Sigourney Weaver: Well, I heard about the script from Alan, because we were discussing doing a play together, and he said. “Well, I’m doing this script.” He said “You should really take a look at it. There’s a wonderful part for you in it.” And he told me the story, and I said “Wow”. I said “They’ll never think of me for that”

Carrie Ann Moss: And I read it, It took me away, you know. And I find scripts lately that I’ve been reading. It’s rare that I read them in one sitting, and I read this in one sitting. And that’s always a really good sign when you, you know, can’t put it down.

SW: And then they sent me the script, which I thought was … well, just had such a wonderful balance of, first of all, comedy, and romance and, I think, some real truth about a rather rare subject, which is someone who has autism.

CAM: I just thought it was so beautifully written and so human, and I haven’t ever, you know, read anything about autism later in my life. We all hear about children with autism but w don’t hear about down the road and what life looks like.

ME: It seems quite often the biggest obstacle between the script and the film seems to be the casting. There’s a whole game about to get names towards the script and how to get the right actors for the part, and how to get the agents to read the script fot the actors if there’s no money on the table. What happened to us was that Angela Pell had written the part of Alex for Alan Rickman, and Alan Rickman’s a British actor, and so, we’re British filmmakers, so it was fairly easy to at least have a phone conversation with his agent about wheter Alan would like to read the script, and it was easier to have that conversation, because we could say that the script had been written for him. And Gina, the producer, and Angela, the writer, and myself arranged to meet him one morning for breakfast to kind of pitch the film to him. He’d read the script already. And he walked in, and in a very Alan Rickman sort of way said “Well, if the script were a house, I’d tell you to take it off the market.” Kind of “Where do I sign?”

MOVIE
CAM: So, Mr Snow Drifter, what’s your story?
AR: Me? Oh, there’s nothing much to say, really.
CAM: Oh, come on. I can tell by looking at your face that you have some interesting baggage.
AR: I don’t have a baggage. I have haulage.
CAM: see, I told you.

ME: But to be honest, Sigourney became involved because Alan knew her from Galaxy Quest. They’d done a film together before. And he just said Sigourney would be amazing for this part. And we concurred. We said “Yes, she would. Do you think she would read it?” You know, we did manage to get the script to her and get her to read it without too much fuss, because Alan had kind of helped us do that. And it was a very similar story with Sigourney as it was with Alan, really, when we actually met her and she talked about the script. She obviously really wanted to do it. And we found ourselves with Sigourney Weaver and Alan Rickman attached, before really had any money to make the film. But you know, that makes every conversation about the film easier and it went from there, really.
I suppose it’s fair to say that we thought of Carrie-Ann Moss, because we were looking for a Canadian actress and I have to say, it makes casting sound really simple, but it was a very similar story. She’d read the script and really liked the part. You know, in a way, it all goes back to Angela’s writing, the fact that she ‘d written these characters that actors just wanted to leap on.

MOVIE:
COP: Oh, I’ve a spare ticket for a magician up at the Legion on Wednesday, if you’re interested.
CAM: What’s he gonna do, Clyde? Make you disappear?

ME: In a funny sort of way, the hardest bit of casting was Vivienne, because she had to be this sort of force-of.nature type of kid who has to have a massive… Make a big impression on the audience before disappearing from the story, really. So she has to be a sort of indelible, and you might have to remember her and like her, but sort of feel like she’s a little, kind of… a bit of a pain in the arse as well, because she persuades Alan’s character to give her a lift. We found Emily Hampshire, and we found her really early on in the process.Young Canadian actress, and you know, to be honest, she was Vivienne. We spent a lot of time looking for other people who might become Vivienne, and she kept sort of… We kept talking abut her, Gina, the producer, and Myself. She was just always there. You sort feel you can’t cast the first person you meet, but she was practically one of the first people we met, and we did cast her, And I’m really glad we did. Not only is she really good in the role, there’s something about her that reminds you of Sigourney. I don’t know, there’s something that makes her credible as Sigourney’s daughter. And I don’t know what that is, but sort of added to the whole relationship within the film. Because they don’t actually meet within the film, but you feel that they’ve had a life longer together before the film starts. It0s quite a hard thing to pull off but I think she did it.

(KITAKA SASSA by TAKEMI KAKIZAKI)

(ANATHEMS FOR A 17-YEAR-OLD GIRL)

ME: Every film has a sort of central problem, and the central problem of this film, if you like, to one thing you had to get right was the autism, or at least the film’s attitude towards autism.

SW: I feel relieved in a way that our production was postponed, because in the end I jhad almost a year to research.

(00.07.25) -2-

AR: Well, It’s a very strange experience. I mean, she’s done so much work and research and is brilliantly convincing. And I have deliberately done none.

(00.07.40)

ME: Of course, one of the greatest things that we had was Sigourney Weaver researching autism. So in a sense, she was in charge of Linda’s autism. She’d lived with a woman called Ros Blackburn, who’s an adult autistic woman, for a while. So she had tha autism down, if you like, before starting.

