Vancouver-based producer Elizabeth Levine knew her company Random Bench had a commercially viable film on its hands when a midnight snack at a Toronto Whole Foods turned into an impromptu therapy session with the cashier.

In town to workshop Bench’s in-development feature, How to Break Up with Your Mother, at the Telefilm Canada Features Comedy Lab, Levine and Break Up writer Kellie Ann Benz were buying pita chips when the cashier asked them what they were up to, fuelling up at such a late hour.

“So Kellie says, ‘Oh I’m working on a film called How to Break Up With Your Mother‘ and he’s like ‘You’re kidding me – I’ve been estranged from my mother for five years’ and suddenly the guy at Whole Foods is downloading his entire personal story on us. This happens to us every day on this movie. It’s our test market research: the random person at Shoppers Drug Mart! The cab driver that takes us from our hotel! People just get it right away.”

Written by Vancouver screenwriter Kellie Ann Benz and produced by Random Bench, Break Up is a mother-daughter comedy (Levine is claiming coining status on the term “mom-com”) with the tagline “Breaking up is hard to do, but breaking up with your mother is a bitch.”

The comedy was accepted as part of the 2011/2012 Telefilm Canada Features Comedy Lab, which wrapped its first phase in Toronto in November, an opportunity Levine says was not only valuable in helping Benz develop her script, but sharpening the film’s financial strategy.

“We went in thinking that this was a film that could be made anywhere from $1 million to a $30 mil studio movie. And while it has the feel of a studio movie in many ways, we got some really good advice to not do it that way,” she says, noting that the goal, budget-wise, is not to make The 40-Year-Old Virgin, but rather My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

It was pointed out to them that if they shopped the movie to studios, the risk of not seeing the film get made, or being sidelined in the process, would be high and that was not a route Levine and her business partner, Random Bench co-founder Adrian Salpeter (pictured at left at the CFC Comedy Lab), wanted to take. Making the firm decision to keep the film indie and target a mid-level budget was critical in being able to move forward in structuring the film’s financing, she emphasizes.

“I think it’s really about putting the words into my head and mouth so I’m stronger in my finance meetings. I got a couple hours with John Hadity [president and CEO of film consultancy Hadity & Associates, pictured at top with Levine] who Weinstein credits with building The Weinstein Company and Miramax. So I got to sit in a room alone with John, who is like, ‘$30 million? No. $1 million? No. Let’s scenario out these three: $6 million can come from here and….'” she says with amazement.

“Financial relationships are always about being able to trust you,” she continues. “And people believing that you will deliver. So you start a relationship with John and he starts to follow you for the next year and a half, he’s going to know that we deliver. And I think that’s a really amazing opportunity for Canadian filmmakers, to be in front of a guy like John.”

Benz also had the chance to work on the script at the CFC’s Writers Workshop at Whistler with screenwriter Peter Hedges, another opportunity to add polish to the script in advance of more financing meetings and the second phase of the Comedy Lab, slated for March.

Although Levine and Salpeter have historically focused on arthouse film – Levine was in Whistler supporting the Michael MacLennan-written and directed short Pleased to Meet You and U.S.-based Traction Media has picked up their latest feature, Toad Road – the chance to develop a comedy with this kind of potential is exciting, Levine says.

“It’s really fun to be working with a piece of very commercial material. It’s exciting and I can feel the energy of the country behind it a little bit and that’s a wonderful thing to have going on.”

All photos courtesy of the Canadian Film Centre