* Director/writer: Bill Phillips * Producers: Helen du Toit, Mehra Meh * Cinematographer: John Holosko * Diary by: Dave Lazar

Toronto writer/director Bill Phillips’ first feature film, Treed Murray, is the story of an advertising executive who gets chased up a tree and is held captive overnight by a gang of thugs. According to producer Helen du Toit, the film is ‘a showdown between this advertising executive with the power of his wits, up in a tree, [using] the clever things he’s learned in the dog-eat-dog world of advertising versus the gang who’ve got street smarts.’ She talks about how the film was made.

1997: Phillips is working on Vincenzo Natali’s feature film Cube when he pitches the idea for Treed Murray to Cube producer Mehra Meh. Like Cube, Phillips’ vision is for a feature film with only one location.

Meh’s intrigued by the concept.

December 1999: Phillips presents Meh – who has been trying to raise financing for Treed Murray, treatment in tow – with a script for his film. With script in hand, Meh contacts Toronto producer Helen du Toit to ask if she would be interested in producing the film. Busy with another project, she declines.

January 2000: Ever persistent, Meh contacts du Toit again, encouraging her to get involved in the film. Du Toit is not enthusiastic. ‘It didn’t really spark my interest,’ she says. Nonetheless, Meh sends her a copy of the script. The quality surprises du Toit. ‘It was actually a real page-turner,’ she says. ‘So I decided to send it out to some broadcasters.’

February 2000: Du Toit returns to Toronto after a month in England on another project to find several messages from broadcasters on her answering machine saying ‘We’ll buy it, we’ll buy it, we’ll buy it.’

‘We actually were in the very enviable position of having more broadcasters than we were able to take on,’ recalls du Toit. Excited, the producers secure a broadcast licence with Citytv and pay windows with The Movie Network, Super Ecran and Corus Premium Television.

March 2000: Du Toit and Meh secure distribution in Canada through Odeon Films, with Alliance Atlantis acting as the project’s international sales agent. Because of application deadlines for the CTF, ‘we had like a week to negotiate a distribution deal. And that was a nightmare, a very hot and heavy negotiation,’ says du Toit.

May 2000: The film is budgeted at just under $2 million and the CTF comes in with a maximum contribution. Shortly after, Telefilm Canada says no to the project, sending du Toit and Meh scrambling. ‘We were essentially dead in the water,’ du Toit says.

June 2000: Meh flies out to the Banff Television Festival to secure additional investment. After the festival, TMN agrees to increase its participation in the project and become an equity investor. Despite the additional funds, there remains a significant shortfall in the production’s budget. Still ‘cautiously confident, based on market interest,’ Phillips, Meh and du Toit agree to defer their fees and desperately look for other savings.

July 2000: Casting takes place in Toronto and New York. The producers want an American actor for one of the lead roles to facilitate international sales. However, the lead eventually goes to Canadian David Hewlett (Traders, Cube), Phillips’ first choice all along. In fact, the entire cast is Canadian.

August 2000: About a week before production, Meh, feeling his work is done in helping to raise financing for the project, decides to move on.

September 2000: Treed Murray goes into production significantly underfinanced. ‘The train had left the station,’ du Toit says. ‘If we had stopped there, we were already $170,000 in debt.’

At the last minute, the cheque from the CTF arrives.

Shooting takes place in a park outside Toronto and in a studio where a replica tree is created. ‘We shot three weeks on location at the tree [in the park] and one week in studio at the matching tree,’ du Toit explains.

Editing begins during production.

October 2000: A rough cut of Treed Murray has a couple of screenings and receives good feedback. Despite some criticism, all the perceived problems with the film are easily corrected in post.

November 2000: The film continues to be honed in post. A live orchestra is recorded and a fine cut prepared. ‘We really took our time in post,’ du Toit says. ‘We really didn’t have that time to put into it at the prep stage. It just got better and better.’

December 2000: Impressed with the fine cut of the film, both Telefilm and The Harold Greenberg Fund come on board with completion financing, putting the production in a position ‘to make a little money.’

February 2001: Sound mix is completed, but a release print is still unavailable due to other productions having credits applied for film festivals in Berlin and Cannes.

Spring/summer 2001: A final release print is completed and delivery to the distributor triggers the rest of the money, allowing the producers and writer/director to collect on their deferred fees.

September 2001: Treed Murray has its world premiere as part of TIFF’s Perspective Canada program.