* Director/writer: Bruce Sweeney * Producer: Stephen Hegyes * Diary by: Simona Chiose

No one was more surprised than Vancouver director Bruce Sweeney when Toronto International Film Festival director Piers Handling called to ask him to open this year’s festival with his film Last Wedding. The story of three fracturing couples marks the first time in the fest’s 26-year history that a Vancouver director has opened the annual extravaganza.

Last Wedding boasts a cast that includes Molly Parker, Benjamin Ratner, Frida Betrani, Tom Scholte, Nancy Sivak and Vincent Gale. With the exception of Parker, Sweeney has worked with all the actors on his two previous films, Live Bait (1995) and Dirty (1998). Live Bait was the winner of the Toronto-City Award for best Canadian feature film at the ’95 festival.

‘The film is about the nature of the disintegration of relationships,’ says Sweeney. It follows the couples as they grapple with the unraveling of each of their relationships and the problems that lead to their demise: infidelity, professional jealousy and a far too quick marriage.

Thematically, Last Wedding examines the role of what Sweeney calls ‘male weakness’ in destroying unions. ‘There is an emotionally feeble quality that men have more than women. When in crisis, men react very poorly, they do exactly what they shouldn’t time and time again.’

Sweeney and producer Stephen Hegyes (Dirty) talk about the winding road that led to TIFF.

January 1998: Sweeney’s Dirty opens at Sundance. Sweeney and executive producer Hegyes have a late-night drink. Sweeney tells him two of his ideas, one of them for Last Wedding. Hegyes signs on.

1998: Hegyes and Sweeney first go to Citytv for funds the director needs to develop the script and run rehearsals, a working method he developed on Dirty. B.C. Film and Telefilm Canada also pitch in for a total of less than $50,000.

The cast of Dirty comes on board. Molly Parker, who Sweeney met while working on Lynne Stopkewich’s Kissed, also joins the cast.

‘I needed to know the nature of each couple,’ Sweeney explains of the theatre-like workshopping of the script. ‘Each actor has their own back story and in the rehearsal stage is where you find out if the dialogue is not working.’

As a result of this process, a number of scenes are eliminated from the script. ‘I watched dailies for a year,’ Sweeney says.

Spring/summer 1999: Last Wedding is licensed for broadcast presale to City. Blackwatch Releasing picks up Canadian distribution rights. In March, the film receives funding from B.C. Film. But in the fall, Telefilm tells the filmmakers the agency is out of money for the year. They return B.C. Film’s funds and wait a year to reapply to Telefilm.

Winter/spring 2000: Last Wedding is turned down for funding from the CTF because it doesn’t meet the requirements under the fund’s point system. ‘They wanted films based on works by Canadian authors,’ Sweeney says. ‘It’s not set up for an original director/producer working with an original script. It’s weighted toward bigger works that come from fiction.’ Hegyes explains that, alternatively, the fund expected the subject of the film to be Canadian. ‘So we have this film about relationships and marriage and it’s not Canadian enough,’ he says.

Meanwhile, Telefilm puts in equity funding amounting to about 49% of the film’s final budget. A pay-TV sale comes from Movie Central. But the production faces unexpected difficulties when B.C. Film now runs out of cash.

July 2000: Sweeney and Hegyes put their fees in deferral as Hegyes spends several frantic days trying to locate money for the production of the film, scheduled to start that month. At the last minute, The Movie Network calls and saves the day, putting in about 10% to 15% of the final cost of the production.

August 2000: Shooting begins. Because of the rehearsals, the shoot is very smooth and is completed in 30 days.

Fall 2000: Hegyes receives a call from the CTF offering some funding. ‘It was less than a quarter of what we’d asked for originally and we were greatly appreciative, but it was still difficult,’ he says. The money covers around 10% of the production’s costs.

Spring 2001: With Last Wedding in post-production, Blackwatch runs into financial difficulties and the film finds itself without a distributor.

Summer/fall 2001: Last Wedding is invited to open TIFF. ‘I was ecstatic,’ Hegyes recalls. Negotiations begin with ThinkFilm, a new Toronto company headed by former Lions Gate Films president Jeff Sackman. In August, ThinkFilm announces it has acquired worldwide distribution rights.

September 2001: Last Wedding opens TIFF.