by MATTHEW HAYS

David Gow says his friend’s story stuck with him. It was the ’80s, and a then-recession-weary Montreal was experiencing a surge in skinhead violence, in particular homophobic violence, which occasionally resulted in a murder. And Gow’s friend, a gay man, was doing nothing more than sitting on Ste-Catherine street in the Village, when a few skinheads knocked him to the ground and kicked him in the head repeatedly.

That act of hatred, Gow recalls, got him thinking. “When I would see skinheads in the street, it was a strange connection. I mean, there are different kinds of skinheads, but the Nazi skinheads, that was always strange. I’m Jewish—how do I respond to these men? What kind of dialogue might develop between us?”

Gow, an actor and playwright who has divided his time and work between Montreal and Toronto, decided to develop this line of imagination into a play. The result, Cherry Docs, was first performed in Toronto eight years ago. The scenario clearly resonated with audiences there, as it sold out for weeks and has seen subsequent productions throughout North America and Europe. The plot has a Nazi skinhead attack an immigrant and beat him up in the street. When in prison, he is assigned a court-appointed lawyer, who happens to be Jewish. The lawyer, understandably, is torn: everyone has a right to legal defence, he strongly believes, but here is a Nazi skinhead who would kill him, given a chance.

As part of his research, Gow contacted a number of lawyers who’d been in just that position. Some, he found, had excused themselves from their respective cases, finding it too difficult to bear defending racists. But others remained, despite the strain. It was this terrible tension that Gow found intriguing.

Stage Two: casting coup

Now Gow has adapted his play into a feature film, Steel Toes, which premieres at this year’s Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois. And while getting any film in the can is an achievement, Gow, who adapted the screenplay and co-directed with Mark Adam, managed something of a casting coup for his lead performance: David Strathairn, the acclaimed American actor currently Oscar-nominated for his role in Good Night, and Good Luck, stars as the Jewish lawyer facing a crisis of conscience. As it turns out, Gow and Strathairn met years ago, when the actor played the role in the Philadelphia production of Cherry Docs; they stayed in touch, and when Gow began work on the film adaptation of his play, he wanted Strathairn to reprise the role.

Gow cast Andrew Walker in the role of the skinhead, and Marina Orsini as the lawyer’s wife. With a capable cast in place, Gow says the challenge became taking something that had proven so successful on stage and making it work for the big screen. For most films, there’s not a great deal of rehearsal time, but Gow insisted on rehearsal before the shoot began. And he thought back to a number of successful adaptations, including Requiem for a Heavyweight, Twelve Angry Men, Marty and David Wellington’s production of Long Day’s Journey Into Night.

“There’s a whole sub-genre of successful film adaptations of stage work, including A Streetcar Named Desire, Night of the Iguana and even Kiss of the Spider Woman,” he says. “I was looking at all of those, and what made them work so well. Frankly, I’m not big into the car explosions. I’m a playwright, so I really like the talky films.”

And when capturing the extreme drama of two divergent personalities clashing, Gow said he erred on the side of caution. “I captured everything. It’s sort of the Penny Marshall school of filmmaking. She shoots a great deal and then cuts it back in the editing process. It was much the same way for me—I would get scenes in close-up, wide shots, so the editor had a wide range of options.”

Gow likens the process of making a low-budget film like Steel Toes to mountain climbing. “It’s an endurance test. But the actors, the crew, they were completely fantastic. It was important to me to set the movie in Montreal, because of our multicultural make-up here. I can see why filmmaking becomes addictive for some. There’s a performance high that comes with it that is incredible.”

Steel Toes screens at the NFB Theatre on Wednesday, Feb. 22, at 8 p.m. as part of the 24th edition of Les Rendez-Vous du Cinéma Québécois

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