SW: She and I kind of hit it off when we met, and I ended up spending a number of days with her. And I don’t think, except for her generosity, I would have been able to take such a leap, because every time I approach a scene I just try to be accurate. And of course, I’m npt playing her. At a certain point Linda takes over, but I care very much that all the physical aspects are accurate.

(00.08.25) -3-

AR: One of the things which I suppose is… It’s hard to deal with, but it’s also quite freeing to deal with, is the fact that she doesn’t make eye contact. So when she speaks to you she’s speaking to yo here somewhere or off somewhere.

MOVIE:
SW: I like useful people. And people who like doing the things I like doing.

AR: Huge intelligence. Hears things in a very selective way, but doesn’t make eye contact.

ME: Working with Alan Rickman and Sigiourney Weaver and Carrie-Ann Moss was extremely scary prospect, because they are thoroughbreds, and in the case of Sigourney and Alan, obviously, are actors who, one has admired from when one was growing up. I mean, Alien is one of the films of my youth. So you go, well… It’s hard to sort of find a language for those people because you admire them a bit too much, really.

(00.09.17) -4-

AR: I said to somebody the other day, I said, “I feel like the filler in a rather remarkable sandwich”, because I got these two very iconic women, and actors, and they’re both very fine actors. And they are playing two sides of a coion, in a way, because an important part of the story is the growing, or hopefully growing relationship between Linda and Maggie, which sort of resolves itself towards the end of the film. So it need two strong women.

(00.09.35)
Fuori scena chiesa e Scarabeo.
(00.10.00)
Fuori scena con camionista
Marc Evans benedice Alan
binocolo e anello
(00.10.15) 

SW: Alan is, to me, one of the greaters actors. I think it’s a quite challenging part. And I think he desplays all of these different relationships with such subtlety and such intelligence. And he’s quite dry, in that sort of, kind of, withering way that Alan has. And great irony.

CAM: Sigourney is just wonderful, and I adore Alan. We’re having such a good time. He makes me laugh, which is, like, the greatest thing, I think.

SW: I haven’t worked with Carrie-Anne. Well, she’s lovely, and I’m afraid that I only have a couple of seconds with her, because Linda is, you know, either in her own world, in her backyard, or she’s preoccupied with people being in her house or some of the other issues she has. So we con’t have much to do together, but it’s been fun, the little that we’ve had.

MOVIE

CAM: Well, the first few days, I was really respectful of, and were shooting in her house, and I hated being in her house, because I felt like “I shouldn’t be in here. She doesn’t want me here. Not Sigourney, but Linda doesn’t want me there.

ME: What made everything easier was having a really good rehearsal period. And Angela, the writer, was present, and we sat… It was a lot of sitting around tables and discussing the script, and actually, they brought a lot of themselves to the script. And so quality is quality, really, because they are who they are because they’re so good. So, it was actually easy, at the end of the day, to direct them than… Even though there was a sort of nervousness there, because they took charge of their parts, they just knew what they wanted to do. And the rest was just discussion.

CAM: everyone is so on this movie, the producers… Niv and Gina are just gorgeous. And Marc is just so lovely. When I first met him, on my first meeting I thought he seemed really lovely but I couldn’t understand a word he was saying, ‘cause he’s got a strong Welsh accent.

SW: He gives you very delicate, very insightful directions, and he’s incredibly enthusiastic and supportive, very generous. I’ve worked with some wonderful, talented directors. He is, I think, especially joyous about what he’s doing, and committed, and happy with his group and with what he’s doing, and that I think, makes for a very happy set.

ME: In general, the Canadian crews are just amazing. They’re just… They obviously look so much healthy than we do, and they always seem like they work hard and play hard. I know that’s a bit of cliché, but they do. They’ve got a great sense of humour and a fantastic attitude to work. And we shot the film in 27 days, which is a real testament, I think, to how hard everybody worked. It was really really happy shoot, from the point of view of working with the Canadian crews and everything. One of the things about co-productions, of course, Gina Carter, the producer, and I turned up there, and we knew that we had to use some Canadian crew, but you don’t know who they’re gonna be. And sometimes that really works in your favour, And one of the nice surprises on the shoot was meeting a photographer like Steve Cosens, who did the cinematography on this film. He’s just… He’s a real Canadian talent. And in a way, it was a conduit, I think, between us and Canada, ‘cause he comes from small-town Canada and really relished the prospect of shooting in that landscape and we had a lot of discussions about how the film should look. And we came up with this idea… I don’t know where it came from exactly, but this sort of Super-8-y idea that somehow… I felt that the film should feel like somebody’s memory, like those… sometimes you go “Remember those three days we spent in that place?”, and because it’s a place that was undergoing change, the snow was melting, that it was like the way you might think back on it. So in a sense it was like a whole movie of Alan’s time there.  A lot of the colours are in the landscape already, but it’s not totally… We weren’t going for a total realism, it’s not… It’s got a little touch of otherness to it, a little unreality.

