A team of rookie filmmakers who have known each other since high school have started principal photography in Hamilton, ON, on the comedy You Might as Well Live for Serendipity Point Films.

Co-writer and first-time feature director Simon Ennis and co-writer/actor Josh Peace (Lars and the Real Girl) have teamed up with producers Ari Lantos (Real Time) and Jonas Bell Pasht on the project, which will wrap filming in mid-April. Ennis, Bell Pasht and Lantos are former classmates.

Peace stars as a dejected and failed man who embarks on a journey to find a home away from the town that branded him a jerk (among other unsavory names). Along the way, he gets wrapped up in madcap adventures involving a roller-skating transvestite cop, a Jimmy Buffett-obsessed drug dealer, and a neighborhood-watch group bent on castrating him.

All of which might explain why Bell Pasht says the crew recently had a ‘very productive meeting regarding prosthetic penises.’

Lantos admits that his father, Serendipity head Robert Lantos, wasn’t too keen on the project’s gross humor in the beginning, but he and Bell Pasht convinced him of its potential. ‘He didn’t give us an immediate green light — he made sure we worked hard on this,’ says Ennis. Serendipity’s siblings Maximum Film Distribution and Maximum Film International will sell You Might as Well Live nationally and internationally.

Filming started after only eight months in development because the financing — from Telefilm Canada, Movie Central, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation — was contingent on the money being spent by a particular time. ‘I basically quit my job and was totally broke last year when I was writing this…but everything came together so much faster than any of us had anticipated,’ says Ennis.

Despite the quick turnaround, the film landed It’s All Gone Pete Tong writer and director Michael Dowse to exec produce and actor Michael Madsen (Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2) to take the role of a disgraced baseball player. Liane Balaban (New Waterford Girl), Dov Tiefenbach (Billable Hours), Stephen McHattie (The Rocket) and Kristen Hager (I’m Not There) also star.

The team anticipates the film will be ready in time to submit for Toronto International Film Festival consideration this year. Ennis, Peace and Bell Pasht premiered the shorts The Waldo Cumberbund Story and The Canadian Shield at TIFF in 2005 and 2007, respectively.