The process of turning this into a film, which is the impatient opposite of everything the book thinks it is, brings me closer, alas, to the writer I am today. In the ten or so years leading up to the script Bruce would finally shoot, I wrote, sometimes alone and sometimes with others, dozens of scripts. In fact, now that it is done, I am still writing sequels. The irony of
Pontypool,
for me, is that it isn’t the thing I wrote in case I wrote; it’s the only thing I ever write.The film bears little resemblance to the novel. How could it? There is a long line of former producers to the project who argued against my involvement, but, though I often suspected they were right, I think in the end I
was
the right person, because no one had a lower regard for this infuriating book than myself. I felt great energy in tossing the book aside. I wanted something new. Something that worked. Something like work.
The first day of shooting was completely harrowing for me. I had been re-writing for years and had grown quite used to the luxury of always getting another shot. I think after years of Guided by Voices addiction I had developed Bob Pollard syndrome: if you don’t like this one, I got four thousand more in a suitcase under my bed. Sketches, loose wet pages and photos. The lake. Plenty more where they come from. But when Stephen McHattie and Lisa Houle stood there, heads full of memorized lines and feet firmly on their marks, I knew that, marvelously and terribly, sometimes things are finished. In the mornings I would go over the day’s lines and grow frantic that they were awful — because of course they were. Every line is always awful. And then I’d trip and bounce around the set, all the busy people who didn’t know how badly the script was failing them, and find Bruce, who I could never tell this to. I’d seek out Stephen and Lisa who were enjoying the script far too much to be of any use. The pro
ducers on the other hand were so superstitious of uncertainty that I think they avoided me with cat-like sense. And then Bruce would call “action” and it was too late, and silence fell and everyone started to focus. Focus! Focus is the last thing we need. We need blurry and unknown and unfinished. We need palimpsest and stick figures and many, many more meetings. I stood there, clammy and guilty and waiting for someone, anyone, to realize how desperately we needed a re-write.Then the scene began, a kind of unassuming feeling to the dialogue. It seemed natural and I watched as these two people began their day. Pouring coffee. A little chit-chat. And this was it. By some strange and miraculous process, in spite of the claw marks across the page, these two actors had finished it. It was a thing. It was people on a specific day. People who really had no idea what was coming. This was not what I thought I had written at all — this was actually very good. I relaxed and drew myself up. I was the writer and this was the good movie he had written. Just then one of the
PAS
walked by me and out of the corner of his mouth he said to the prop person, “They let the writer on the set?” It was meant to be funny, but it’s a cliché I found myself embodying: a destructively self-conscious child in a room of shopworn adults.The shoot went quickly and I did rewrite daily as it turned out; in fact, I rewrote the ending the night before we shot it, perhaps because I was getting comfortable with the idea that no matter what I wrote there was a company of fine people invested in making it work. For a writer that is a massive advantage. Years of fighting and flirting and arguing and despairing had somehow transformed into a giant tent of people co-operating with an idea. A tremendously humbling sensation and, looking back, a striking refutation of that book I wrote back there. The book you just read.
After seeing the film assembled for the first time and feeling great relief that it wasn’t as bad as all that, I leaned over
to Lisa Houle, who I was nuts over, and whispered, “Well, thank Christ, now I never have to watch it again.”
Later, at a party for some event, Lisa sought me out. She had been worried, she explained, that I didn’t like the film. I was quite alarmed by this. I did like the film. I loved her in it. In fact — and this is another odd fact about filmmaking — you have these momentary raptures about other people. Stephen McHattie is a shaman to me. Bruce McDonald is a shaman to me. I asked Lisa why she thought this? She reminded me of what I had said to her at the screening. She looked hurt. I smiled.
Actors. Sheesh.
“Oh darlin’, you should know I never say anything I can’t take back later.”