While it was summer in the rest of the country, snow blankets and white foam covered an Uxbridge, Ont. street corner in mid-July, creating a winter setting for Saul Rubinek’s feature film directorial debut Tom & Jerry.

The $3.5 million cfp film is being shot until early August in Toronto and Chicago, and according to actor/director Rubinek it is a very ambitious shoot involving undertakings typically ventured on large-budget films.

The movie g’es through 11 time and season changes within the 10-year span between 1982 and 1992. Instead of the usual cut or dissolve to the next time and place, they are making the transition with a simple pan.

In the background is a wintry Chicago coffee shop, while the used car lot in summer is set in the foreground. As Jerry (Sam Rockwell) finishes his lines on the lot, the camera cranks up and over the fence of the car lot, transporting the audience through time and place to the present-day cafe ­ no tricks, no special effects.

‘This is a challenge for the production team, cinematographer and director,’ says coproducer Elinor Reid. ‘It creates a beautiful kind of p’etic flow to the film and gives it emotion.’

According to the director, the story is told very simply. ‘We’ve got no tricks up our sleeves.’

Tom & Jerry was originally a three-person stage play directed by Rubinek in l.a. in 1994. After its success, and a lot of encouragement, he, Reid and writer Rick Cleveland decided to adapt it to the big screen. As Tom & Jerry is a dialogue-oriented piece, Cleveland remains on set every day.

The movie is a dark comedy about Tom, a Chicago hitman played by J’e Mantegna (Up Close and Personal, Bugsy), and his enthusiastic pupil Jerry, played by Sam Rockwell (Box of Moonlight).

Other prominent members of the cast include Ted Danson (Three Men and A Baby), Charles Durning (Spyhard), Peter Riegert (The Mask), William H. Macy (Fargo), Maury Chaykin (Unstrung Her’es) and Sarah Polley (The Sweet Hereafter).

Mantegna is an executive producer on the project along with Great North Artists Management’s Ralph Zimmerman, who packaged the project, and cfp’s Jeff Sackman, John Dunning and Andre Link. Besides Reid and Rubinek ­ who boast that their on-set husband-wife relationship is going very well ­ Vivienne Leebosh and cfp’s Michael Paseornek are producing.

Once Mantegna agreed to play the part of Tom he, Leebosh and Cleveland put their heads together to come up with the right cast, the only challenge being, who would play the role of Jerry.

Looking for someone who could play a boy and through the course of the film become a man, the team went through the list of big-name actors in their 20s such as Brad Pitt and Christian Slater.

After witnessing 28-year-old Rockwell’s performance in Box of Moonlight at the Sundance Festival and poring over his rave reviews, Cleveland suggested Rockwell to play the part of the rookie hitman.

Rubinek says the young actor is having no problem holding his own with the seasoned actors who make up the rest of the cast.

‘cfp allowed me to cast the best actor instead of the biggest name,’ explains Rubinek. ‘To sell a movie in this genre it’s got to be a good one, you get a big star in this and the movie sucks they aren’t going to sell it.’

Twenty-five-year stage and screen veteran Rubinek, who has worked on films with budgets ranging from $100,000 to $75 million, says he has never seen a director get the kind of support he is getting on this project.

‘They loved the script so much and they trusted my vision of it. They knew how I wanted to work, they found a way to make it work for them and their priorities. I have had nothing but support, and I have learned to make adjustments.’

Although every day presents some minor crisis, Rubinek’s goal is to get through with no major weather disasters and a healthy, well-rested cast and crew. ‘In the middle of all that, it’s a tremendous amount of fun because it’s something that I have spent a few years thinking about and developing and hoping that it would come to fruition, so it’s a joy for me to realize.’

‘After I wrote So Many Miracles, a book about my parents, I imagined that it could be made into a feature and I thought it would be impossible for me to do a big picture unless I had a couple of films under my belt,’ says Rubinek.

As far as the future is concerned, the actor/director says he stopped thinking about life in those terms a long time ago.

‘There are other things that I am writing that I would like to direct,’ says Rubinek. ‘I love acting and I will never give it up. I’ve got two children and they are going to dictate.’