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Television by Julie Pithers Manon Rhéaume: The Woman Behind the Mask Thursday, April 20 @ 7 p.m. WTN Twenty years ago, the idea of a woman playing NHL hockey was as inconceivable as Jackie Robinson playing in major league baseball once was. And though, as a little girl, Manon Rhéaume didn’t dream she would ever play in the big leagues, she struggled up through the ranks and got her tryout with The Tampa Bay Lightning. Now you’d think that documentary crews would be all over that like Valeri Bure on a rebound, but you’d be wrong. Not until now has Rhéaume’s story been made into an hour-long documentary... by a Calgarian yet. The goalie’s story is one of strength, endurance and grace. Even though Rhéaume was cut from peewee, the Olympics and the NHL, she showed grit and determination without ever slamming those who didn’t think she could do it. This documentary shows the best and worst times of her life and how she reacted to so much hoopla it would make the Dionne Quintuplets blush. Local filmmaker Wendy Hill-Tout, director/producer of The Woman Behind the Mask, has a strange, yet compelling reason for developing this particular documentary. "There weren’t any girls around where I lived, so I was like her and I played with boys all the time," says Hill-Tout from the edit suites where the film is going through its final stages before airing on WTN next week. "I played football, and when I was in Grade 7 my dream in life was to be the quarterback for the Calgary Stampeders. I used to cry every night before I went to sleep, because I knew I could never be one because I was a girl." Rhéaume’s crying would have come from the fact that she was proving herself night after night in goal against Junior A boys, but would never be asked to play in tournaments or even considered for the NHL. Her story is so compelling that, though the documentary rights were available for Hill-Tout, the dramatic rights to her story are owned by none other than Babs Streisand. Word has it that Sandra Bullock is the front-runner for the lead if it gets off the ground. "It was the easiest project I’ve ever done to finance," says Hill-Tout about the interest surrounding Rhéaume’s story. "But once we got started it was a lot of work. When you’re working with stock footage you have so much more research to do." That work comes from the fact that they had to get permission for every voice or image on the film. They started to feel like private detectives hunting down play-by-play announcers from Quebec City to New York City. However, Hill-Tout says Rhéaume was a giving and honest documentary subject who opened her home and family to the crew. "I felt actually, when I was making it, very privileged to be doing her story."

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