"Mars was the quintessential star," writes Loughman online. "He loved being on set, made friends with all the crew, did just what we needed, when we needed it... and all for cookies and a tickle behind the ears!" "He's such a primadonna," chides Hewlett.
Although the award-winning actor adores a good horror flick, he wanted to keep the audience for his directorial debut in their seats because of great story telling and performance, not white-knuckled terror. "I love those kind of movies, but I didn't want to make a film that was, uncomfortable. One that alienated its audience."
"I wanted to make a Pink Panther movie, you know? One that's naughty, but never dirty. Dark, but not nasty."
"And comedy comes from a release of tension, so there has to be some kind of threat of something going wrong."
Helping things along were Stargate producer John G. Lenic, cinematographer Jim Menard and other crew members from both Atlantis and SG-1.
"The Stargate people were so great," enthuses Hewlett. "These guys could be getting paying jobs, but there they are standing around in the freezing cold, on this property we were shooting on, with a nearby river rapidly encroaching." He also cites Natali and Phillips, who he's worked with on several occasions, as inspiring influences.
Though he's always harboured an interest in writing, Hewlett says he never really thought about directing, per se. “It’s the old cliché right? What I really want to do is direct. I never wanted that."
It's more about creative restlessness. All the more so, he insists, when you're gainfully employed as a performer.
“As an actor it’s very easy to settle. I actually think it’s really important to keep moving. Especially as an actor, the further you move along in your working life -- anything you can do to stand out in this industry is valuable."
"I learned that in L.A. You go to L.A. and you sit in a room and you know that 1000 to 1500 people have not got into this room that you’re sitting in, and there are still 50 to 100 people that will be in there going for the same part as you. The odds are so stacked against you ... you go in for an audition for someone who’s a redheaded, vampire loving, hearse driving Mormon, and there will be somebody who is that. And they’re going to get the part over you, who are pretending to be. That was very eye-opening to me."
So he took the risk, and "completely fell in love with the process".
"I went into it with the end in mind, I didn’t think about what happens between ‘I want to make a movie’, and ‘the movie’s finished and I’m showing it to people’. Every aspect of it was so much more interesting that I expected it to be.”
Despite the creative satisfaction, Hewlett says he and Loughman were warned they might be barking up a fruitless tree, that no one would give them even a DVD release for A Dog's Breakfast. So they hit on a master plan -- one that's led to a worldwide distribution deal with one of the industry's major players.
“Jane and I are huge nerds," he explains. "We try to apply everything to the Internet and technology. Back in the days of Cube, me being the geek, my little sister and I jumped in and started an Internet company for promoting films and television on the web. What’s funny is how hard it was to convince people to go for it back then!”
Hewlett says it wasn’t so much that the siblings were ahead of their time – more that the cultural economics hadn’t quite caught up.
“There’s not a lot of money in the Canadian film scene, and that’s what we were dealing with at the time,” he explains. ‘Effectively, it was ‘get the film shot’, and then you’re out of money.” Though filmmakers and other artists tend to put something aside for marketing these days, the point remains valid, especially when you’re dealing with content that’s heavily subsidised by government (which rarely allows for a laundry list of itemised promo costs post-production), or low-budget fare that’s doing it’s best just to get off the ground.
The actor also founded fusefilm.com, an Internet based networking forum for filmmakers.
Hewlett’s early work generating chatter about films online taught him a lesson that many content producers are only now processing.
“The big discovery that I had, which I was fascinated by, was that the flash and the glam means virtually nothing. After the first visit, it’s all about the information and the community.”
And community is something he has unique access to.
Superficially, it appears he and Loughman have tapped the much-buzzed ‘long tail’ of marketing, anointing existing fans of Hewlett and his work ‘squirrel minions’ and empowering them to market the film like crazy. Give them downloadable posters and they’ll put them up in their neighborhood. If you build it... and so on.
Venessa Paech Venessa Paech - Editor & Founder. Venessa holds a BFA from NYU. She has done the arts to death, and has been in love with the web since she "discovered" it at a CyberCafe in NYC in '93. She wants to be a podcaster when she grows up.
Doctor Who is a long-running award-winning British science fiction television programme (and a 1996 television film) produced by the BBC. The series shows the adventures of a mysterious time-traveller known as "the Doctor", who explores time and space in his TARDIS time ship with his companions, solving problems and righting wrongs.
Perl is a cross-platform scripted programming languge
All content ©2010 Geek Illustrated. 09 f9 11 02 9d 74 e3 5b d8 41 56 c5 63 56 88 c0
Venessa Paech - Editor & Founder. Venessa holds a BFA from NYU. She has done the arts to death, and has been in love with the web since she "discovered" it at a CyberCafe in NYC in '93. She wants to be a podcaster when she grows up.
GI Pin Up: Ella Morton
GI Rising Star: Tom Wood