Guitarman

Director/producer/writer: Will Dixon

– Cowriter: Hart Hanson – Producer: Stephen Onda

– Executive producer: Kevin DeWalt

– Associate producer: Gail Tilson

– Cinematographer: Barry Parrell

getting a production off the ground anywhere in Canada is a long, arduous journey. But in Saskatchewan, where the dramatic production industry is still in its infancy and sizable productions are few and far between, the task can be Herculean. With this in mind, Playback takes an in-depth look at the making of the most ambitious dramatic project undertaken in Saskatchewan to date, Guitarman.

1987: Seated in a red vinyl booth in the back of a small-town Saskatchewan cafe, nibbling on a greasy burger and chips, filmmaker Will Dixon conceives the idea for Guitarman and starts scribbling out the screenplay on a crumpled-up napkin. It’s a father/son story entwined in the modern retelling of the pied piper tale. In this instance, the pied piper is replaced by a rock ‘n’ roll guitar player and the rats by grasshoppers.

‘We were looking for a story that could be told from Saskatchewan that had some universal appeal but didn’t look like anything seen on the screen before,’ says Stephen Onda, Guitarman’s producer.

1988: Dixon and Onda form Heartland Motion Pictures and apply for development funding for the project from Telefilm Canada, Superchannel and the newly formed provincial film funding agency, Saskfilm.

The duo produces a one-hour drama entitled The Garden and contemplates the possibility of transforming Guitarman into a long-form tv movie. They spend the next year and a half reworking the screenplay.

The project languishes in development limbo while The Garden takes precedence.

Onda heads out in search of production financing. Surprisingly, he says it was not that difficult raising the financing from Saskatchewan, even though it’s far removed from the major money centers. But he was constantly confronted by one question: ‘Where did you say you’re calling from?’

‘Let’s face it,’ he says, ‘even if you’re living in Toronto, you’re still on the phone or fax, you’re not running into these people’s offices all day there either. Distance might have hampered our learning curve in this area, but I think we tried harder and became more aggressive as a result. The bigger issue was confidence and creating relationships. We didn’t have very much of a track record as far as dramatic production and we’d certainly never worked with a budget of this magnitude before ($2.2 million), let alone on a long-form drama.’

1990: Jim Henshaw, a native of Saskatchewan living in Toronto, is asked to come on as the story editor.

1991: Well-known Vancouver writer Hart Hansen joins Dixon as a cowriter.

Spring 1992: Somewhat overly optimistic about securing government funding, Heartland starts to move the project into preproduction, but at the last minute, when it looks like the time lines will be too tight, it’s pulled back and rescheduled for the following year.

June 1992: Casting begins. Heartland is determined to package the project with a well-known musical personality in the role of the guitarman. For over a year and a half, Onda aggressively goes after the who’s who of guitar players around the world. Not one to let the fact that he’s a small producer from the Canadian Prairies deter him, Onda makes contact with Sting, David Bowie, Johnny Winters, Keith Richards, Robbie Robertson and Neil Young.

‘We learned a lot about how to approach musicians at that level and learned a great deal about how to pitch the project – and how not to,’ says Onda. ‘There’s definitely a pattern to pitching, and the essence is to give them less, not more.’

The major advantage of dealing with Americans, he says, is that the turnaround on decisions is very fast, usually within the week.

However, even after all the effort, they still come up with a big zero.

‘We were faced with three main problems,’ explains Onda. ‘Either most musicians are afraid to act or the musician would be interested but their personal manager would not, and if we made it through those two hoops, the record label would have control over the public image of the artist and would insist on being intimately involved in the project – which we definitely didn’t need.’

‘Interest from most American distributors was based on the presence of a marquee cast member, so we ended up in a chicken and the egg dilemma. We didn’t have the money to cut a pay or play deal with the talent or at least flash some green, and yet we couldn’t get any money from the distributor unless we had the cast committed. We just didn’t have the cash to play the game at that level.’

August 1992: Barry Parrell, who has shot virtually all the major dramatic projects in Saskatchewan, signs on as dop while scouting on weekends, through the next several script incarnations, to find the perfect locations.

