FFWD Weekly
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| Film by FFWD Staff DIRECTOR IGNORES DEMONS AND FINISHES FILM AT LAST Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe nobody told him it couldn’t be done. But eventually it was way too late to stop him and from 1994 to 1998 writer/director David Clark set about making a feature-length film for $100,000. He based the film on a script that called for period costumes, prosthetics, an original score, computer graphics, time travel and several locations. As one of the lead actors, Mark David Stewart, says, "It’s like building a car for three dollars." Maxwell’s Demon is tagged as a film noir screwball tragedy. It is also an homage to films like Fellini’s 8 1/2, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Last Year at Marienbad and 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is the strange twisty tale of private detective Dick Valard (Andy Curtis), whose business card reads: "It’s all about dick." When the pregnant and mildly testy Helvetica Bold (Darcy Dunlop) blows into Valard’s office, she sets him off on a wild goose chase to find the unwitting sperm donor, an astronomer named Maxwell (Mark David Stewart). They all come together for a time travelling Oedipus complex that deconstructs as it goes. "I like the line it walks," says Stewart, "between being really intellectual and really stupid." There is a lot of fun cornball stuff thrown in beside thermodynamic theory and deconstructionist art. Some of it was re-written on the fly and the narration was done twice. Even the actors don’t get some of the references Clark sends up in Maxwell’s Demon. "I think everyone will enjoy it," says Stewart, "but it is the film buffs and science geeks that will be doubled-over laughing." Shot mostly in Calgary and partially in Halifax and London, Ontario the whole thing was cobbled together by grant money and the seat of Clark’s pants. Stewart’s prosthetics came from Mary Steenbergen’s leftovers in Nixon. A friend of a friend lent the actors basses that were required for a big sight gag. It is no wonder it took nearly five years to complete. A Calgarian working in Halifax as a multi-media professor, Clark is a sculptor by education and a filmmaker by choice. While teaching at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design he discovered digital editing and computer generated special effects were within his grasp. As Maxwell’s Demon slowly came together, Clark would teach himself something new on the computer and throw it on the film – hardly the James Cameron school of film technique. There are dream sequences, there are scenes that are shot-for-shot recreations of famous scenes, and the whole thing is linked by the great phallus we call the Calgary Tower. So far Maxwell’s Demon is being greeted warmly, having been picked as a favourite in film festivals and reviewed kindly. If there are parts you don’t get, don’t worry, we will be lucky enough to have the director himself at the Calgary screening this Sunday in The Garry Theatre, either answering questions or muddying the water further. |
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