Frank’s Cock, Justify My Love

Director/producer/scriptwriter: Mike Hoolbloom Diary by: Pamela Cuthbert

March 1992: Mike Hoolbloom is living in Vancouver (he now resides in Toronto) and receives notification of a $10,000 grant from British Columbia’s Cultural Ministry to make a personal film about aids. He has a script, but it’s about to get tossed out.

Editor Haida Paul, a friend of Hoolbloom’s, is looking for someone to take care of her downtown house for a few months Hoolbloom moves in. He starts work on a script that can be shot entirely in the house.

Short ends of 16mm stock are collected for the shoot.

June 1992: The film is evolving into a sequel to Hoolbloom’s first feature, Kanada, and is written for Kanada stars Babs Chula and Gabrielle Rose. The Valentine’s Day story is about Canadian civil war as experienced by a lesbian couple, one of whom becomes hiv positive when she is gang-raped.

July to August 1992: Chula and Rose meet with Hoolbloom every day for a month to finalize the script.

Steve Sanguedolce flies out to Vancouver from Toronto to shoot the film, help cook the meals, and do the lighting. Sound recordist is Bruce Sweeney and Alison Beda handles the boom. It’s a one-week shoot in the house and all scenes are shot in sequence. Everything goes smoothly.

Scenes with Callum Rennie as an astronaut/slogan spray-painter, are shot separately on the streets of Vancouver a few weeks later.

September 1992 to March 1993: Meanwhile, Frank’s Cock is hatched through a National Film Board Program to Assist Filmmakers in the Private Sector-sponsored exercise led by Alex Mackenzie, then board member of Vancouver-based Cineworks Independent Filmmakers’ Society. Seven filmmakers are asked to create a three-minute film, limited to one edit, on the subject of breaking up. Hoolbloom makes a film without edits, but with an internal montage created by reshooting, through a piece of cardboard with a hole, footage off his television screen. He creates a four-screen display within the frame. In one corner is actor Callum Rennie, delivering a monologue about a lover who has died of aids. The film is finished by March, but not printed (through pafps) until September 1993.

March to May 1993: First rough assembly of Valentine’s Day is done at Cineworks.

June 1993: Sanguedolce and Hoolbloom begin to edit the feature film on Sanguedolce’s Steenbeck in his Toronto apartment.

July 1993 to May 1994: It’s a long edit. The script and the shot list are scrapped. New scenes, including Kanada footage and old home movies, are added.

August 1993: The Ontario Arts Council contributes $12,000 to Hoolbloom’s efforts.

September 1993: The astronaut scenes are sent to Carl Brown (a fellow experimental filmmaker) for hand, bathtub processing.

A grant from the Toronto Arts Council arrives for Frank’s Cock and two other shorts in the making, for a total of $10,000.

October 1993: The final shoot of Valentine’s Day takes place at the Metro Toronto Zoo with Rose and Chula who are visiting Toronto for another gig.

November 1993: Stock army footage, ordered months ago, arrives and is inserted into the film.

March 1994: Hoolbloom flies to Vancouver and sleeps on the living room floor of composer/mixer/ sound editor Earle Peach while Peach composes the sound. Sound effects are done at Cineworks on a ProTools system.

April to May 1994: Justify My Love is conceived and shot in less than one month. Hoolbloom scrolls a text over the Madonna rock video of the same title. The overlay is a fictional letter from the glam-queen’s high school heartthrob, reminiscing of their sweet and smutty romance.

June 1994: Back to Valentine’s Day: Hoolbloom launches into a panicked, last-minute final cut of the fine cut.

August 1994: A print is struck at Film House. Andre Bennett of Cinema Esparanca agrees to be the film’s international sales agent and theatrical distributor in Canada. The Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre handles educational distribution. Hoolbloom estimates the cost of Valentine’s Day at somewhere between $20,000 and $30,000.

September 1994: Toronto International Film Festival screens all three Hoolboom creations, Valentine’s Day, Frank’s Cock and Justify My Love.