– Director/writer/coproducer: Gary Burns

– Coproducer: John Hazlett

– Diary by: Mary Ellen Armstrong

Filmmaking in the ‘burbs. Without a camcorder, even.

For Calgary-based Gary Burns, industrial painter by day and filmmaker at heart, the suburbs aren’t necessarily beautiful, but they are interesting. As the young, bored ‘losers’ in his first feature film comb the streets and the malls for dope and women, he casts his lot in with them.

‘It’s based on my own experiences. And most of my friends’. It’s like no one even got going until they were 30.’ Thirty-five, even – that’s when he finished The Suburbanators. It’s from this ripe old age that Burns sees fit to take a wry look at ‘life between the malls.’

July 1992: Fresh out of Concordia film school, Burns gets a $5,000 Telefilm Canada/ Directors Guild of Canada Kick Start grant to make Beer Land, a short film which extends ideas from Happy Valley, a black-and-white project from his film school days. Both feature Arabic-speaking guys and suburban angst, two themes he apparently couldn’t get out of his system.

November 1993: Burns completes the first draft of a script originally titled Marlborough Mall in time for the Canada Council’s Nov. 15 deadline. In the meantime, he’s working full-time for a painting company and paying the bills.

March 1994: An acceptance letter along with a $20,316 grant comes in the mail from the Canada Council. A little surprised that he’s managed to win at the funding ‘crap shoot’ with a proposal that he admits in retrospect was ‘shaky,’ Burns attributes the grant to the weight of Beer Land. Things start to move quickly.

July 1994: After two more drafts and a request to the Alberta Foundation for the Arts for $10,000, the afa jury grants half that amount.

John Hazlett, another Concordia film grad, joins the project.

Pretty sure the National Film Board isn’t going to be giving him services under its Program to Assist Filmmakers in the Private Sector, the budget shrinks and shrinks again – down $11,000 from the original.

Meanwhile, there’s heated debate over whether to shoot Super 16, 16mm or 16mm framed for a blowup. They settle on 16mm.

Because sitting in a basement with a Steenbeck and a pile of film clippings for months on end is no one’s idea of fun, they decide to use the latest technology to speed up the post. A deal is made with Mark Lemmon, then an editor on North of 60, to cut on a Lightworks system.

Sept. 1, 1994: Burns quits his day job and Hazlett commits to the film full-time as production manager.

Mid-September 1994: Preproduction time is regrettably short and two weeks are spent casting the four lead roles. The search for talented young actors – willing to rearrange their schedules and work for free – turns up a cast of local drama school students and grads and theater people from Calgary. Getting three people to play the Arab characters proves more difficult. An ad is placed in the paper.

Late September 1994: Just weeks before the shoot the final draft is finished with yet another title – the suburban angst film. Days before the shoot, Burns casts the Arabic guys with three young Lebanese men – the only ‘non-real’ actors. Says Burns: ‘That was a risk. If there’s one thing I learned in film school, it was always use actors, like, real actors.’

Oct. 6, 1994: On the first morning of shooting, the crew gathers at Burns’ house. As he and dop Patrick McLaughlin go over storyboards in the kitchen, one of the crew accidentally sends a half-ton truck careening down the driveway and onto the quiet, residential street. Barely missing the sound guy’s minivan and an innocently bystanding Jeep, the truck, its gas pedal still to the floor, pushes a neighbor’s Olds up onto the sidewalk.

Mid-October 1994: With gear from the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers and other goodies such as cell phones and photocopies through donations, the shoot progresses smoothly. Until it snows. The snow that never stays in early-winter Calgary stays and throws a wrench into the production schedule of a film that takes place all in one sunny Saturday afternoon. However, the shoot continues, sans permits and insurance, with nothing more than a little trouble from the local parking authority.

December 1994: Shooting was scheduled to end in October. Some of the last scenes are shot with snow on the ground and three crew members. The pm is behind the camera and the director is holding the boom. The $25,000 is basically gone. Cast member Jacob Banigan picks a gem, The Suburbanators, from his ongoing list of possible titles, and the film is renamed yet again.

Jan. 17, 1995: Editing begins in Edmonton at Studio Post and Transfer. Burns, Hazlett and Lemmon stay in a cheap motel and work during the night shift and 24 hours on weekends. They don’t give anyone at Studio Post a chance to ask if they have any money (because they don’t), so they pay their first bill, for processing, promptly and lie low.

Four weeks later, Frank Laratta at the Synch Spot in Calgary uses Protools to put together a scratch mix.

March 1995: At the Local Heroes festival in Edmonton, Burns and Hazlett get their preview cassette into the hands of David E. Williams, an editor at Film Threat magazine. He gets back to l.a. and likes what he sees. Film critic Geoff Pevere also has good things to say.

April 10, 1995: Bills mounting (and mounting, and mounting), an application is made to Telefilm Canada for finishing funds. Despite disinterest from nearly all Canadian distributors, they bravely make plans to distribute the film in Canada themselves.

May 15, 1995: $10,000 is requested from the afa for finishing and promotional funds. Creditors are grumpy.

May 26, 1995: Telefilm turns them down but might reconsider if there is festival interest.

June 1995: Laratta fine cuts the sound and the film is accepted into the Perspective Canada section of the Toronto International Film Festival. They try to keep their mouths shut until the press conference on July 25. Burns and Hazlett plead poverty at Paul Sharpe Sound in Vancouver and get a great deal and a great final mix.

Early July 1995: The afa declines. Sulking all around. Telefilm is informed of the film’s acceptance by the festival and reapplication is made. The film is also accepted to participate in the New Voices: Canada section of the Independent Feature Film Market in New York.

July 21, 1995: True to its word, Telefilm comes through with $20,000 in finishing funds. Small sighs of relief all around.

August 1995: The film is selected for the Vancouver International Film Festival. In preparation for the Toronto festival, Hazlett is getting the ‘promotional shit’ together. Burns is back in the painting business to earn some spending money and shooting a music video on his front lawn for Field Day, a local band featured in the film’s sound track. Although his characters are ‘bored white youth,’ for Burns, life’s busy in suburbia.

September 1995: The Suburbanators screens at the Toronto International Film Festival.