VO Chats with Writer, Director, and Star of VIFF Film, Son of the Sunshine

VO: Could you tell us a little bit about yourself personally and as a filmmaker?

RW: I primarily come from an acting background and have been an actor in Toronto for nine years. I studied acting and was always interested in making my own stuff. I wrote my own plays and performed them and would tour them, as a way of learning and to cut my teeth as a writer and creator, with the eventual goal of making a film.

I'm really keen on the type of movies that are written directed and starring the same person because I think they come across very personal. Quite different from watching a movie even written and directed, but not starring that person. For example, we know Woody Allen's movies. You watch them and because it's he who wrote it and directed it and is playing the character, you feel closer to him. You feel like it's kind of like his life on screen in a way which I find more personal, and more my cup of tea. Something I would keep endeavouring to make. I don't think there's anyone in Canada who does that currently.

VO: Could you tell us about Son of the Sunshine?

RW: It comes from the way I was feeling at the time that I began to write it. About the world and not feeling that there was any place for me in it. I was pretty down about that.

At that time I had been in Toronto a short amount of time, maybe a year, and I was on the subway and I saw this man. He's kind of famous around Toronto. He's blind and has Tourettes (syndrome). He was ticking and after every time he would tick he would say sorry. At the time I didn't really know what was with him. I went home and looked it up and figured out that he had tourettes.

I was really interested in this idea and started writing a story about a young man who had tourettes, not really knowing why I was so interested in it, so drawn to it. Then after a while of writing, the penny dropped. I was looking at my own life and how I felt about the world I was living in, and to me it was like, bang, the perfect metaphor for the way I felt. A metaphor of an angry young man with tourettes who can't control anything, and is crying out to the world.

From there I took this, the sadness, my central message, and I was determined to come up with a positive answer to where this character would find himself; that there was actually hope, and there was a place for me, for others.

I wanted to express that message. Not just because I needed to say it, but because I thought that other people might relate to it and might need it.

VO: So was this entirely based on the combination of this man and the way you were feeling at the time?

RW: I wrote in circles for a while. And then when I figured that out, and it all gelled, I got together with my co-writer Matt Heiti, and we kind of mapped out where the story should go, and then we did it (laughs). After that it made a lot more sense.

It was a long journey because I'd never made a feature before. I'd made a couple shorts, but nobody really cares about shorts. It was a real struggle. A long time between when I started and when we actually filmed it. About five years. It was kind of lucky for me because I was doing a theatre show at the time and that afforded me the opportunity to keep working, and also film.

VO: I have to ask you about casting because that's one of the things that stands out about your film. You have a stellar cast. Where did you find these people.

RW: (Laughs) they're non-union Toronto actors. I'd made a short film before and I really wasn't convinced that union actors were any better than non-union, and I'm non-union. I'm equity at the theatre but not film union. I was convinced, and I just wanted to prove my point.

We started auditioning and were really interested in finding people who weren't just going to act the part, but had something about them that was that person.

We searched high and low to find the people who's real personality matched the characters. They were really hard to find.

We were surprised that we found some of the older actors first, which shocked us because we thought that anybody who was forty or fifty and going to play these parts, that if they were any good, would be union. But that wasn't true.

The younger cast were actually harder to find. We went through one Ariel (Sonny's love interest in the film) and had to re-cast before we found Rebecca (McMahon). We held another set of auditions and she was the last person to walk in on the last day. She was perfect. She came in and punched the wall and made her hand bleed and we were like, perfect! (laughs).

VO: Well it obviously paid off to wait and get the right people.

RW: We were lucky. It was serendipity you know. I think when you have something you need to do and you're going to do it, everything conspires to help you. I was lucky to find the people I found. I was lucky to find the producer (Paul Fler) that I work with.

I was looking for a producer and I found him, and he made it possible for us to shoot on film and to get all those great locations, on a really small budget.

VO: How is your film being received?

RW: Well pretty, for a small, Indy, made by guys who don't know anybody in high places. I would say phenomenally good. We finished shooting May 2008, were cutting and sent a rough cut off to Slamdance (Utah) in September, and got in. We were kind of blown away.

Eight months after we finished shooting we premiered . Raindance (UK), in Germany before that, and Oldenburg, Montreal and Amsterdam...

I think it's a movie that garners a strong reaction one way or the other. I don't think there's any in between reaction that it would get because it's very raw and harsh, and in your face, and it doesn't really back off until the end of the movie. That's kind of what we wanted to do. We just wanted to make something that... people will love it and hate it, but we told the truth and were honest, this is what we felt. This is what we wanted to do.

VO: Can you tell us about the idea behind the light that we see in your hands throughout the film; where that came from?

RW: I always say that I darkened the corners of the film to make the light at the centre brighter. That's kind of the idea. Throughout the movie I really wanted to accentuate the idea of light in the dark. Things may seem like shit, things may be dark and horrible all around, but in the middle of it there's light and there's hope. For me that's what it represents.

There is magic in the world if you can see past everything else and I think that the way the main character does that is that he learns to love. He learns to love himself and others, and to accept people despite their flaws, and that's when he sees the light fully. That's what you pull away from him. I made the film with this in mind.

You have value to the world and you need to know that.

I think that's what Sonny comes to realize, that he has value in the world, and that even the people around him who have been horrible to him have value in the world, and aren't always horrible, and weren't always horrible.

You belong, you're important. When you see that, is when everyone will see that.

When he finally realizes that, he suddenly can consciously use his power to bring his child back to life. In a way, symbolically, he's healing himself. When you learn to love, you heal yourself, primarily. I think it was a good way to end the film.

It's a weird movie, in the way that it goes up all the time. It's just a peak upwards until he heals the baby and then it stops. I find it an interesting way to make a movie.

What I like about the movie is that the structure is not traditional. It's a three act structure but it doesn't have all the peaks and valleys that are normal. The conflict is not with another person, it's with himself.

VO: What's in the future? Are you moving ahead with another film?

RW: I'm writing a new film. I've got a couple things going and I'm trying to get permission to do another one, but it's very difficult. The new one I'm writing is called The Love. It's about all the relationships in a man's life, from when he's a little boy until he's an old man. When he's an old man he reflects on what all those people meant to him.

I've never seen a movie like it before because it only takes place inside of his relationships, and it's not just one relationship. It's every relationship.

I think that what I'm trying to explore is how the relationships we go through in our lives form who we are, who we fall in love with, our ideas, and the way we see love.

VO: And it's from a man's perspective, something we don't often see in cinema.

RW: Yes, I think it'll be interesting to see. The question of the movie is, is there one person out there for everyone, or is it all these people who make you who you are.