Canadian style: Don McKellar talks about Childstar, Hollywood and fame

TAKE ONE, Sept-Dec, 2004 by Wyndham Wise

Don McKellar's credits read like a list of the very best in contemporary English-Canadian cinema: author of Roadkill (1990) and Highway, 61 (1992); co-author of Thirty-Two Short Films about Glenn Gould (1994), Dance Me Outside (1995) and The Red Violin (1998); with notable appearances in Roadkill, Highway 61, Thirty-Two Short Films, The Red Violin, Exotica (1994), When Night Is Falling (1995) and Joe's So Mean to Josephine (1997). Although it has been six years since the release of Last Night, his debut feature released in 1998, Don McKellar has been a busy lad, nothing like the slacker filmmaker he portrays in his second feature, Childstar. Apart from adapting Nobel Prize-winner Jose Saramago's novel Blindness for Rhombus Media, in the past half-dozen years he has written and starred in all 13 episodes of the CBC series Twitch City. (1998/2000) and has appeared in countless films and television movies such as The Herd (1999), eXistenZ (1999), Sea People (1999), The Passion of Ayn Rand (1999),Vinyl (2000), waydowntown (2000), Cinderella and Me (2001), The Art of Woo (2002), Rub & Tug (2002), Trudeau (2002), The Event (2003), Public Domain (2004), and the upcoming co-production Clean, which had its English-Canadian debut at this year's edition of TIFF. As Toronto Star film critic Geoff Pevere points out in the Special Edition of Take One that examines the so-called Toronto new wave (now available on newsstands and for purchase on Take One's Web site), "[McKellar is] the closet thing English-Canadian cinema has to a household name ... [his] contributions are so abundant and crucial it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to imagine that cinema without him."

His latest is a character-driven comedy about the innate ridiculousness of child actors and their parents in a culture where the kids act too old and adults act too young. It's also a spoof on American runaway productions and an incisive take on Hollywood as seen through the eyes of Canadians. McKellar stars as Rick, an idealist and failed experimental filmmaker/slacker turned production driver for an American blockbuster being shot in Toronto, who is drawn into a world of American stardom that is beyond his comprehension. Forced to play babysitter to a brat who suddenly disappears from the set, it is Rick who needs to get his life together and come to grips with the films he wants to make. Childstar also stars Jennifer Jason Leigh (eXistenZ, Single White Female), Dave Foley (Kids in the Hall, Dick), Michael Murphy (Year of Living Dangerously, Batman Returns), Eric Stoltz (Pulp Fiction) and (at the time of filming) the 15-year-old Mark Rendall, who already has a number of film and television credits under his belt and is the current voice of Arthur on the very popular children's show of the same name.

Childstar was given a Special Presentation screening at this year's Toronto International Film Festival and will be distributed by TVA for general release in the fall.

Where did the idea for Childstar come from?

I was at the Oscar[R] party for The Red Violin [2000], and we went to the Dreamworks party afterwards. I found myself sitting at the bar talking to Haley Joel Osment. We were talking about the business and about the Oscars[R], which were the longest in history. It was late at night, and what was interesting about this was that after about 10 minutes into the conversation I thought, "Oh my God, I'm talking to an 11-year-old." It was a Hollywood party and it didn't occur to me that any children were present. Instead, I was talking to a celebrity. He seemed to perfectly encapsulate American stardom. This was just after The Sixth Sense and before A.I. He was an example of something, but I didn't know what. He was preternaturally mature, extremely young but unnatural. There was something spooky about it, if you thought about it. He sort of summed up in an instant all my feelings about Hollywood, all my Hollywood experiences. I carried that away with me. At the time I was working on Blindness, which was a heavy slog, and I was obsessed by it. Then this idea formulated in my head about a child star. It was rumbling around in my head and I was entertaining it as a lighter diversion, but the more I thought about it the more I became intrigued. I told my idea to Mike Goldbach, who, at the time, was a writer up at the Canadian Film Centre.

He was a writer-in-residence?

That's right. I had been at the Film Centre as an advisor, or mentor, or whatever the term they use at the Centre. I liked his work and he showed me a feature script. While we were talking about that, I told him about my idea for a film about an American child star who comes up to Canada to shoot a big Hollywood film but runs away from the set. He really responded to it. So I asked if he wanted to run with it.

The American film the kid is shooting up here is called ...?

The First Son. It's a film about a president who is kidnapped by terrorists and his son, who has come home from summer camp, has to take over.