Director: Richard Lewis – Producers: Raymond Massey, Steven DeNure – Executive producers: Robert Lantos, David Hauka – Associate producer: Eric Norlen – Scriptwriters: Paul Quarrington, Richard Lewis – Diary by: Joanne Morgan

1989: Steven DeNure of Alliance Communications in Toronto sits down to read Whale Music. It’s the story of Desmond Howl, the genius behind the once world-famous pop group The Howl Brothers, who’s become a bearded recluse living in isolation in his ivy-choked mansion by the sea. He’s been subsisting on a diet of pharmaceuticals and stale jelly donuts for nine years while he composes his magnum opus, The Whale Music, a polyphonic symphony intended solely for the listening pleasure ofÉuhÉwhales.

DeNure falls in love with the book and calls up its author, Paul Quarrington. They ‘talk.’

1990: Quarrington’s novel wins a Governor General’s Award. DeNure options the book.

Robert Lantos, chairman of Alliance, reads the book and agrees there’s definitely a Canadian feature film there. DeNure passes the book on to Vancouver-based producer Raymond Massey.

Quarrington takes a couple of passes at writing the script. Alliance’s philosophy is to attach a director to the project early in development. The search for a director begins. Quarrington suggests his friend and writing partner, l.a.-based, Toronto-born filmmaker Richard Lewis.

March 1992: Quarrington and Lewis show DeNure their film treatment of an earlier Quarrington novel, King Leary. DeNure likes the treatment, but he’s not so sure about using Lewis, who’s never directed a feature before, for Whale Music. However, after screening Electrojuice, an industrial film directed by Lewis, he’s sold.

Says DeNure: ‘It was the most brilliant industrial/educational film I had ever seen.’ Alliance decides to take a chance. Lewis gets the job.

April 1992 to October 1992: Quarrington and Lewis start writing the script in the summer and work through the winter, rolling off at least five drafts. Quarrington is accepted at the Canadian Film Centre. They write every scene on three-by-five-inch index cards. The film becomes so dense the cards paper an entire wall.

As with most adaptations, the challenge is how to make the film version work on a modest budget – $2.5 million – and still preserve some of the exquisite writing from the novel.

Spring 1993: With Alliance backing and distributing the project, financing is not a major problem. However, finding a way to make the project an interprovincial (b.c. and Ontario) coproduction with access to funding from both provincial agencies, is. Each province has different rules and policies that are not conducive to joint productions.

June 1993: Final draft of the script is completed. At the Banff Television Festival, Paul Gratton, then head of the Ontario Film Development Corporation, and Wayne Sterloff, president of British Columbia Film, meet.

In a new spirit of co-operation, the agencies bend their rules and find a way to make Whale Music work as the first interprovincial coproduction between Ontario and b.c. But they don’t have much time, the picture must be shot before the cold of winter sets in.

Telefilm Canada, B.C. Film, the ofdc and the Foundation to Underwrite New Drama for Pay Television all agree to contribute funding.

July 1993: They cast for a lead, a very large man who can play the part of a deranged musician who has let himself fall into decay and lives like a hermit. Massey asks: ‘What’s the field? Who can you call? Meatloaf?’

They go through the list but one name keeps coming up, Maury Chaykin. Chaykin accepts.

After auditioning across Canada for the female lead, Claire, actress Cyndy Preston is a clear choice.

They still can’t find a mansion to film in. People who own $6 million houses don’t want film crews in their homes for two months, smearing the walls with jelly donuts and littering the floors with nine years’ worth of garbage.

They find Hycroft Manor, an old mansion in Vancouver owned by the University Women’s Club. They’re in luck, the club needs a new roof but can’t afford it. It takes a lot of persuasion, but the heritage house board relents.

For the exterior pool scenes, they find a house near Whytecliff Park overlooking Howe Sound.

August 1993: Lewis drives up from l.a. to begin prepping.

Preproduction decisions are overwhelming, there are so many complicated elements to combine – matte photography, whale stock shots, and integrated music. The music is integral to the film because it fits into the narrative plot line and represents the lead character’s raison d’etre for the past nine years. It must be brilliant.

‘We wanted a composer who could combine elements of rock and roll, new age and symphonic music to give us something almost cosmic,’ says Lewis.

Synchronicity is on their side. Enter the Rheostatics, a hot new Canadian band, which coincidentally has already put out an album entitled Whale Music, inspired by Quarrington’s novel. The next challenge is to find a composer who can play counterpoint and to use some of the themes created by the Rheostatics for the dramatic underscore. They enlist George Blondheim .

Meanwhile, Lewis works with dop Vic Sarin to determine how the underwater sequences with the whales will be achieved.

Production designer Rex Raglan has his hands full trying to marry the looks from two different sets. Around the pool, the art department constructs a deck, balustrade and an elegant descending staircase to match up with the mansion 15 miles away.

The art department turns the pool into a bog. The floor of the pool is littered with the leftover debris of a rock ‘n’ roll wild life – plastic guitars, motorcycle parts, eight-track tapes, gold records, lingerie, high-heeled shoes. Moss floats on the surface.

September 1993: Lewis spends a luxurious 10 days on rehearsals.

Lewis wants to ‘take this small two-hander and make it epic, using the visual styles, locations, music and art direction.’

October 1993: Principal photography begins. The long-hoped for Indian summer ends the day before they start shooting.

November 1993: The damp cold of a West Coast winter settles in just as they begin filming the underwater scenes. It proves a stretch for the actors.

Boats driving by to catch a look wreak havoc with the sound.

The underwater scenes are filmed over four nights in the deep end of an Olympic-sized pool at ubc. They optically combine a plate shot of Chaykin swimming with stock shots of humpback whales.

The pool manager starts to panic when he sees a 110-foot crane being installed in the pool and then, a wrecked 1960 Porche lowered into the water and surrounded by five-foot cement hulled boulders.

End of November 1993: Production wraps.

November to April 1993: The guru of post-production on the film, Richard Martin (who is also a director in his own right), takes over as picture editor and sound designer. Martin is faced with the daunting task of paring down the 123-page script to a workable length. The first cut comes in at two-and-a-half hours. Lewis and Martin must cut out entire scenes and characters to bring the film down to one hour, 46 minutes.

April 1994: Martin begins the sound design. He creates a dazzling sonic world inside Howl’s head.

June 1994: Paul Sharpe of Vancouver’s Sharpe Sound Studios starts mixing while George Furniotis of Toronto’s Film Effects works frantically on the extensive optical effects and titles, all this co-ordinated by Martin who’s going crazy supervising the sound as well as opticals.

Massey has moved on to another project. Executive producer David Hauka pitches in to pick up the slack.

Martin flies back and forth between l.a., Vancouver and Calgary, where he’s directing episodes of Alliance’s North of 60 tv series while trying to shepherd his baby through the final stages of post and make sure it’s finished in time for acceptance into the Toronto International Film Festival.

July 1994: Whale Music is invited to premier at the tiff.

September 1994: Whale Music opens Perspective Canada at the Toronto festival.