April 1993: Frustrated by the delays in piecing together the financing puzzle in Canada, Onda heads off to l.a. to do the rounds of u.s. distributors. Heartland is offered a sizable foreign distribution deal; however, after several months of trying to knit together the needs of the u.s. distributor and still satisfy Canadian content requirements, Onda returns to Canada empty-handed.

‘While the deal didn’t work out, we did learn a lot about what u.s. distributors need and the kind of field they play on,’ he says.

Summer 1993: After more than a year locked in limbo because of casting, the producers come across Jack Semple, a very talented guitar player who has made his name in the r&b band The Lincolns, but tired of life on the road, has returned with his family to his native Saskatchewan to live.

Although the broadcaster WIC Western International Communications is initially skeptical, Semple does a screen test and the broadcaster loves him.

July 1993: Without the security of a signed distribution deal, Superchannel follows through on a hunch, and with a giant leap of faith advances Heartland enough to get preproduction rolling.

August 1993: Onda has been cultivating a relationship with Paragon Releasing head Isme Bennie for some time, keeping her abreast of the project throughout the five years of development and seeking her input. Finally, with Bennie’s help, a foreign distribution deal is struck with Paragon.

Further production financing comes in from Telefilm, which is anxious to see more production take place in the Prairie provinces, and Saskfilm comes through with its first major investment participation in production financing.

However, three weeks before principal photography is slated to begin, there are still several critical financing gaps in the $2.2 million puzzle.

Time is running out.

Onda calls rival Saskatchewan producer Kevin DeWalt of Minds Eye Pictures at home at 10 o’clock in the evening and asks him to join the project as executive producer to push it over the top. DeWalt, who’s always been enthusiastic about the story, leaps at the chance.

They hurriedly call a full-day meeting to bring DeWalt up to speed on the project and Onda shifts his focus to day-to-day production activities. DeWalt provides a ‘fresh face’ to deal with, says Onda. ‘Most people were sick of me. After all, how much of a tenacious producer can you take for five years?’

DeWalt, who developed a close relationship with broadcaster wic while working on his last drama, Eli’s Lesson, is able to close a deal with wic’s representatives from Superchannel and itv in Edmonton.

With financing finally locked in, casting confirmed and only days away from production, Onda begins crewing up. Faced with the challenge of finding a top-flight crew at such a busy time of the year, Onda is still able to hire all but seven of the 84 technicians in Saskatchewan. Of the seven remaining positions, several in the camera department come from Montreal, anxious to work in an ‘exotic location out West called Saskatchewan.’

Late August 1993: Preproduction begins at a fast and furious pace with a skeleton staff.

Sept. 16, 1993: A day before production begins, a cold snap settles over Saskatchewan and the snow starts to fly. The Army and Navy store has a run on long underwear and snow boots.

The script calls for hordes of grasshoppers. Ironically, Saskatchewan, which normally has to fight off swarms of the pests, this year is faced with a grasshopper drought. The producers anticipated the problem earlier in the summer and called in Vancouver-based Action Animals, which arranged with an Agriculture Canada research station in Lethbridge to breed 2,000 grasshoppers for use during the film.

The grasshoppers hatch as planned. Only problem is they’re due to mature too early for the film and, since their life span is only six weeks, the producers have to contend with the grasshopper shortage yet again.

The research station starts incubating another batch of grasshoppers and ships the previous load to Saskatchewan to be placed in a special incubating bug nursery where light and temperature can be carefully controlled to slow down the aging process. It works. The grasshoppers survive the duration of filming. ‘You just don’t learn this kind of thing at film school,’ says Onda.

Oct. 15, 1993: Despite the challenging weather, production wraps on time, with only a half a day lost to interruptions due to the snow. ‘We just kept on going,’ says Onda, ‘and if there was snow that day we just wrote it into the script and took the attitude, don’t look back.’

Christmas 1993: Editing and post-production continue in Saskatchewan. Completion is scheduled in time for mip-tv in early spring 1994, with broadcast anticipated for the 1994 season.