As is the case with the majority of independent Canadian feature films produced each year, the story of Denis Côté’s Les États nordiques is the tale of a no budget, made-with-friends-on-the-run affair, shot outside of both urban American production sound stages and their industry standards, cut at home on Final Cut Pro, rejected from Cannes, and faced with limited domestic screening possibilities – likely also hampered in the English market by a Quebecois stigma. The film went on to win the Golden Leopard prize for best video at Locarno, but when it screened domestically at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival, it received negative press reaction, including possibly the most ignorantly scathing TIFF denunciation in recent memory, especially for a Canuck film.

Its final hopes for access to a domestic audience were dashed when it was forgotten by Film Circuit, TIFF’s side project that annually makes a list of the year’s 10 best Canadian films and then helps distribute them across the country at local film festivals. Whether there were 10 better – or perhaps, in safe programmer speak, ‘more accessible’ – Canadian films than LEN in 2005 is debatable. To be fair, there were both great and mildly interesting films released in Canada in 2005: two hilarious mock-docs on the music biz – It’s All Gone Pete Tong and The Life and Hard Times of Guy Terrifico – that graced the front page of two issues of this here rag; new (if not great) films by Cronenberg, Egoyan, Virgo, and Mehta; and C.R.A.Z.Y., the runaway smash out of Quebec that, last time I was walking the streets of Paris in April, was featured on posters everywhere.

But the real cinematic story of the year – or at least the most inspiring – was completely lost in the mainstream press shuffle, and even periodicals and magazines (including FilmCAN) dropped the ball. Les États nordiques is critic and filmmaker Côté’s story of a man who euthanizes his mother and then attempts to escape his consciousness in the far reaches of a small village in northern Quebec. And while the film didn’t exactly take the world (or even Canada) by storm, after a positive Cannes rejection note, Côté took the advice of Telefilm Canada and selectively rolled out his feature film to other international film festivals. Building on the screenings at Locarno and TIFF, the director was soon flooded with festival invites from around the globe, and LEN has since played at over 25 festivals worldwide.

While the film’s budget alone – an initial $70,000 in arts council funding produced the film, with $20,000 more helping to finishing it off – should be an inspiration to independent filmmakers across the country and globe, it’s Côté’s ethos that is most refreshing. A longtime cineaste, Côté exudes an energetic and no-nonsense rejection of the safe, stale, conventional industry model of production that consistently produces such middle of the road diddling in the majority of Quebecois and English Canadian cinema. Along with other international artists exploring realist tendencies within a fresh contemporary cinematic framework, Côté challenges these outdated models of not only how a film should be made, but also what ultimately makes it successful.

Ryan j NothWhere did you first study cinema?

Denis CÔtÉAt Ahuntsic College in Montreal between 1991 and 1993. I grew up watching an exaggerated amount of horror films, with a strong admiration for people like Dario Argento. Being very close friends with my teacher (who is now my director of photography!), he made me discover many filmmakers and strong films: Godard, Bresson, Garrel, Buñuel, etc. But one night, like many students, I had my own personal cinematic revelation: with a roommate, back to back, we watched L’important c’est d’aimer (Andrzej Zulawski) and Teorema (Pier Paolo Pasolini). Damage was done.

Ryan j NothAnd now who do you admire?

Denis CÔtÉPialat, Fassbinder and Bresson are still my favorites. Being a film critic helped me discover many trends and new filmmakers. I think somebody like Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Tropical Malady) is probably slowly revolutionizing a thing or two. Tsai Ming-liang, Jia Zhang-ke, Bela Tarr, Aleksandr Sokurov, and of course Claire Denis are some of my favorites.

Ryan j NothHow did you get into film criticism?

Denis CÔtÉHonestly by accident. I was a regular Cinematheque zombie between the age of 18 and 24. I bumped into a guy my age, he offered me the chance to talk about films on community radio. Then I got my own show for a couple of months. By accident again, I bumped into another guy asking me if I could write – I said I’d rather write than do radio. Two weeks after, in ‘99, I was Film Editor for Le Mirror (a Montreal cultural weekly), with no computer skills! Having no mentors or rules to follow, I was totally free. Needless to ask the question – being a filmmaker was the dream and the priority.

Ryan j NothWhat did you learn from your first films?

Denis CÔtÉI produced and directed all my short films with a serious minding. There was no money but there was curiosity and real ambition. I would always put English subtitles and try to submit the stuff somewhere. I work pretty fast and I’m unstoppable when my mind is set on an idea. Despite the low-budget and technical modesty, I guess a good half-dozen are still watchable.

Ryan j NothHow did the idea for Les États nordiques surface?

Denis CÔtÉHaving the guts to make a feature probably came with age, maturity and a real frustration. I made so many shorts and I was refused so many times by the institutions that I had the frustration to run somewhere at the end of the world, as soon as I could grab a couple of thousand somewhere... I had no script but a couple of ideas and a real desire to improvise with non-professionals. My concept landed on the good desk at the Canada Council and we got $60,000, plus $10,000 from the Quebec Arts Council. I got the money before writing the two-page script!

Ryan j NothHow did you choose your actor(s) Camera?

Denis CÔtÉChristian (LeBlanc) played in three or four of my shorts. He studied theatre and mime. I knew he would be comfortable with improvisation. We shot Les États nordiques with the Panasonic DVX-100A 24p. Some settings were made to assure a possible 35mm blow-up. I’m unfortunately not a technician and I must acknowledge that of course we use video for budget consideration.

Basically, we were seven friends, we rented a van, this small DV camera, and every morning I sat with my actor (the only pro in the film) and we knit something together on a day-by-day basis. I’d say 60 percent of the film comes from accidents and improv.

Ryan j NothHow did the scenario change during production?

Denis CÔtÉWe were in the dark; it was a day-by-day thing. You just don’t have time to think. You play with and you accept reality. There’s a real guy with a moustache wearing his green shirt in front of you... in real life he is a garbageman. It’s a big mistake to ask him to cut the moustache, wear the red t-shirt you bought for him and ask him to play the doctor. It’s sad that not that many directors are ready to trust reality. We always think we must change something for a script, for a whim or for lighting. I adapt to reality with the simple tools I have. Actually I’m afraid to have a big budget some day…

Ryan j NothWhen you were in production were you confident that the film would turn out OK?

Denis CÔtÉHaving made many, many low-budget shorts, I was pretty confident. It was my people, we knew we had the resources in Montreal to save something out of this. But I must admit that when the film was finished, we had no clue what kind of object we had in our hands... it was a very hybrid mixture of documentary and fiction. It was certainly not unique but I knew it was not for everybody. How can you be confident with a thing where no dialogue is spoken before the 18th minute?

Ryan j NothWhere did you edit the film, and how did the scenario change through editing?

Denis CÔtÉAt a friend’s house on Final Cut Pro, then we entered a professional studio for color-correction and mix. We had 12-13 hours of material only for a 12-day shoot. We played with all this stuff with some sort of rigor, we discussed a lot... then we had something. We screened it to some friends then cut about 12-15 minutes for a 94-minute final result. We finished this first version in January ‘05, came this close to being selected in Cannes. We won Golden Leopard video in Locarno and now I think we made 25-26 festivals – being screened in TIFF was a great help.

Ryan j NothHow did you see the film in relation to other Quebecois and Canadian cinema, both past and present?

Denis CÔtÉLes États nordiques is obviously a UFO. Many people in the industry cannot imagine doing a feature for under $100K. Doing it, self-promoting, self-distributing, etc., is of course a kind of statement. (My) being an ex-film critic is also a point of curiosity for many observers. I don’t know, the thing just happened... with all these years of making $200 short videos, you just never develop the need of spending useful money on useless things. I know it’s different in English Canada, but making a film for under $2 million in Quebec is now considered risky and hard.... bullshit! The total budget of LEN is under $100K, without any producer or distributor. I do absolutely everything alone with my partner Stephanie Morissette. Despite the success, Telefilm took a long time to offer and pay for a 35mm print. We only got it in February ‘06.

As for the content of Les États nordiques, many critics wrote about this object being in the continuity of Quebec cinéma verité from the ‘60s. Of course this heritage is inside me, but I wouldn’t say it’s an hommage. I think it’s the pleasure of playing with genres, formats, forms, using documentary techniques to do contemplative cinema. Les États nordiques is elliptical but it’s an extremely simple film – I guess there’s something universal in the character’s journey.

Ryan j NothWere you actively trying to create a film that would reach a certain kind of audience (art house vs. mainstream, for example)?

Denis CÔtÉOf course not; it’s false to think there’s a ‘certain kind of audience’ out there. People don’t know what they want or what they are looking for. They just want to be surprised. People are so much more curious and intelligent than we ‘people of the industry’ can imagine. Maybe I can’t reach the masses, but Les États nordiques is not obscure, complicated, too symbolic or whatever...

Ryan j NothObviously the film has taken on a life of its own internationally. What was your first sign that this could be a well received project? How has your experience interacting with viewers of the film from different regions changed your perspective of the film?

Denis CÔtÉWhen I received a ‘sorry we had to make choices but it’s the best Canadian film we saw this year’ email from the people at Director’s Fortnight (Cannes), I was pretty happy. Then people at Telefilm warned me not to send the film in every small fest around the world and instead think strategically. After the prize in Locarno and the Toronto screenings, my email box was full of invitations from festivals.

In America, viewers are more curious about the ‘how did you make this thing’ aspect, budget etc..; in Europe, they care less about the process, they ask more questions about content, euthanasia, the character. There’s a bigger ‘emotional’ side in the European Q&A periods. I’m dying to screen it in very different cultures like India.

Ryan j NothHow do you plan to develop as a filmmaker – are you interested in exploring a specific cinematic style, structure, or approach in your next project?

Denis CÔtÉI’m not a storyteller. I don’t see films to be entertained. I’m not planning to fall into experimental cerebral filmmaking but I want to oppose forms, confront, explore storytelling techniques – surprise the viewer without boring or losing him. For now, I want a budget, better production value. I hate the word, but I’m still not a ‘professional’ filmmaker. I never directed a 25-30-40 person crew, never shot a commercial, a videoclip or TV. Not sure it’s my cup of tea.

Ryan j NothWhere do you see Quebecois and Canadian cinema headed?

Denis CÔtÉThere’s definitely something sad about the over-hyped Quebec production versus the shrinkage or the weak performance of (English) Canadian cinema. (English) Canada doesn’t really care about Quebec movies and likewise. There’s something perverted to all this and seeing the institutions trying to find a way to stop the bleeding on one side and pumping the money on the other side is very weird. Internationally speaking, Canadian-Quebec cinema is still not a model of credibility. Here and there we have one or two films able to grab a prize somewhere but what else outside our ‘Quebec-TV-huge-funny-conventional productions’ and Canada’s ‘U.S.-wanna-be’ productions?

Ryan j NothDo you feel like you are part of a new movement in Canadian or Quebecois cinema, or do you even bother thinking about such things?

Denis CÔtÉThere’s no new movements in Canada-Quebec film industries. All are struggling in their own backyard trying to please as many people as possible. Sometimes I wish we’d live in the U.S. system where when you decide to produce a movie you put your whole life at stake or risk. We don’t have the Russian-roulette producing reality here. That’s probably why we make ‘comfortable’ movies with ‘public’ money.

Ryan j NothAre there recent Canadian films and filmmakers you enjoy and look forward to seeing more work from?

Denis CÔtÉToo many filmmakers make one or two films then disappear. It’s hard to follow somebody over the years. On the festival circuit, I heard about a film from Hakan Sahin called Snow – I desperately try to see it these days. I think the guy is Turkish-born American, now living in Boston. From Canada, all I can wish for is to be surprised and I honestly think Canadian filmmakers are better than Quebec filmmakers. We must have hope.

Ryan j NothWhat’s your next project and what stage is it at?

Denis CÔtÉI have two projects. A feature film project, with a bigger production scale, that we are aiming at a $1.3 million budget; very normal, fictional story based in the country with only seven actors. If we are lucky we shoot in Spring 2007.

The other one is crazier, riskier and homemade. If everything goes as planned, two Bulgarian actors are coming from Sofia in July 2006 and we shoot/improvise something – États nordiques-style – in Bulgarian, but shot in Quebec. The budget is miserable – so once again video, friends, etc.

Toronto jokers Adam & Dave discuss hopping the curb between comedy and film

One of the most familiar lines in comedy is the late Rodney Dangerfield’s contention that “I can’t get no respect.” For Dangerfield, whose 1995 application for membership in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was refused on the grounds that he hadn’t demonstrated a “mastery of his craft,” it was a way to turn self-deprecation into laughs, and a subversive comment on his (low) place on the comedy establishment’s ladder.

For comedians in general, and especially for filmmakers working in the comedy genre, it works as a summation of the attitude espoused by the artistic/auteurist community, which tends to think laughs are for the bovine masses and not worth the consideration of serious artists. Comedies almost never win awards outside those awarded by comedians, and the rare ones that garner widespread critical acclaim, like last summer’s The 40-Year-Old Virgin, are usually treated as successes in spite of their penchant for things as un-intellectual and un-cinematic as jokes.

“Comedy’s always been kept in its own category in terms of filmmaking,” says Dave Derewlany, one half of the Toronto filmmaking team Adam & Dave, who moonlight as experimental sketch comedians in the troupe Knock Knock. Who’s There? Comedy! “Not that it’s not respected, but it almost seems like it’s not respected. How about that? 180 right there.”

Dave and his partner-in-laffs, Adam Brodie, are the exception to the rule: comic filmmakers that have managed to garner both the attention of the Canadian film elite and significant commercial success. Their offbeat, cerebral humour, often playing with self-reflexivity and comedic forms, has graced the gilded screens of the Toronto International Film Festival and filled airtime between tabloid programmes on MuchMusic, and they’ve written and directed a film starring a Hollywood actor (John Ennis of Mr. Show) for a U.S. television network (Fuel TV, www.fueltv.com). Their approach – independent but ambitious, uncompromising but open to collaboration – is a model for filmmakers looking to find a place for genre work in the cautious and often dour world of Canadian cultural production.

“It just took that one voice saying, ‘This is good,’” says Adam. “That’s where we’ve kind of been lucky, getting into TIFF and that kind of thing, because there’s this voice of authority saying, this is acceptable. So all of a sudden, our comedy films are art films.”

While the duo has had a few fortuitous turns, it was hardly a foregone conclusion that their brand of alternative comedy would fly with film bigwigs. Collaborators since meeting in Ryerson University’s film program, they can recall a moment when one of their first films was screened for their classmates and the response was teetering on the brink of disaster. 

“A lot of the stuff we made was intended to be sort of confrontational,” says Adam. “The first bomb we dropped was parody of all these different Hollywood movies shot on Super 8, and there was a really good masturbation scene in it. It really freaked people out. The students didn’t know what to think.”

“It played and then there was this silence in the room,” says Dave. “We’d collaborated with one more person on it, and he was really worried that we were going to get kicked out of school. There was a moment where everybody thought, what should we think? But the professor chimed in, and she really loved it, so all of a sudden it turned into, ‘Oh, this is good.’”

From there, the duo made the 2002 short, Heatscore, which went on to be the first of three of their films selected to play at TIFF. Combining the attention that resulted from that screening with a profile-building live comedy act, they began engineering a way to take their filmmaking into the professional realm. 

