Fiction Films

1. The Peanut Butter Solution 1986.
2. Tommy Tricker and the Stamp traveler, 1988
3. Vincent and Me. 1990
4. The Return of Tommy Tricker. 1992
5. Even Emus need to dance. 2006

Mike has written and directed five fiction feature films, The Peanut Butter Solution 1986. Tommy Tricker and the Stamp traveler, 1988. Vincent and Me. 1990. The The Return of Tommy tricker, 1992. Even Emus Need To Dance. 2006 This last feature film follows after a long gap and was made in a completely different way.

The Mid Eighties found Mike teaming up with the legendary Quebec producer, Rock Demers who had a bold plan for his company, La Fete, to make a series of medium budget family films, starring young protagonists.

Rock had very clear ideas about the sort of stories he wanted. Wholesome and non violent tales they would be (they were called, in fact, Tales for all) and generally Mike agreed with his vision. There were 15 in the first series and after Mike left Canada, another other series began. Raising the money was part of Rock's genius,  as well as having strong input on content. The films had tremendous success internationally but were especially loved  in Qubece where generations of kids grew up knowing almost every frame of every film. Mike's four that he wrote and directed for La Fete, were amongst the most popular.

Mike's four features were made in an unusual way. With a first draft of the script done in consulation with Rock, Mike visited  Montreal primary schools as a story teller. He'd borrow a grade 6 for an hour and tell them the new story, acting out the parts as best he could. Doing it again and again, he soon discovered strengths and waeknesses. Indeed, when some plot part was really effective , a complete silence would fall on the thirty kids in front of him,  and Mike would float. Naturally any story teller enjoys such moments when an audience is enthralled. Mike soon noticed that, having struck gold as it were, he'd keep mining that moment, building on the thread which was working so well. This way new and stronger material got added and weak bits fell away.

This method had many advantages. It gave Mike solid confidence in his stories. When Rock fell into money raising difficulties for Mike's first project, the Peanut Butter Solution (the funding bodies were questioning the wisdom of giving a feature to Rubbo, a director  who had never done fiction before) Mike simply said to Rock, “Come and listen!”

So, on that key day, Rock sat at the back of a class and saw the story magic work, the rapt faces, spellbound. He saw kids crowd around afterwards, insisting what a great movie it was. They thought they had actually seen a movie, and wth this Rock was convinced and in turn, able to muster the persuasion necessary to get Mike's first film fully funded. Mike recommends those who have doubts in a family story to test it like this

Peanut butter Solution was originally called, Michael's Fright, and was based on a true event, that in the case of a huge fright, all one's hair can fall out.

This happens to the hero in the story, 12 year old Michael when he and friend Connie, wander into a deserted house. Later, the boys will find a recipe which, if smeared on the head, makes hair grow again. The trouble is that if you put on too much, then the hair won't stop growing and that's what happens of course. There's hair everywhere. The movie turned out to be more scary than Mike realized. He painfully remembers a public screening in Vancouver, himself was pacing the lobby nervously as the film was playing. Halfway through a father came out with a distraught little boy of about 5. Fear had the kid crying piteously with the father saying, again and again “I'm sorry, Simon, I'm so sorry.”

Having perfected the story, (on in that case over perfected it) the next step was casting. Mike was firm that, whilst he would use professional actors for the adult parts, the kids must be fresh amateurs. This was partly because he'd auditioned some professional children through their agents at various times, and found them often obnoxious. Secondly, because in going to so many schools, Mike was certain, from the parade of keen faces he'd seen, that the talent was there. So, he went back to the same primary schools a second time, this time looking for his stars.

This was an intensely enjoyable period in the making process. Mike would again borrow grade six's. He'd fill them in on the story then invite them to audition for a key scene. He'd worked out ahead of time on which scenes, were best for revealing the characteristics of each of the actors he was looking for. With Tommy Tricker, this scene was one in which Ralph is persuaded by a devious Tommy to trade one of his Dad's rare bluenoses, an old Canadian 50 cent stamp for some rubbish stamps. The actual Bluenose was a famous 19th century Canadian Racing schooner , depicted on the stamp as forging though a light sea in monochromatic blue.

The trading of the Bluenose is quite a subtle scene psychologically, and boys love acting it out, a brief description being all they need to get going. Tommy comes to Ralph's house and prevails on him to get down his Dad's special stamp album. Nervously, Ralph turns the pages, not allowing the sticky fingered Tommy to even touch the book. They come to a page of Bluenoses, each worth around $400 in mint condition. Tommy spies a small packet tucked into the spine in which there's is another Bluenose not mounted, a spare.

