When Larry Weinstein comes to town, it’s usually to screen a work-in-progress or a new film at the Victoria Film Festival.
This time the Emmy-nominated filmmaker and Rhombus Media co-founder has gone a step further. As well as doing a Q&A via Skype after screenings of Our Man in Tehran (click here for review) tonight and Saturday at the Vic Theatre, Weinstein recently came back to shoot footage for his new documentary about Olympic medallist Clara Hughes — using crew from his acclaimed Iran hostage crisis documentary.
“What would really be great is if we could show it at the next Victoria festival and get Clara there,” said Weinstein, whose previous projects showcased here include his witty political satire Mulroney: The Opera; Inside Hana’s Suitcase, his heart-wrenching documentary about a Jewish Czech girl who died in a concentration camp; and Mozartballs, his documentary on Mozart maniacs.
Weinstein is travelling with Hughes on her 12,000-kilometre bicycle ride across Canada to raise awareness about the impact of the stigma associated with mental illness. His crew is chronicling the drama and challenges during her journey, part of Bell’s Talk Canada campaign, which ends July 1 in Ottawa.
Along the way, the six-time Olympic speedskating and cycling medallist who lives with clinical depression is listening to and motivating young people who have faced “debilitating obstacles” because of their illness, or are afraid to seek help.
“We’ve been parachuting into places she’s going to, editing as we go,” said Weinstein, who filmed Hughes during an uplifting rally at the legislature two months into her ride.
The weather had been severe everywhere up to that point and Victoria was the first place she really felt spring had arrived, Weinstein said.
“Everyone knows about this epic ride, but her odyssey takes so much courage and is hugely personal and there’s this incredible altruism.”
Weinstein is also filming young people sharing their own stories, and Hughes’s husband Peter Guzman, along for the ride, is keeping a video diary.
The crew, whose next stop is Hughes’s hometown of Winnipeg this weekend, will have shadowed Hughes on her travels from Toronto, with stops enroute in cities including Hamilton, Montreal, Halifax, St. John’s, Iqaluit and Inuvik.
Their subject has kept them on their toes, he said.
“She doesn’t like to prepare speeches ahead of time, and she drips with sincerity,” he said.
“The more I know her, the more compassion I feel for her.”
While Weinstein hasn’t settled on a title, Clara’s Big Ride keeps popping up, but he has some reservations.
“It kind of feels like Pee Wee’s Big Adventure,” he said, laughing. “There’s something disarmingly naive about it, but it’s a very heavy subject.”
When Weinstein was suggested as a good fit for the documentary airing this fall on CTV, it was partly because of The 13th Man, his 2012 film about the CFL.
“It almost sounds like an Orson Welles movie, doesn’t it?” quips Weinstein, who wouldn’t be mistaken for a jock. “I’d never even seen a CFL game in my life.”
The 13th Man, which focuses on the love affair between the Saskatchewan Roughriders and their loyal fans, became TSN’s most-watched documentary.
Although perceived as a “sports” film, it was the human element Bell Media executives remembered.
Whatever Weinstein tackles — football fandom, musical genius or former Canadian ambassador to Iran Ken Taylor’s heroism — he’s always fuelled by passion.
“I’m so easily influenced,” he jokes. “I was never going to go to a concentration camp in my life [for Inside Hana’s Suitcase] and then you couldn’t pull me out of there.”He’s thrilled about the warm reception for Our Man in Tehran, which he directed with Drew Taylor.
“The American response was phenomenal,” he said, referring to feedback at festivals such as Full Frame in Durham, N.C., where it was named best documentary feature.
“I thought they’d like the film but not that much,” he said, recalling some surprising reaction in the U.S.
“When Joe Clark said: ‘I admire the morality of Jimmy Carter,’ the audience laughed so hard,” he said. “And they laughed when [CIA agent] Tony Mendez refers to how the Canadian government arranged these fake passports and was asked what was the likelihood of the American Congress doing that. Not a chance!”
Weinstein said it was surreal sitting next to Clark at the Toronto International Film Festival première.
“You could only imagine what’s going through his mind. I was watching his reaction and he was riveted. You could almost hear him clucking.”
The ultimate compliment came when the former Canadian prime minister rendered his verdict.
“He said: ‘I’ve seen Argo and I’ve seen Our Man in Tehran and the truth is a better story.’ ”
Review
What: Our Man in Tehran
Where: The Vic, 808 Douglas St.
When: Tonight and Saturday, 7 p.m.
Rating: 4/5 stars
Joe Clark and Flora MacDonald might not have the sex appeal or box-office pull of actor-director Ben Affleck in his Oscar-winning thriller Argo. However, the former Canadian prime minister and foreign affairs minister deliver star power of a different sort in this taut documentary from first-time filmmaker Drew Taylor and film veteran Larry Weinstein that tells the real story of how big a role Canada played in hiding and extracting six U.S. Embassy officials during the Iran hostage crisis in 1979-80.
Title character Ken Taylor, then Canada’s young ambassador to Iran, provides historical context augmented by input from his wife, Pat. The film also includes former CIA operative William Daugherty, one of the 52 people held hostage after Iranian militants seized the U.S. embassy; journalists Joe Schlesinger and Carole Jerome; and a surprisingly understated Tony Mendez, the retired CIA agent Affleck portrayed.
A nostalgic and refreshingly balanced tapestry of commentary and archival footage, this fascinating flashback also corrects inaccurate reports that Taylor housed all six hostages, rather than two, and reveals the complexities of getting the Canadian government to issue phoney passports so the hidden Americans could escape by posing as a Canadian film crew scouting locations. It also shows how a CIA technical blooper almost botched the operation. By the time it’s over, you’ll feel proud to be a Canadian.
Michael D. Reid