Iconoclastic director Bruce McDonald is coming to the Toronto, Vancouver and Halifax film festivals with a new feature, The Love Crimes of Gillian Guess, and with something to prove.

The drama, produced by Vancouver’s Force Four Entertainment, is loosely based on the sensational 1995 case of a female jurist in B.C. who had an affair with accused killer Peter Gill while serving on his trial. With a TV window on CHUM-City, the $3-million project may sound like typical MOW fare, but, as conceived by screenwriter A. Fraser (Kissed) and McDonald, the film’s true events are merely a springboard for the kind of wild-and-wooly rock ‘n’ roll satire behind McDonald’s most acclaimed features.

In this fanciful telling, Guess, played by Joely Collins (Cold Squad) – daughter of pop star Phil – seeks further notoriety after her well-publicized affair, appearing on a late-night TV show hosted by sneering, shiny-suited Bobby Tomahawk, played by Hugh Dillon (Hard Core Logo), frontman of defunct rock group the Headstones. Tomahawk leads the audience through Guess’ story, promising to act as judge, jury, and, possibly, executioner.

McDonald recalls that Fraser, who had been commissioned by Force Four to write the script, suggested him as a potential helmer. The director immediately took to Fraser’s concept.

‘What drew me to the project was the crazy chick lead character, which was refreshing. It’s about a woman who wants to be bad,’ he says, on lunch break from a UPN gig on the drama series Kevin Hill, shooting in Toronto. McDonald was equally intrigued by ‘the stylistic possibilities allowed by the frame that Fraser created.’

The director says his approach is far more impressionistic than one would see in a typical MOW, relying less on dialogue and more on sound – featuring a score by hot Toronto pop band Broken Social Scene – and picture, overseen by Hard Core Logo DOP Danny Nowak.

McDonald has been one of the country’s busiest episodic TV helmers in recent years, also amassing credits on Queer as Folk, Degrassi: The Next Generation, This Is Wonderland and The Collector, but he has never hid the fact that the big screen is where his heart is. So he is no doubt cheered by the news that Love Crimes has picked up Canadian theatrical distribution from Montreal-based indie Cinema Libre one week ahead of the Toronto International Film Festival.

It is somewhat surprising that the film would go to a smaller player such as Cinema Libre, which counts among its recent releases The Delicate Art of Parking and Saved by the Belles. The fact that bigger distribs Alliance Atlantis Communications and ThinkFilm did not pick it up likely has much to do with the failure of McDonald’s last dramatic feature, Picture Claire, which was produced by Wendy Grean and Robert Lantos, a 50% owner of ThinkFilm, and funded entirely by AAC.

Hallowed company

Up until three years ago, a new McDonald film would arrive with the kind of anticipation from Canuck film aficionados that was otherwise reserved only for the works of Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg and Denys Arcand. After bursting on the scene with Roadkill, the best Canadian feature award winner at TIFF 1989, the director followed up in impressive fashion with Highway 61 (1991), Dance Me Outside (1995) and Hard Core Logo (1996). In an online poll of Playback readers in 2002, Logo was voted the fourth best Canadian film of all time, with 61 at number 13.

And then came Picture Claire.

The 2001 feature, McDonald’s biggest production to date at a budget in the $10-million to $12-million range, was hyped as not only a commercial breakthrough for the filmmaker, but for English cinema as a whole. It boasted a cast of known Hollywood commodities Juliette Lewis, Gina Gershon and Mickey Rourke. The noirish drama, penned by Semi Chellas, the brains behind CTV’s The Eleventh Hour, is about a French-Canadian woman who comes to Toronto looking for her boyfriend, but instead gets inadvertently entangled with various criminals.

It debuted at TIFF 2001 and was widely panned. Jason Anderson, critic for Toronto’s eye Weekly, called the film’s story ‘a dog’s breakfast of convenient coincidences, noir cliches and easy art-world satire,’ but was especially harsh on Lewis, ‘whose blank expression and weird pidgin joual will test the patience of even the more ardent admirers of McDonald’s work.’ The film never got a theatrical release, although it did finally make its TV premiere on U.S. movie channel Starz! Cinema on Aug. 1. The film’s fate likely contributed to Alliance Atlantis’ eventual decision to abandon the Canadian production business.

In a further twist, one year later McDonald set about to make a documentary called Claire’s Hat (formerly Planet Claire) which details the making of and pitfalls that plagued the production. The director’s intention was to salvage something from the whole experience and help ‘the money cats’ make back some of their investment. AAC, which owns the rights, has not released this film either, despite the fact McDonald calls the doc his ‘greatest success.’

Aside from McDonald’s occasional private screenings of the doc, the curious will finally get a chance to see Claire’s Hat if McDonald makes good on the claim that he will personally distribute DVD copies to film schools and the local movie community in a month or so.

Also, as further evidence of the situation’s infamy, radical Toronto stage group Crow’s Theatre will be mounting a play based on the doc in March 2005, titled Director’s Cut: Planet Claire. Actors will portray Lewis, Rourke and Gershon, as well as McDonald, Lantos and editor Jeremy Munce. ‘It’s fucking hilarious,’ McDonald says. ‘Shine your shoes up Mr. Lantos and Mr. MacMillan – we’re going to the theater!’

Although McDonald says AAC [of which Michael MacMillan is chairman and CEO] has been cooperative in allowing him to screen Claire’s Hat, he remains miffed about the non-release of his two films.

‘The Alliance folks are so corporate,’ McDonald laments. ‘You think, ‘Don’t people want to have any fun? Are they so uptight?’ I think they’re just sick of the whole experience.’

It will be a race to have Love Crimes ready for its world premiere at TIFF on Sept. 17. Two weeks prior to that date, the production had just recorded its score and had yet to do the sound mix. The film is slated for a March 2005 Canadian release.