed, he was left with 100 bucks in his pocket, and moved back home.

With interest from Telefilm Canada and the Ontario Film Development Corporation, he began work in earnest on his feature. Given a whack of money to develop the script, Ledbetter concentrated full-time on writing, ‘not realizing just how hard it was, or how bad I was.É’

He did pass after pass, calling each version The Final Draft.

He was given a batch of rewrite money, but unfortunately his work coincided with the advent of the Gulf War. The overall tone of the script became very negative as he increasingly lost faith in humanity. ‘It became a kind of `dolphins are still the smartest species!’ ‘

Both the ofdc and Telefilm, upset that Henry and Verlin had become a dark tale, abruptly stopped development. In fact, Telefilm wouldn’t even meet with Ledbetter anymore.

Determined to make the film, somehow, eventually, he learned to live poor, live cheap. He decided that everything he did from then on would be to develop himself as a writer, as a director.

He made a charming short called Last Respects in Marushka Stankova’s workshop, and, despite having no experience and no audition piece – ‘I just talked real fast’ – found himself in Bernadette Kelly’s acting class.

Meanwhile, he went back to work on his script, giving it a slightly more optimistic tone, and soon the agencies were interested again.

It finally seemed that his first feature was about to happen, with Telefilm eager to have John Board produce, but then Board was suddenly off to ad David Cronenberg’s M. Butterfly, and then, Ledbetter learned that his father Ken, who had read every draft of the screenplay, who was his greatest supporter, who encouraged him to make his short films, to take chancesÉ had cancer, and was given six months to live.

Suddenly, the world of film didn’t really matter much anymore, and Ledbetter spent every available moment over the next several months with his father.

When Ken Ledbetter died in February 1993, ‘I had never been so depressedÉso disillusioned.’

To make matters worse, the Montreal office of Telefilm suddenly said no to Henry and Verlin. Ledbetter was at his lowest point. ‘I was missing my dad, and it looked like the film was finally over.’

Board, however, persisted, and got fund to ante up a quarter of a million dollars. The ofdc, always interested in the project, and Malofilm agreed to another three quarters of a million, and suddenly Ledbetter was only a hundred thousand short. With a financial favor from Telefilm, Henry and Verlin started shooting that fall.

‘I started the film on emotional empty,’ says Ledbetter. They shot for 28 days, using an old house near Pickering, Ont. The cast and crew worked for minimal wages. Halfway through the shoot, Ledbetter had to borrow $50,000 from a patron, and by the end, ‘both John and I ended up absolutely brokeÉlike you’re supposed to.’

Months later, at the first screening, seeing his first feature and his father’s story finally up there, after so many years, his overwhelming emotion was one of gratitude. ‘My five-year plan had taken six years, but I felt very lucky, very fortunate.’

Now that Henry and Verlin is out (being named Best Feature at the Atlantic Film Festival and nominated for four Genies), Ledbetter says it’s transition time.

‘I’m trying to take a bit of time off from my ambition.’ He’s gone back to paying his bills by doing the occasional lighting gig, but ‘I don’t make more than I need.’ He’s working on a new screenplay, the complete stylistic opposite of Henry and Verlin, and expects to have to go through the same hard slogging to get this one made. He doesn’t seem to mind, though. ‘I figure, even if I’m not any good at it, I can at least inspire people who are.’