“Hey Ralph,” he cries, “ A spare one!. I'll swap you that one crummy Bluenose for this beautiful Peace set, I've got here. Watta ya say?” Ralph is torn. It seems like a dream swap since the Peace set is also valuable and it will be 6 stamps for one. But he's been forbidden to touch his Dad's collection, let alone trade from it. Boys playing Ralph loved being torn by the temptation in the story which allows them to finally give in to Tommy's blandishments.

The tommy apirants also loved their role, loved playing poor Ralph like a fish on a line, for as soon as Ralph agrees, Tommy backs right back off, change his mind and seemingly loses interest. At this point, it's Ralph who's now pleading for the swap, to which Tommy with studied reluctance, finally agrees. As Tommy slips away, Ralph finds that he's not been left the Peace Set at all, bu a very inferior set of something else. The repercussions of that scene, and the getting back of the Bluenose which turns out to be a variety, is the spine of the story.

A variety, by the way, is an error on a stamp. In this case, it not so much an error, but rather a very exotic addition. There is a tiny figure in the prow of the Bluenose, forever staring straight ahead, a figure who shouldn't be there. It's Charles trapped on the stamp many years before through faulty magic, forever a prisoner.

Mike played out this swapping scene dozens of times in dozens of schools before finding his perfect Tommy on morning in a wintry Ottawa, and later his Ralph in the West island of Montreal. In both cases, there was a big degree of type casting. The Ottawa Tommy, Antony Rodgers, was probably a charming rascal in life, a kid with lots of natural authority, sure of his own cleverness. When that Tommy, showed himself in that Ottawa school room, playing opposite with a now forgotten Ralph, Mike felt immediate excitement.

Antony was mesmerizing. It was patently obvious that he was living the scene, the subtle cheating of Ralph, in a way Mike had not seen before. To cap his appeal, as Ralph pleads at the end for another chance to swap, Antony popped his fingers on his cheek in a coll gesture of dismissal. It was a finger trick that Mike had never seen, some secret kid's code, and so right for Tommy's control of the moment. The Tommy trick made it into the final film and, for a while, was the rage around Montreal after the film came out. If anything, it was that mocking gesture which that ensured Tommy had at last been found.

Nancy, the main girl in the story, by a strange fluke, was in the same school in the same class as Tommy on that special day in Ottawa. While he was dark and slight brutish, JillStanley her real name,was ice blonde and sharp featured. As they played opposite each other, bristling as that scene required, she clearly did not like him , knowing instinctively that he was from the wrong side of the tracks. Antony reciprocated, sensing her snobbish rejection. They never did like other all though the long filming. That's type casting, I guess.

Ralph, was found in another school many miles away hiding under the name of Lucas.. Mike had been intrigued when, as they were about to start the auditions in the particular class, the teacher had warned Mike that Lucas would probably not participate because he had a stutter problem.

Mike's modus operandi was that everyone in the class got the chance to try the scene whether they showed any talent or not, they merely had to want to try. Whilst this was time consuming, it made the process fun and fair and kept Mike's relationship with the schools friendly, for they saw the process as good for everyone and not just as cherry picking talent. Mike was thus always welcome. Being able to go into almost any school at a moment's notice, was huge asset. Those were the days when notes did not have go home to parents, and no one worried about any ulterior motives of an adult videoing kids.

Anyway, in this case, at the very end, Mike was delighted to see Lucas step up to try. And as he struggled with the words which seemed to be in his mouth but somehow prisoners, Mike realized that there was something exciting about Lucas and his courage in trying.

Indeed all happened in an instant. Mike knew it would be a nightmare working with Lucas, that there would be take after take that had to be redone, but that he had found his Ralph. As usual he'd been videoing, as he did with every improv. he did. He couldn't wait to show Rock his find. Rock was always an arms length participant in the casting process, seeing all the kids who Mike thought were promising. Rock too was fascinated by Lucas and his stutter.

These were delightful days. As well as finding undiscovered talent who had none of the “attitude” of child actors , Mike was also hearing his dialog refreshed. Many scenes were radically changed as Mike listened to how these Canadian kids actually talked, not how he thought they talked.

Thus did freshness get on paper. The down side was that it often died there. Mike looks back on those auditions with sadness because sometimes he was never able to recapture the freshness he saw in those classrooms on 35 mm film. With a crew of 70, with the endless waiting that a big feature film requires, with its multiple takes, it is very hard indeed to keep the game fresh for non actors. Once it'ss no longer new , once they know what the kid opposite is going to say from the take before, then the thrill is mainly gone for them.

Happily the type casting so solid, that much that was good did get onto the screen. But for Mike, as he struggled for fresness on the film set. there was the memory of what he'd seen in that Ottawa class room when Tommy and Nancy first sparked. Somewhere, he hopes, he still has that audition tape. Whether he can find it, whether it still runs he doesn't know.

