With Atom Egoyan’s support, distribution deals with Odeon Films and TFI International, a stellar cast featuring Sarah Polley, a non-union crew, some Hollywood-caliber gear, a $2-million budget and a little luck, writer/director Peter Wellington’s latest feature has the promise of something big.

Produced by The Film Farm’s Simone Urdl and Jennifer Weiss, and exec produced by Egoyan, Rhombus Media’s Danny Iron and Accent Entertainment’s Susan Cavan, Luck is a witty drama set against the backdrop of the 1972 Summit Series, one of the most legendary moments in Canadian sports history.

At the centre of the story is Shane Bradley, played by up-and-comer Luke Kirby (Lost and Delirious, see Talent Report, p. 30), a smart, handsome 28-year-old, who, obsessed with his own luck and destiny, wonders if he’s lucky enough to win the girl of his dreams, played by Polley. But when their relationship starts to falter, Shane begins to obsess about the possibility that he might be unlucky, catapulting the film and its protagonist into the underbelly of the gambling world.

Two and a half years in the making, the screenplay was inspired by a friend of Wellington’s who is a compulsive gambler. ‘Through him, I learned all the nuances of the gambling scene, the vernacular…the hard-boiled dialogue,’ says the 36-year-old director, on lunch break from a heavy shooting schedule that ran in Toronto and Barrie, ON May 21 to June 19. ‘I knew I wanted to make a film about gambling and luck.’

We’re sitting in the west lot at the Sullivan Studios in east end Toronto, where the Luck crew is shooting the apartment scene in the film’s only built set – think early 1970s, an apartment fit for a bunch of first-year college boys but inhabited by four late twentysomething roommates, adorned with shag rugs, an old telex machine, a Zenith TV playing the legendary Canada-USSR hockey series, an eight-track stereo, a turntable and vinyl collection, a kitchen fit for a family of rats, a bathroom reminiscent of a time better left forgotten, a single bed draped with a Guatemalan blanket, and a yellowy brown tinge to the dirty air, all reeking of authenticity.

‘It was really important to get the apartment right,’ reveals a crew member. ‘It’s fashioned after an apartment Peter actually lived in.’

Much of the film’s 1970s authenticity, explains DOP Luc Montpellier (Foreign Objects), is in the untraditional lighting – creating the feeling of being unlit, which tends to be harder than something more expressionistic.

‘We jump around between a few styles, but in the apartment we made it so there were really hot windows but everything else is dimly lit.’

Wellington (Joe’s So Mean to Josephine) and Montpellier, who together spent more than two months shot listing the film, describe its three distinct styles as: extreme kitchen-sink realism for the apartment scenes; traditional coverage for the romantic scenes; and fetishistic for the underground gambling scenes.

‘We’re veering away from frames that look too composed – we compose them, then screw them up a bit so it looks accidental,’ says Wellington.

The two, who had never previously worked together nor had ever spent as much time in prep, share almost identical visions of the film. Wellington, however, was more motivated by the significance of the 1972 hockey series and Montpellier was keener on recreating the period.

‘We had to ask ourselves, ‘If we were a crew shooting in the ’70s, what would have been available to us?” says Montpellier. ‘Digital doesn’t make sense, although it’s cheaper, and the film stock today is so much superior to what they were using then.’

Thanks to the generosity of Panavision, the DOP was given access to equipment generally reserved for the big Hollywood shoots to achieve his goals.

Using 35mm Panavision cameras along with the Panaflasher, which reportedly hasn’t emerged in 20 years, the DOP used the in-camera technique of flashing to desaturate the high-caliber look of the film. After the film goes through the gate, yellow-filtered light is exposed to the negative, giving the blacks a yellowish, warm feeling, explains the DOP.

In addition to the lighting, equipment and shooting techniques, locations, props, wardrobe and makeup have a big hand in recreating the period.

‘We had to shoot in areas [of Toronto] that haven’t developed much in the past 30 years,’ which turned out to be less difficult than expected in such locations as Roncesvalles, Sherbourne, Gerrard and Ontario Streets, says producer Urdl.

Wardrobe was also an easier and less expensive hurdle as so many of today’s fashions are retro-’70s and even old stubby beer bottles have made a comeback. What did prove to be more expensive was renting cars and wigs for extras.

But for the most part, says Wellington, ‘we were able to rely on the generosity of the background performers to look the part.’

Generosity aside, the film, which on some days had close to 30 setups, has come together almost seamlessly because of a cooperative collaboration among producers, writer/director, DOP and crew, the support of some of the industry’s more influential players, and an uncharacteristic amount of prep time.

The prep time was a function of Polley’s lack of availability. The money for the film actually came through last summer, but Polley couldn’t shoot until this spring, so Wellington was left with eight months to spare.

When Montpellier read the script, he was so impressed he decided to not take any work for the following months so he could take advantage of the time with Wellington. ‘If you don’t have money, you have to have time,’ he says.

Because of the budget, explains Urdl, going the union route was too expensive, despite IATSE’s last-minute plea and subsequent protest against the shoot.

So the producers needed to find people who were overqualified for the money they were being offered – a labor-intensive process, but one that would bring together a group of people who truly believe in the project (the on-set climate was a testament to this).

On that line, Urdl’s and Weiss’ respective associations with Egoyan and Rhombus (Urdl has been Egoyan’s long-time assistant and was associate producer on Ararat, and Weiss is a producer at Rhombus) would help secure funding and distribution deals.

Funded by Telefilm Canada, The Harold Greenberg Fund and The Movie Network, the film has been presold to Israel.

Additional key cast include Jed Rees (Men with Brooms), Sergio Di Zio (Twitch City) and Noam Jenkins (Century Hotel).