After doing the festival circuit with his much-anticipated The Hanging Garden that opens the Perspective Canada series at the Toronto International Film Festival and the 17th Atlantic Film Festival, as well as having its European premiere at the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain, Halifax-based writer/director/producer Thom Fitzgerald of Emotion Pictures is set to begin shooting the docudrama Beefcake in October.

In between festival schmoozing, Fitzgerald has been doing research and interviews for the $500,000 picture, which Emotion is producing with help from Britain’s Channel 4 and France’s arte. The film is already presold in Britain, France, Germany and Canada, as Cineplex Odeon will carry it here.

Beefcake tells the story of the muscle magazines of the ’50s and ’60s, which Fitzgerald points out were in fact published and photographed by gay men, for gay men. ‘They somehow survived censorship,’ says Fitzgerald, who thinks that the magazines’ homo-eroticism was simply overlooked by an ignorant public. ‘I guess in the ’50s you could show a biker spanking another biker and not think twice about it,’ he says.

Fitzgerald optioned the book Beefcake as a basis for the film but says, ‘I don’t know why I optioned it, because it’s all pictures.’ Beefcake will also make use of some surviving stock footage of muscle movies made in the same era.

The four-week shoot will see most of the interior photography taking place in Halifax, with a week in California to pick up some exteriors.

This marks the first feature produced with Emotion as the lone production company, and Fitzgerald says he and Emotion partner Shandi Mitchell are hoping to do more lower-budget features.

*Mickey and Owen

The Disney production of Angels and Armadillos, based on the John Irving novel A Prayer for Owen Meany, that is currently shooting in the Toronto area, will be coming to Lunenburg, n.s., between Sept. 29 and Oct. 10.

The modestly budgeted feature will be utilizing Lunenburg’s historic setting as a stand-in for the u.s. east coast. First-time director Mark Stephen Johnson, (writer on Grumpy Old Men) will be picking up some cast and crew for the 11 days in Nova Scotia, and John Dunsworth of Filmworks Production Services (principal and extras casting for Two If By Sea, Dolores Claiborne) is handling some local casting.

Angels and Armadillos stars David Strathairn (Dolores Claiborne, The Firm), Oliver Platt (Executive Decision) and Chicago newcomer Ian Smith as the strange character Owen Meany.

Roger Birnbaum of Caravan Pictures is the executive producer on the project, with Laurence Mark and John Baldecchi serving as producers. Emmy award-winning cinematographer for Murder One, Aaron Schneider, will be lensing Johnson’s script.

*Jest in Time For Halloween

The Horror Channel, ‘All Horror, All the Time,’ is coming to Canadian television sets. Has the crtc approved yet another socially valuable American specialty for the unsuspecting Canadian public? Fortunately not; an infomercial (ooohh scary) for the fictitious Horror Channel is serving as the setting for Halifax-based physical/sketch-comedy troupe Jest In Time’s Halloween special.

The troupe was in Toronto last week to shoot the half-hour special under the leadership of veteran comedy producer Cynthia Grech (The Vacant Lot, codco specials). The show is a cbc in-house production that Grech promises ‘will get every bang possible for each production budget buck.’

The special will star troupe members Sherry Lee Hunter, Mary Ellen MacLean, Shelley Wallace and Christian Murray and has an all-star, East Coast-heavy writing team headed up by Ed MacDonald that includes Paul Bellini, Dian Flax and Mary Colin Chisolm.

Former codco member Greg Malone will be joining the cast with a cameo performance, doing his version of the classic horror character Dracula.

Directed by Alan Resnick, Jest In Time For Halloween is slated for a late October broadcast on cbc, just in time for Halloween.