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Getting Dirty >> Bruce Sweeney's tips on how to make Canadian film filthy by MATTHEW HAYS
And Sweeney has certainly followed his own advice with Dirty, which profiles a group of characters with a litany of screwy and disturbing obsessions. From the film's opening sequence, in which a naked man searches a house for his sexual mate in a kinky game of hide and seek, Sweeney sets the tone for this all-out malady fest. Turns out the two are in an obsessive, twisted relationship--as is virtually everyone in the film. "Too much of the cinema I see is sanitized," says Sweeney. "You know exactly what's going to happen; it's stuck in a genre convention that's boring. Not enough Canadian directors take enough chances. Maybe the funding, with people having to go to so many different places, is the problem. It just leads to too many compromises." Sweeney's style does involve compromise, however. After working with British demigod director Mike Leigh (Secrets and Lies, Career Girls), Sweeney said he experienced a revelation about the process of making a film through a series of improvisatory sessions with his actors. Sweeney would enter the scene with subject matter; the actors and director would then bat out the material, slicing through each issue and motion. "The subject matter would serve as a springboard to the rest of the movie," he explains. "Most improv doesn't actually work. Only one tenth of it does, really. The rest you cast out." Despite the solid international reputations of Leigh and John Cassavetes, among many others, some directors still frown upon extensive use of improvisation in the filmmaking process, arguing it is an affront to the script itself. "These are directors with too much of an investment in the oh-so-precious words they've written," charges Sweeney. "The writer should be taken to task all the time." Sweeney does, though, find the festival experience unnerving, something he describes as his least favorite part of the moviemaking process. "You're never sure how it's going to be received. I'm surprised at the good responses to Dirty. I don't see filmmaking as a contest, about wanting to be liked. "These characters, essentially, aren't that likable. Well, they are to me, because I'm a cynical fuck, but most people aren't like that. "To an extent, each film is autobiographical: the film is you. You put it out there, and you're just never sure how it's going to go--especially a film like Dirty." Dirty opens Friday, October 16 at the Cinéma du Parc. See repertory listings for showtimes
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Vancouver director-screenwriter Bruce Sweeney has some advice for Canadians in the biz: whatever you do, don't hold back, don't self-censor, just let it all hang out.