ME: Well, Wawa’s a town in Northern Ontario in the middle of nowhere. It was suggested to us by Niv Fichman, the Canadian producer, because it was Glenn Gould’s, the Canadian pianist’s, favourite town. It’s called Wawa ‘cause “wawa” is the sound of the Canadian goose and it has a very large Canadian goose sitting proudly at the entrance of the town. And it’s just got a kind of a look. It’s not the prettiest town in the world, but it’s got something. Something that a small town… A small town in the script seemed to require, which is a kind of, I suppose, an eccentricity, and a charm.

SW: I’m so thrilled that we got to start on location. I think it’s a great way of getting to know everybody. And it’s really helpful to me as an actor to know what world I’m in. And Wawa is very beautiful. Everyone was incredibly welcoming and excited to have us.

ME: There was  definite contact between the locals and the actors, and we almost became part of the furniture, which is, it’s great when that happens. People going about their daily business while we were shooting a scene in the high street. And really a lot of the town and the people that you see in the film that’s just… That’s what Wawa is, that’s the reality of that place.

SW: I kind of felt righy at home there, really, mountains and lakes and stuff like that, like we have in upstate New York, and really nice people, really generous people. Coming from New York City, where people go “Oh, another film crew’s in the town. My God. I’ll never get downtown” or something. They were like, quite pleased to have us there, which was really sweet.

(00.16.00) -5-

AR:I like it. You don’t have to travel far to work. You’re filming, sort of, just outside the door or one minute down the road or something. And you’re very focussed on the work, ‘cause there’s nothing to do.

(00.16.20)

ME: One of the main reasons for going to Wawa, as well, was that we needed snow. The title of the film is Snow Cake, and the snow is almost a character in the film. It’s part of the world of the film. And the production went later and later, as productions do. So we really shot the film in spring, not in winter. In a beautiful, Northern Ontario spring, with the thaw happening. But as the thaw increased, the snow decreased, so that we… Luckily, we were in Wawa, and the town was behind the film, so we had a lot of help from local labour just digging snow out from the lake, into the back of pickup trucks, and depositing it in the back garden of Sigourney’s house in the film.

(00.17.00) -6-

AR: we had a freak period of 13 days of unbroken sunshine, which, on the face of it, with a film called Snow Cake, you might think would be a problem, but the special effects people and the snow pourer-downers and the wheelbarrows full of it that had been collected from gardens and kept in storage came out by the truckload, and were dumped on gardens. The mixture of snow and slush and sunshine, I think, has been much better for the film because I think it gives a visual lightness that it really will benefit from.

(00.17.40)

SW: I always imagined the world, Linda’s world, to be like a snow globe where the snow was plentiful and pure, and went for miles and stuff like that. And of course, we just had, like, little, rather pathetic piles of snow sometimes, and it wasn’t always clean. I felt that hanging on to little remnants of snow that were left actually was much more real. And that I think Linda differentiates between good snow and bad snow. It’s all snow, and she loves it all, and so, in an odd way, something that we had tried to avoid, which was lack of snow, ended up working for us.

ME: In a way, it was quite lucky that we ended up shooting the film in spring, because in a way, what the film is about is the thawing of Alan Rickman’s character of Alex. He starts off as a frosty character with a lot of stuff going on  inside him. Through meeting these people in this town, in particular Sigourney’s character and Carrie-Anne’s character, he starts to thaw. As a person, he starts to come out of himself. And so, sometimes the weather goes with you, and sometimes it doesn’t. But in a way spring really helped us tell the story.

What was weird about this film, that we got the cast together quite quickly, and what was difficult was getting the money together, even with our cast. And sometimes you do wonder how hard it’s gotta be to make a film like this, because it seems to me to make perfect sense as a piece of casting and a film, now that we’ve managed to make it. But were severely delayed, and that, you know, it tried our patience a lot, and it particularly tried the patience of the actors who were committed to the film. But it wasn’t a big-budget film, and they were trying to make time in their schedule to make sure they were still available. And I must say they became much more a part of the production than actors normally do, because we’re all living in a state of high tension until the first day of shooting, you know.

CAM: You know, I can only imagine that this story will give some people a lot of peace, I think. People that are dealing, that are living with autism. There is something very conscious in this story about the experience of autism that takes it from the observer thinking , “Oh, what a drag” to… That maybe there’s something more to the experience than it being all bad or all tragic.

(00.20.05) -7-

AR: You know, this has been a real labour of love, this film, and it just goes to show what you can achieve when enough people get their energies together and really commit to a piece of writing that has a real story to tell. I mean, Angela has a nine-year-old autistic son, but she hasn’t been indulgent about that. She has moved that story to an adult autistic. I think that’s something that none of us know much about. So it’s gonna be an education to people on one level, but it’s hugely entertaining and very funny and touching, as well.

ME: Why.. why the film seems to win you over, or the script won me over, anyway, was because it’s sort of a grown up film. It’s about somebody who… It’s not about kids. It’s about somebody, you know, in their middle age, who’s been through some hard times, who finds a new angle on life and carries on. You sort of feel at the end of the film that Alex’s life will be very different and better. And you sort of go on that journey with him.