VANGUARD: PONTYPOOL

Director: Bruce McDonald
Writer: Tony Burgess
Producers: Jeffrey Coghlan, Ambrose Roche
Exec Producers: J. Miles Dale, Jasper Graham, Henry Cole
Production Company: Ponty Up Pictures
Cast: Stephen McHattie, Lisa Houle, Georgina Reilly, Rick Roberts
Distributor: Maple Pictures

Toronto’s favorite outlaw Bruce McDonald struck gold at TIFF 2007 with The Tracey Fragments, starring Canadian ‘It girl’ Ellen Page.

So it should come as no surprise that he’s got another feature premiering at this year’s outing, though Pontypool is startling even to the director.

It’s a genre-busting horror flick in which its victims turn into monsters, adapted by Tony Burgess from his novel Pontypool Changes Everything. This high-concept zombie romp was financed solely by a group of private investors, led by exec producer J. Miles Dale, who says what grabbed him was its message ‘about the power of words to hurt and heal. I think that will really come through to people.’

The $1.5-million flick was also shot using the ‘bleeding-edge’ digital technology of the Red One camera, liberating its producers from having to raise a significantly higher budget for 35mm.

Dale had previously executive produced Talk to Me and Hollywoodland. He tells Playback that on Pontypool, he aimed to ‘keep that special iconoclastic Bruce magic, but make sure that he’s made a movie that people are going to want to see, and enjoy seeing.’

Dale’s financial acumen, quick resolve and new company Crescent Road Films gave him the freedom to immediately greenlight McDonald’s Pontypool in February.

Pontypool was subsequently shot in 15 days in late April and early May and accepted for TIFF after festival programmers saw a rough-cut screening in mid-July.

‘That’s never happened to me before,’ laughs McDonald, chatting over coffee at a café in Toronto’s tony Yorkville district prior to TIFF. ‘From the time we think of a project to the time of shooting it, there’s usually five years. It’s Canada!’

Dale and his investors take a vanguard approach to financing Canadian film. Working with Henry Cole (a broker who has a top client list) and British-born Jasper Graham (Silent as a Mouse), Dale has assembled what he calls a team ‘of reasonably high-net-worth guys who want to diversify [their investments] and are intrigued with the notion of being in the movie business.’

Dale adds, ‘Those of us who are in it know that it’s not entirely glamorous, but those who aren’t are perhaps under the illusion that it is.

‘I think Pontypool is our ideal first project, because we stand to at least do alright, and it’s a great way to dip our toe in the water before doing something bigger next time.’

McDonald is quick to point out: ‘Miles had enough experience to know: Okay, one location. Scale. People doing favors. Fast turnaround. Short post schedule. Yep – these guys can do it.’

McDonald and Dale knew that Pontypool could be an effective low-budget feature. The film is set in a small-town radio station, where Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie), an urban shock jock on the skids, is broadcasting the morning news when reports come in that rioting – and perhaps killing – is taking place in their home locale, Pontypool, ON.

Tension builds as McHattie’s heavy-drinking deejay, the stern station manager Sydney (Lisa Houle) and bright-young-thing engineer Laurel Ann (Georgina Reilly) receive increasingly disturbing reports of flesh-eating from their off-site reporter Ken (Rick Roberts). As the monsters assemble to attack the station, Mazzy figures out the cause of the plague – speaking the English language.

It’s up to Dale to decide how to market the film to distributors. Along with McDonald and others, they’ve already come up with the enticing tagline ‘Shut Up or Die.’ But having seen publicity campaigns fail for Talk to Me and Hollywoodland, Dale knows he has a tough task ahead.

‘Universal and Focus have great minds,’ he says, referring to his previous films. ‘They make a bet and [sometimes] it doesn’t work out. [Pontypool] isn’t 3,000-screen horror porn. This is a platform, word-of-mouth film.

‘We need partners who understand the film and can convey that to an audience,’ he concedes. And they got one when Maple Pictures came on board as the Canadian distributor.

Dale believes TIFF is the perfect place to secure American distribution after the flick’s world premiere there on Saturday, Sept. 6.

‘It’s a great slot,’ says Dale. ‘Film executives know how to watch movies, but it’s still better, even for them, when they sit there with 500 people who are laughing and gasping. It’s instant research. I think we’ll have an American distributor within three days of the screening.’