As far as TIFF newcomer Michael McGowan is concerned, his feature Saint Ralph is in a perfect position.

Coproduced by Toronto’s Amaze Film + Television and Alliance Atlantis, the comedy-drama penned and directed by McGowan was selected as this year’s opening pic for Canada First!, a new festival program for movies from first-time Canadian feature filmmakers, as well as those making their first appearance at TIFF.

‘I feel like we completely lucked out and couldn’t have asked for a better occasion to showcase the film than opening Canada First!,’ says the 38-year-old Toronto filmmaker. ‘Our main hope was getting in at the festival, and not only did we achieve that, but we’re having the honor of launching this program, which is fantastic.’

Saint Ralph tells the heartwarming tale of a 14-year-old boy with high aspirations. Ralph, played by Adam Butcher (The Pentagon Papers), dreams of winning the 1954 Boston Marathon in the hopes of changing the fate of his gravely ill mother. Set in Hamilton, ON, the film also stars Campbell Scott, Gordon Pinsent and Jennifer Tilly.

Unlike traditional filmmakers, McGowan did not attend film school and admits to taking a circuitous route to moviemaking. ‘I graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1987, where I took English, and from there continued my career as a freelance print journalist, writing for publications such as Toronto Life and Saturday Night.’

After seeing director Kevin Smith’s feature Clerks at TIFF in 1994, McGowan says he got to thinking it was possible to make successful low-budget movies. ‘I started writing a screenplay just as an exercise to see if I could actually do it,’ he recalls.

What was a complete ‘act of folly and innocence,’ according to McGowan, turned into reality when a high school friend suggested he turn the screenplay, My Dog Vincent, into a feature film.

Produced on an ultra-low budget in 1997, his first movie, about three twentysomething men looking for love, screened at film festivals and enjoyed some commercial play around the world.

After Vincent, McGowan kept busy creating and showrunning the stop-motion kids program Henry’s World for Alliance Atlantis, broadcast on Family Channel. He also wrote his first book, Newton and the Giant, a young-adult novel published by HarperCollins, which recently won him the Silver Birch Award for fiction, voted on by Ontario children.

An avid runner

It was while working on Henry’s World that McGowan started toying with an idea for his next film project, explaining he always wanted to do a movie about running, since he had once been an avid runner himself.

‘I had this one-page idea about this boy running the Boston Marathon and talked about it with Amaze Film + Televison producers Michael Souther and Teza Lawrence, whom I met during the release of My Dog Vincent,’ says McGowan.

Souther and Lawrence saw potential in the little story with a big heart. ‘When he pitched the original idea, both Teza and I knew there was something there,’ says Souther. ‘The story has a great blend of irreverent humor and heart, which is rare in films.’

Souther believes Saint Ralph is poised to attract a lot of attention, not only through TIFF, but also because they’re working with two seasoned U.S. producer reps, Cassian Elwes of the William Morris Agency and Andrew Hurwitz of the Film Sales Company. ‘They usually work independently and don’t take on many projects in the year, but both were charmed by Saint Ralph and are actually teaming up to work on getting a distributor in the States,’ he says.

McGowan proceeded to write the original screenplay for Saint Ralph while being involved in Henry’s World. ‘Because Alliance Atlantis coproduced Saint Ralph, they allowed me to do both, which was fantastic,’ he notes.

With a budget of $6 million, McGowan says Saint Ralph had to have a unique, original story as a backbone to be able to compete with bigger-budget films. ‘The tale is intended to be inspirational of a kid trying to do something exceptional, so if you buy into it and get swept along with it then it works,’ he explains.

As far as his vision for Saint Ralph goes, McGowan is cautiously optimistic and says he hopes to come out of TIFF with a U.S. sale. ‘That is the priority, but eventually we’d like for the film to make sales around the world,’ he says. ‘You cannot predict a movie’s success or even control it, but we trust this film to get the right buyer and find an audience.’

McGowan says he’s been reading a great deal of material for rewrites and for directing possibilities while working on a screen adaptation of Newton and the Giant for Family.

Alliance Atlantis’ Odeon Films and Vivafilm will distribute Saint Ralph in English and French Canada for release in the spring of 2005, while AAC International will handle world sales.