From the steps of the Ryan family home, or in reality a cozy Victorian-style Newfoundland bed and breakfast, director Stephen Reynolds breaks for lunch. Cell phone in hand, he sings the praises of his feature film directorial debut without losing an ounce of enthusiasm over the choppy long-distance connection between St. John’s and Toronto.

The Divine Ryans, produced by Chris Zimmer of Halifax-based Imagex, is a $3.9-million film based on the book of the same name by Newfoundland writer Wayne Johnston. Wolfram Tichy of Time Medien Vertriebs GmbH, Germany, is coproducer and Bob Petrie of Petrivision is the associate producer, Red Sky Entertainment will distribute in Canada, while Alliance Independent Films is handling world sales.

The film is a comedic story about ‘sex, religion, love and hockey set in St. John’s’ and how a nine-year-old boy, Draper Doyle Ryan, sets out to solve – with the help of his renegade Uncle Reg – the mystery surrounding his father’s sudden death.

With the hockey playoffs currently underway, the time line couldn’t be more fitting as the story begins on the first day of the 1966 hockey season and wraps with the final game of the Stanley Cup in 1967.

The cast comprises Pete Postlethwaite (In The Name Of The Father) as Uncle Reg; Robert Joy as Donald Ryan, editor of the Ryan family newspaper The Chronicle; Mary Walsh as Aunt Philomena Ryan; Richard Boland as Father Seymor, who runs the local orphanage; Marguerite McNeil as Sister Louise, who helps out after the death of Draper’s father; Genevieve Tessier as Mary Ryan, Draper’s sister; and Wendel Meldrum as Linda Ryan.

Jordan Harvey, taking his first stab at acting, plays young Draper, the most difficult role to cast, says Reynolds.

In order to find just the right Ryan Reynolds envisioned when he read the script, the director saw almost 500 boys between the ages of eight and 12 from Halifax, Vancouver, Newfoundland and Toronto. He eventually narrowed it down to three and finally decided on Harvey.

‘He’s a dream,’ says Reynolds, brimming with enthusiasm. ‘Not only does he look and sound great, he is hitting all his marks. He understood the techniques of filmmaking within the first couple of days, and he’s from Newfoundland, which makes him all the more authentic. He brings the boy on the page to life.’

Alwyn Kumst is the cinematographer on the project, which wrapped a seven-week shoot earlier this month. Sixty-five percent of the film is being lensed on location in St. John’s, while the remaining scenes, such as the bedroom scenes, the top floor of the family home and Uncle Reg’s apartment, were shot at Halifax’s Cinesite Studios.

As for the look of the film, Reynolds says he was going for something cool, overcast and ‘pastelly’ yet, at the same time, a rich feel. The look of the Ryans themselves is old traditional; the men are pre-Austin Powers while the ladies are post-Jackie O.

According to Reynolds, the buzz on set is that everyone is having a great time shooting, especially when it came to the stranger scenes such as Draper’s nightmare.

In his final nightmare, shot in high speed, Draper experiences the great ‘apuckalypse,’ which is, as it sounds, a showering of hockey pucks. Instead of getting wrapped up with a whack of post work, Reynolds decided to do the effects the old-fashioned way.

‘Imagine yourself looking up at the starry night sky and the stars seem to be multiplying but they aren’t stars… they’re pucks,’ says Reynolds. ‘Uncle Reg is there in goalie gear to encourage the boy and to tell him that to stop the apuckalypse he has to come with him.’

To pull off the puck shower, rigs were set up with around 3,000 soft foam and 2,000 authentic, hard rubber pucks. While the soft pucks were showered over the people, the harder ones were dropped on the ground and the car.

Aside from the fact that it was raining pucks, the weather posed a bit of a problem while attempting to shoot the part of the nightmare which caught Draper’s pov out the window of the truck.

‘I nearly split my gut laughing,’ chuckles Reynolds. ‘We had a few guys standing in the back of the truck throwing pucks on the front windshield, but the wind kept blowing them back onto the guys so it was actually the boys in the back of the truck that experienced more of a puck shower.’