Murder on the Rock

>> Mary Walsh on her directorial debut, the Newfoundland mystery-comedy Young Triffie

by MATTHEW HAYS

But two minutes into our interview, and Mary Walsh is talking politics. And that’s a topic she doesn’t take lightly. On Prime Minister Harper: “He’s beginning to look like 300 pounds of condemned veal, isn’t he?”

I suppose the surprise would be if you sat down to talk to Walsh and she didn’t say something nasty about a politician. Walsh was one of the founders and co-anchors of This Hour Has 22 Minutes, the comedic take on Canadian current events. Several seasons ago, she stepped back from the show (she now appears only occasionally) so that she could pursue other artistic endeavours, including other series, and film and stage work.

Now she’s hocking her latest project, her feature directorial debut, Young Triffie. The film is an off-kilter comedy about a young Newfoundland ranger (Fred Ewanuick of Corner Gas) sent to Swyers Harbour to investigate a sheep mutilation in 1947. But upon his arrival, the bungling officer finds that the stakes have been raised, when the corpse of Young Triffie shows up on the shore. Suddenly, he finds himself in charge of a murder investigation.

Walsh was very familiar with the film’s source material. In 1985, she had commissioned writer Ray Guy to pen a play, Young Triffie’s Been Made Away With. She has since directed it on stages throughout the eastern provinces, to rave reviews and suggestions it be translated to the big screen. “Translating it turned out to be quite tricky,” Walsh concedes. “I had been working on it with Ray Guy, and we’d taken various runs at it. In the play, the village is really the hero, and it’s about the village’s resistance to colonialism. But people told me that the script just won’t work if the village is the protagonist. That meant a huge overhaul to the script.”

Learning curves

And how did Walsh handle her first time as a feature-film director? “Being on the ground as a director was fine. At times I felt a bit overwhelmed, but the cinematographer [Eric Cayla] and I sat down and planned each shot very carefully. It was post-production that was a real learning curve. There was so much to learn, I had to just get over being heartbroken about not knowing my way around and deal with it. Denise Robert [one of the film’s producers] was very generous with feedback.”

“COMEDY IS LIKE MATH”: Walsh

Walsh reports that she learned a great deal about directing from simply watching those she’s worked with, among them vet Henry Sarwer-Foner: “He directed me in This Hour and also in Hatching, Matching & Dispatching. His sense of timing is impeccable, and let’s face it, God is in the details. I also acted on stage in A Moon for the Misbegotten, directed by Martha Henry. I had directed for stage, but when I worked with her, I felt as though I knew nothing. She is simply amazing.”

What Walsh strove for with Young Triffie was “a cross between Fargo and Anne of Green Gables.” And that old saw about comedy being serious business? “God it is. I was surrounded by people who understood this, like Andrea Martin, Andy Jones and Cathy Jones [CODCO] and Rémy Girard. “There are much more laughs on the set of a drama or tragedy. People need a release there. Comedy is like math or something. Where do I stand while we do this? You’ve got to get it right.”

Walsh says the Young Triffie shoot did suffer its share of maladies—the superstitious might even suggest a curse. Andrea Martin suffered a severe fungal eye infection and had to go to Miami for treatment, shutting down the shoot for a month. Walsh broke a finger, and her brother, who also worked on the shoot, broke his leg. “No animals were hurt, but many Walshes were during the filming of this movie,” she notes.

Does Walsh have any theories about why Quebec’s film business is booming while English Canada’s still falters so severely? “The Quebec model is getting people out there, doing interviews and making sure the movie is in the press. We do it so badly in the rest of Canada, and no one seems to want to do it any differently. The next time someone tells me we can’t do something because it doesn’t work, I’m going to point out that what we’re doing doesn’t work anyway, so we may as well try something new.”

Young Triffie opens Friday, April 6

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