As our local production industry inches toward the fourth quarter in a year with a surprisingly thin midsection, it’s easy to see why many stakeholders have adopted a “one day at a time” philosophy.
A resurgence of film and TV shoots has been slow in coming, with The Gourmet Detective 3 and A Convenient Groom leading a sparse pack of early-year shoots, followed by a dry summer.
It seems fitting, then, that a particularly promising fall project features Alcoholics Anonymous, the international mutual-aid fellowship that popularized the “one day at a time” slogan.
Lizzy Caplan, star of Showtime’s Masters of Sex and Now You See Me 2, is slated to arrive in late fall to shoot Friend of Bill, a dark, character-driven comedy scripted by Harper Dill.
Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker Amy Rice (By the People: The Election of Barack Obama) is directing, with Caplan playing a writer forced to take a sabbatical after being arrested for public intoxication.
Returning to her idyllic hometown, Caplan’s character discovers that finding solace and sobriety is more difficult than she imagined.
She finds herself negotiating a complicated relationship with her mother and attracting the attention of two male suitors — a former teacher and an eccentric who volunteers at the AA meetings she secretly attends.
“Friend of Bill has been a passion project for both Lizzy and I since we first became aware of Harper’s screenplay,” said Jessica Elbaum of Gloria Sanchez Productions.
The female-centric offshoot of executive producer Will Ferrell’s Gary Sanchez Productions is reuniting with Bron Studios, the Burnaby-based company with which it partnered on the Kristen Wiig indie drama Welcome to Me.
“It’s rare to embark on a project with an all-female creative team,” Caplan said. “We take this exciting responsibility quite seriously.”
Meanwhile, Front Street Pictures has returned with plans to shoot two more Hallmark Channel movies — Rose Parade, which starts shooting mid-September, and an unconfirmed project in October.
“I’m excited because we had enough advance notice to be able to get a lot of our Victoria crew together,” said producer Allen Lewis, the Vancouver-based company’s vice-president of production.
“We’re getting the team back together that has done a lot of productions here like Freshman Father, Spooksville and the Gourmet Detective movies. We have a shorthand.”
Front Street Pictures began setting up production offices here this week for a slate that could potentially include sequences for another picture in Hallmark’s Signed, Sealed, Delivered franchise.
Lewis, whose crews recently wrapped The Irresistible Blueberry Café in Vancouver, filmed a Signed, Sealed, Delivered movie here last year but said he wanted to avoid shooting here this summer.
“Downtown is busy, you’ve got cruise ships coming in and the last thing you need is to have your streets clogged with film trucks,” said Lewis, who prefers shooting here off-season.
The Signed, Sealed, Delivered franchise still has standing sets, including its Dead Letter Office, in storage and ready for action in Brittania Beach, he said.
“We’d like to do what we did on Blueberry, where we spent a week shooting in Gibsons. We hope to get out and see more diverse locations,” he said.
Rose Parade, scheduled to air New Year’s Day, is set in Pasadena, California, home to the annual Tournament of Roses parade, and focuses on a family with a float-building business.
One of the crew’s challenges, Lewis said, will be recreating a giant Rose Parade float, complete with thousands of flowers.
“We’re looking at a warehouse in Esquimalt,” said Lewis, who hopes to shoot at locations including the Roundhouse, doubling as the Tournament of Roses house, local arts and crafts homes and on lower Johnson Street.
Victoria film commissioner Kathleen Gilbert, whose staff is working with producers of two potential features, said she’s cautiously optimistic about an upswing, adding there could be seven projects by January.
“We had a strong start and what looks like a strong end and a weaker summer season,” she said.
Local viewers can see Chesapeake Shores, the Hallmark mini-series starring Victoria’s Meghan Ory and Jesse Metcalfe filmed in Parksville-Qualicum this summer, on Thursday nights on the W network.
It has also been hard to miss the moving, wedding-themed Volvo commercial filmed on Ocean Boulevard last May.
Pup Star, Air Bud Entertainment’s singing dogs action-comedy starring Makenzie Moss filmed here last fall, is also coming soon.
It premières Sept. 17 as a Cineplex Entertainment Family Favourites presentation.
