| Wrought with pain, rejection and angst, five troubled teens near graduation. To mark this chapter’s closing, they attend a year-end party where they are each faced with situations embodying their high school experience. Herold is rejected by a girl he is smitten with. Rick wades aimlessly in a prescription painkiller abyss completely numbed to reality. Emily withdraws from social contact. Rose feels pressured to be thin. Greg drinks one too many and comes out of the closet to a straight guy. Each has the potential to do absolute self-harm, but only one of them will commit suicide at the end of Whodunnit, an hour-long film by Brendan Prost.
"I was really interested in the idea of an ensemble story about these five people who in reality are the same," says Prost, a recent graduate of Bishop Grandin High School and Whodunnit’s director, writer and producer. Inspired by the films Magnolia and Elephant, Prost’s film tells the story of five individuals on the road of self-destruction. Making the suicide mystery has left lasting impressions on Prost and his cast and crew.
Prost began filming stop-motion and then live-action movies when he was about nine years old. He learned by watching films and then copying other directors’ techniques. This helped him discover his own style. Last year he made two B-horror movies titled Fashion Zombies and Attack of the Baby Eaters.
After three months of writing the script for Whodunnit, Prost began discussing it with classmates in October 2006. "When he was discussing it with me, it sent chills down my spine with how true it rang," says Prost’s classmate Mike Thorn, who plays Greg, a young man secure with his homosexuality, but influenced by society’s perceptions of gay people. "He really took the project very seriously. He wanted to tell a story and he went at it with a lot of passion."
Prost had no idea his film would not only be better by "tenfold over anything" he’d ever done, but would strike up controversy with the Calgary Catholic School Board. "I knew I was doing the right thing," he says in his defence, "this was material that had to be shown."
Prost approached school administration about using Bishop Grandin High School as a set. School principal at the time, Marc Renaud, says the school had no issue with letting Prost use classrooms and facilities for filming. However, the students were told the content of the film was not acceptable to a Catholic school community.
Despite the advisory, Prost cast the show. Filming began in early February and took place after school. While he was shooting, Prost realized that he and his crew were producing something special. "I was really excited by the fact that we were turning out this super-high-quality project," he says, comparing Whodunnit to David Lynch’s Inland Empire.
Empowered by the initial results, and despite the school’s comments, he was confident he would be allowed to hold a public screening at school for the students. School administrators did not change their minds about the film, but Prost succeeded in arranging a private screening for the cast, crew and his drama teacher Cynthia Stratulat (who could not be reached for comment). However, Prost wanted Whodunnit to reach a bigger audience. He turned to the media, hoping to use the film’s controversy to generate interest and perhaps secure a venue off campus.
On May 13, the Calgary Herald reported that according to an unnamed high school drama teacher, Whodunnit was "laced with profanity and included a very graphic depiction of suicide." Prost believes films shown in school as part of the social studies and English curriculum are just as disturbing as his film. He uses the example of Dead Poets Society, shown in English classes, in which a kid shoots himself. Surprised by the sudden backlash, he wonders if the film’s critics are being objective.
The Herald article roused Bishop Grandin students to action. There was talk of a rally to be held outside of the Calgary School Centre on May 17 to protest censorship of free speech. "Of course students are very anti-administration," says Prost. "Nobody’s a fan of ‘the man’. So everyone was disturbed by the fact that someone was screwing them. They wanted to find out why."
School administrators met with students, insisting they had no problem with the students’ right to protest. "We just gave the students our positions," says Renaud. Prost believes Renaud had the best of intentions. He also decided that the protest wouldn’t bring him any closer to showing his movie and called it off to let the dust settle.
"Even if they didn’t agree with the presentation of the subject matter, they could take that idea… and present it in another way," says Thorn, disappointed the film will not reach the Grandin audience.
On Saturday June 16, Whodunnit was shown to a crowd of 60 people at the Canyon Meadows Cinemas. Unfortunately Prost had little time to promote the screening and admits the turnout was "disappointing."
"I guess he did get it out there, because he was worried he wasn’t going to be able to show it to the students," says Renaud.
Prost continues to stand behind the film’s quality, yet he finds himself plagued by doubt and unsure of his abilities as a director. "I’d like to believe I’m totally right. Maybe it was fate that it never got shown. Maybe it was a bad idea," he says.
Prost has submitted his film to the Calgary International Film Festival, despite knowing it doesn’t quite fit into a category. At the very least, directing Whodunnit gave him an experience worth putting in his career portfolio. While Prost has no idea what his next project will be, he is still considering a career in directing and hopes to pursue his studies at the Vancouver Film School.
Anyone interested in obtaining a copy of Whodunnit can email Prost at brendan.prost@hotmail.com. |
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