The increasing lightness of being Daniel MacIvor

TAKE ONE, March-May, 2003 by Cynthia Amsden

Banana bread. Green tea and banana bread. It's late December, not even Christmas, not even New Year's. Too early for any resolution to be in effect, and Daniel MacIvor is at one with the baking universe.

"S-P-E-L-T," he offers. It's an ingredient in the banana bread. A grain flour. Only a writer would be attracted to a recipe like this. If prose was a whole grain, he'd add it too. Irony, to be sure, but not as much as MacIvor would have spooned in had he been cooking a decade ago. Besides, he believes irony is only good if it is "protecting the heart. If it isn't, it's just something bitter, like Letterman." More emotion now in what MacIvor creates in the kitchen and elsewhere, more compassion, but always, always seasoned with wit.

This baking jag MacIvor is on goes beyond his doctor's wheat-avoidance advice. It's becoming a metaphor for the overall trend his work is taking--collecting, blending and building. Prior to turning 40, a watershed moment in his life, Daniel MacIvor was a deconstructionist. He was reflexively inclined to observe, dissect and pull behaviour apart. He seemed to be possessed by the spirit of the American conceptual artist Jenny Hoizer--the best way to understand something is to do violence to the facts. In MacIvor's case, because he has a grand generosity of spirit, the scrutiny was invariably welcomed.

The suggestion is made that the dynamic of cooking is a novelty because it's all about putting things together. Edibly. "That's good," MacIvor observes, puckishiy. A split-second pause and then--theft. "I said that!" Immediately you want to steal his line about him stealing your line. But he gives his lines away. Once a week, he ritually calls Janet McKellen, his best friend who lives in Halifax, and provides one for the chalkboard in her kitchen. This week's edition: "Feelings will get you closer to the truth of who you are than thinking." If life is a series of moments, MacIvor is a series of lines.

With his feature-film directorial debut, Past Perfect, released by Mongrel Media in February, and the opening, in April, of Wiebke von Carolsfeld's Marion Bridge, for which he wrote the screenplay, again released by Mongrel, MacIvor is keenly aware of how his work is going to stand up against other writer/directors. Having just seen Steven Soderbergh's Solaris on the weekend (not his usual mid-week afternoon avoid-the-often-misguided-group-think-audience-reaction viewing preference), he is captivated by the exchange between George Clooney's character, Chris Kelvin, and his wife, played by Natascha McElhone. She has just woken him up. He turns in shock, since she has been dead for quite a while. They look at each other, and then she says: "Don't blow it." And he says: "OK, you start." And she says: "I already did." "That's great dialogue," proclaims MacIvor. "Great film writing."

This is delightful conversation, but there is more going on here than clever moments of repartee. MacIvor is a man in a state of moving his emotional allegiance from stage to film. Usually, this shift is accompanied by a great deal of giddy chatter about finally having control of a vision, particularly when an actor is directing his first film. Or, when speaking to a director who has just launched himself on the scene from out of nowhere, there is a great deal of wringing of hands about coping with the intensity and luck of it all. In the case of MacIvor--an award-winning veteran of the theatre--control and fame and acceptance have already been won. This is an internal journey.

All sorts of indicators trumpet that a metamorphosis is taking place, and there's a Where's Waldo glee in spotting them. On this day, MacIvor is just shy of two months of being on vacation. The Weather Channel might as well have reported hell freezing over, because he usually never takes time off Ever. The beard is another clue. It's gone come January because of a theatre commitment to a character who is definitely not bearded, but at this point it seems to be a visual vacation clock, as in "I've been off for 'this' long." And there's the cooking. It's all there.

For MacIvor, the bridge between theatre and film is words. There's a folkloric tale about two lovers who live apart, but at certain times, flocks of birds would spread their wings and form a bridge over which the lovers could cross and meet. In the same sense, words grant MacIvor passage from one side of his creative psyche to the other. Initially, of course, he's a lot less romantic about it, summing it up with, "It's my time, sister, it's my time."

Camelia Friedberg, producer of Past Perfect (part of Halifax-based imX's Seats 3A and 3C low-budget six-film series) and also producing partner on Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter and Jeremy Podeswa's The Five Senses, knew it was his time as well and she was in the position to open the window of opportunity. His interpretation is characteristically humble. "She took a chance."

Where exactly was the risk? MacIvor walked away from New York with an Obie Award for his two-man play, In On It, which he wrote and co-starred with Jim Allodi (The Uncles and Men with Brooms). And the path from stage to screen has already been walked by David Mamet, who brought with him a signature style, and American Beauty's Sam Mendez. Plus, MacIvor writes only about what he knows, and in the case of Past Perfect, it's all about dialogue. And the echoes.