Candidly, even though Rock was fully supportive and there were never nasty looking men on the set with calculators, Mike never enjoyed the feature making experiences. He did not as so many do, wallow in the power of having all those professionals at his beck and call. There was no thrill for him to arrive at the location early each morning and to walk past the props truck, the lighting truck, the sound truck, the camera truck, bonnet to tail, all along the block. “All here to make my film,” he'd think but it would give him little pleasure as he headed to the one truck that gave some comfort, catering, where there was hot coffee and sliced croissants with ham inside.

Four feature film in ten years, written and directed with lots of prizes collected and many kids who laughed instead of crying, it was a good period. along the way. But Mike missed documentaries, missed being one's own person and he was not sorry when the fiction period ended with a Cessna plane struggling to rise from a turquoise lagoon in the Cook Islands. Tis was a piece of fantasy that cost everyone dear to realize.

Mike was intrigued by the idea that since air water were similar, water just being thicker, if a small plane was underwater, and it was pulled by some powerful boat, it would behave in water like in the air, and would rise and fall and turn, obeying all its controls. Easier to think of than to try. An old Cessna was found in New Zealand being used as a chicken coop. Cleaned up, it was shipped to the Island were, months later, the trick was tried with the Tommy hero character inside with an aqualung. It sort of worked.

>Probably the most satisfying of the family films, and closest to his heart thematically, was Vincent and Me. Being a plein aire painter in his spare time, see the painting gallery, it was natural for Mike to think of a film on his hero , Vincent van Gog and equally natural to have the protagonist Jo, even though a girl, passionate about Vincent to. Mike needed to fell ready to do this film. There were at the time some 85 films about van Gogh and the world did not need another one. True, there had never been a kids/family film on Vincent . But that was not proof enough from him. He decided that as a sign that he could do the film he'd do all th copies needed himself. He'd already determined that prints would not photograph well and there was no chance of getting access to originals, especially not having them on location. They had to be painted by someone. Why not the director whose grandfather and mother were both artists?

Mike was teaching at Harvard at the time and managed to score an attic studio where he could work late and night without being disturbed. As he painted away in the early hours, he did feel Vincent's ghost looking over his shoulder, and while that is fanciful, the copies did turn out well, good enough to feel that he had “permission” to go ahead.

It was also great fun to scout Arles for locations were scenes could be shot, locations that would look like the late nineteenth century when Vincent painted outdoors there. Also to feel why he loved the area. Working with th French act Tjeki Karyo, who became a wonderful Vincent was an eye opener, though it was a shock to discover that he had not revealed that a motorcycle's accident meant his right arm, the arm he had to paint with was partly crippled an he could not raise it above the elbow. Still, to was magical scene when Jo finds him there in the field and brings him the news that he's not forgotten and that the paintings which he could not give way, that the doctor who treated him for madness, used to patch a hole in his roof, were now worth millions. It's a shivery scene and was when Mike wrote it, perhaps the one scene in all that writing, that he found himself stopping on wonder at what was coming out on the page.

It was 15 years before Mike tried fiction again. There had been an adventure on a ship coming back from China which was the prelude. He had been in th Hangzhou region, research Tommy tricker, and instead of lying form Shanghai to Hong Kong, he decided to take a a slow and decrepit liner. He found himself with a 100 back packers and 4 day with noting to do. That had seemed delightful before boarding but into the second day, some diversion was necessary. So, having a small video camera with him that he'd being using for auditions as usual, Mike proposed to the travelers that the make a movie. And so they did, an an Agatha Christie who dunnit, shot sequentially in a day and a half. It was so much fun, that also th stranger who'd been drawn into th adventure, rented a room in a hotel in Hongkong king on arrival to view what they done, their being no working TV on the ship.

So it was not a surprise when 10 years later, being in Maleny for a folksy film festival and being ask how maleny could make a movie for itself, he remembered th ship film and told about that. Susanne Haydon immediately proposing raising some money, a few thousand and the Mike would help the make a village story. This was done mid year 2006, with the local play themselves sin a story made from their one lives, later to be called Even Emus need to dance.,Ho it was don and what was hoped for is well described on the wen site, Even Emus Need to dance, and does not need to be repeated here.

Mike hopes to more village films like this. The contrast between working so freely and freely, able to change the story at any minute, no money or time pressures, all of that with the world of the bigger feature, could not be greater. Mike had found a way to bring that freshness of the Ottawa class room to material which was going to be on the screen, Improv. which could be th finished product. Indeed the motto could well be the process is also the product when making such fictomentaries.