“You kind of need that (validation), coming out of film school,” says Dave. “The first year, it was really difficult for us, because we were trying to figure out how we could make films and go a little bigger. That’s where the comedy really helped, because we were doing the live shows and we met a lot of great talent, and we started scaling down our productions and just focusing on simple things we could accomplish. Little character pieces and stuff.”

Using available technology to keep things small and quick has been a key part in Adam & Dave’s success. Dave points to the purchase of a Panasonic DVX 100 camera, which allows them to shoot practically spontaneously and with minimal production costs, as a turning point. 

“(With that camera) you can shoot whenever,” says Adam. “It kind of looks alright even if you don’t have lighting, so that’s just made us be able to shoot a lot of the stuff quickly.

“The two pieces we had in TIFF (2005), The Racist Brick and The Wrong Number, were very tight character pieces that were simple to do, just relying on people’s comic timing and the writing.”

“Doing those short films and getting that quick turnaround, that quick satisfaction, somehow helps us focus when we get to a longer one,” says Dave. “It helps remind you that you’re eventually gonna get to that point, rather than just getting lost and thinking, ‘This is never gonna end.’”

Since The Racist Brick and The Wrong Number screened at TIFF, the pair has been busy building on their buzz. They recently completed a series of dog-themed mobisodes for the CBC, and a film for the joint Bravo!FACT/NFB project, Shorts In Motion, (http://www.bravofact.com/shortsinmotion06/), which also features offerings from Guy Maddin and Mark McKinney. (“We’re tired of the big screen,” quips Dave. “We’re gonna go tiny, tiny screen. If we could project a film on someone’s thumbnail, we’d be really happy.) They’ve worked on pilots and a film about their KK.WT?C! cohort, Katie Crown, for the Comedy Network, and collaborated with Sook-Yin Lee and Andrea Dorfman on another CBC initiative.

But it’s telling that the project the duo is most enthused about is working more for Fuel TV, the U.S. sports and action network that financed Switchstance, their recent 22-minute short about a cop who goes undercover as a skate punk to uncover a smuggling ring.   

“Switchstance was the best (funding) scenario, where they just gave us all the money up front, and were hands-off and said, make exactly what you want,” says Adam. “The network was actually really amazed that we were able to pull it off for the same amount of money that everyone had. We’re going to be doing lots more stuff for them”

“The best thing that they said was, ‘Man you guys must’ve not paid yourselves,’” says Dave. “They were right.”

For now, television seems to be the medium most open to Adam & Dave’s take on comedy, and although they’d like to make a feature someday, they’re not particularly encouraged by the current state of comedic cinema. The prevailing notion of comedy as good for little more than mindless escape means that most of the humour produced for theatrical release only reinforces the stereotype, leaving intelligent and challenging comic creations seeking refuge on the small screen. 

“I don’t see lots of the films in the theatre,” says Adam. “I’m more inspired by television these days, which is weird. But people are making more extreme television now. Everyone quotes HBO as being the source, and the shows they create are better than movies in the theatre. But then there’s other stuff on, like (MTV2’s) Wonder Showzen, which I’ve been watching a lot of. It’s from two of the guys who wrote (the defunct sitcom) Where’s My Bush?, and it’s one of the most subversive things on television.”

“What happened to comedies like The Big Lebowski?” says Dave. “It’s hilarious and it goes into really weird areas. To me that’s one of my favorite comedies. The television comedies that we’re drawn to are so multi-layered, you can rewatch them and they have a lot to them. I think film comedies need to get back to that.”

Whether or not Adam & Dave will finally win comedy the respect of the greater film community is up in the air – as is whether or not they even want it. It’s worth noting that when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, spurred by public outcry, reversed their decision to let Rodney Dangerfield in, he was past wanting the honour, and suggested on his website that “They give no respect… to comedy.” In the end, respect might even be an obstacle to good comedy. