Across the street, people are lining up for a free meal during the evening sitting at St. Francis’ Table. It’s not yet 5:30 but it’s already dark in Parkdale, a west Toronto neighborhood that’s not inviting after the sun goes down, let alone when it’s as cold as it is today.

In a pool hall, between blocking shots, director Dan Petrie talks about Frank Alpine, a character from Bernard Malamud’s 1957 novel The Assistant, which Petrie began adapting in the early 1960s. Petrie relates the story so eloquently, it’s easy to tell that Frank has been with him a long time.

‘Sometimes I don’t know quite why, but he moves me. I see a lot of my own family in this family, and I see a lot of myself in Frank Alpine.’

In The Assistant – a HandMade Films presentation of a Paragon Entertainment/Miracle Pictures film – Frank, an orphan who was often mistreated in his youth, is drifting during the Depression, jobless.

A brief stint with crime sees him participate in a robbery during which a Jewish grocer is knocked cold with the butt of a gun by Frank’s anti-Semitic and ne’er-do-well partner.

Shortly after, Frank’s guilt over his part in the robbery drives him to begin working for the grocer for free under the guise of perhaps learning enough to find a job elsewhere. He soon falls in love with the man’s daughter, and the girl’s family does not take kindly to her feelings for a stranger who’s a gentile.

There have been at least 12 drafts of Petrie’s adaptation, and before his death, Malamud, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, had read an early version.

‘It was very, very long,’ says Petrie. ‘It was 162 pages, at least 40 or 50 pages too long. And Malamud’s comment at that time was `Petrie has been too faithful to the book,’ which bothered me because I thought he’d want me to be faithful to the book. So I was angry foroh, about 10 years.’

But Alpine and Petrie were not to part that easily. After later readings and rewrites – during years when he was also directing pictures like A Raisin in the Sun with Sydney Poitier, Resurrection and Fort Apache, The Bronx – Petrie was looking for a home for The Assistant.

‘It’s not a shoot-’em-up, despite the fact that there’s a robbery,’ he says. ‘The robber hits him with the gun, he doesn’t shoot him.

‘I feel the script sings, and I feel audiences will mightily respond. But at the same time, when you take a picture like this to a big studio they don’t want to know because they see it as something that isn’t commercial.’

Now was the right time for the picture to happen. Paragon’s Jon Slan had been aware of the project for many years, and it was one of the first projects the company moved on when it started getting into feature production. For Petrie, he finally felt he had the freedom to concentrate on the project.

‘Now my kids are all grown and I think they can take care of themselves, so I can begin trying to do projects that mean a great deal to me personally.’

Although Petrie had clear visions of who he’d like to see play most of the characters – Joan Plowright (The Diary of Anne Frank) was on his wish list from the beginning as the grocer’s wife – he was unsure about Frank.

‘I had a number of ideas about star players – from Matt Dillon to Christian Slater – but everything in me said that was the wrong way to go. My wife and I were at a screening of Shawshank Redemption and at a certain point we both nudged each other. My wife leaned over and whispered, `Frank.’ ‘

So Gil Bellows, who’s also starred in the indie thriller Love and a .45, became Frank. The cast is rounded out with Armin Mueller-Stahl (from the Toronto International Film Festival award winner Shine) as the grocer, newcomer Kate Greenhouse as the daughter and Hamilton, Ont. native Jaimz Woolvett (Unforgiven, Dead Presidents) as Frank’s partner in crime.

Paul Brown, Slan and Petrie are the producers. cfp has the Canadian rights and HandMade has international rights. The budget – which totals about $3 million in cash – came from Telefilm Canada, the investors, deferrals and ‘extreme sacrifices from Petrie and Paragon,’ says Brown.

Petrie says producing a period piece for the available budget required remarkably few sacrifices.

‘There were a number of sequences – for example a Nazi parade – that I expected, in the interests of the budget, they would ask me to cut. But no. Fortunately everybody, cast and crew, are taking low pay because they too agree that it’s a lovely story. And an important one.’