PREVIEW
JET BOY
Starring Branden Nadon and Dylan Walsh
Written and directed by Dave Schultz
Opens Friday, November 2
Plaza Theatre
Jet setter
SUB: Writer-director Dave Schultz prepares for take-off with debut feature
Dave Schultz has a headache. It isn't hard to see why as he zips around his kitchen, juggling a mug, telephone and cigarette, all while fending off the kitten that keeps attaching itself to his pant leg. If he seems a bit manic, he has good reason to be – Jet Boy, the first feature film both written and directed by the Calgary filmmaker, hits theatres this week. He immediately advises me to ditch journalism for screenwriting.
"That's where the dough is. Suspense-thriller stuff. I used to joke and say if a woman twists her ankle at the end of the second act, I probably wrote it."
Jet Boy, however, is an unusual and sensitive drama about an orphaned, adolescent prostitute named Nathan (Branden Nadon). Nathan desperately needs a dad, and he finds one in Boon (Dylan Walsh), an enigmatic drifter forced to revisit his own unhappy youth when he travels to his home town to visit his dying father. Schultz describes the film as a mixture of My Own Private Idaho and Old Yeller. Toss in elements of Stand By Me, Taxi Driver and maybe even The Parent Trap, and you'd just about be scratching the surface.
Schultz began Jet Boy seven years ago, but he had the idea long before then.
"I used to visit a friend in Vancouver – this is probably 12, 13 years ago – one time we were sitting on Granville in a greasy spoon looking out the window, and this guy who was about 50 was picking up a little kid across the street. And I thought, that's pretty sick. You kind of want to run out the door and yell at the guy, but you don't, right? That stuck in my head."
Jet Boy's gritty subject matter made it difficult to market at first. The fact that Nathan is an underage hustler affected every aspect of filming, from initial funding to casting to distribution. The finished film received an 18A rating in Alberta for sexual content, despite the fact that its few sex scenes are amazingly mild by current standards. Schultz wasn't afraid to tackle such controversial material, but he made certain his motives were pure.
"Seven years ago nobody wanted to talk about molestation, and then all of a sudden there was this period for about four years when it was the hottest thing on the planet. Everybody was abused. The whole fucking world was abused. And then I felt even worse because I didn't want to exploit the situation."
Despite its grave theme, Jet Boy is surprisingly upbeat. Schultz wasn't interested in depressing his audience.
"I didn't want to make this really heavy, dark movie. You don't want to romanticize people's tragedies. Sure, tragedy is fascinating. We all want to see the little cutie-pie boy hooker get abused – ohhh, isn't that sad – but that's not what I wanted to do."
Despite being both screenwriter and director, Schultz found his ability to control the artistic direction of the movie frustratingly limited.
"People believe this fallacy that when you make a movie you can do whatever you want. You just can't."
On set, Schultz had to contend with location, lighting and space problems, as well as time restrictions. Once, the HAWKS helicopter swooped over and ruined a scene. Another time, a community association leader accused the crew of blocking his condo door with their vehicles. Schultz jokes that he asked a crew member to fake a seizure if the police showed up, to buy him a half-hour of shooting time.
"The problem with films is that you never have enough time. You're on set, you have these grand visions, but you only have five seconds. On a 12-hour day, you only really direct one hour a day, and the rest of it is politics and walking around smoking cigarettes. You've got three-second decisions to make, and that's your movie, and that's what's onscreen for the rest of your life."
Despite enthusiastic feedback and a successful screening at the Calgary International Film Festival, Schultz still can't decide whether he thinks Jet Boy is a good film or not.
"When you make a movie you don't know if it's good. I mean, you watch the edits, you see all the things that didn't happen or happened wrong. When I finished it I said, 'I don't care who likes it as along as I like it.' Have you ever watched a movie a thousand times? I mean, is a joke funny a thousand times?"
Despite his migraine and his misgivings, Schultz looks pretty happy as he plucks the kitten from his sock once more. He pauses for a moment, and then describes a man who approached him at Jet Boy's festival screening.
"He came up to me and said, 'You know, your movie's about love.' And I just said, 'Thanks.'" |
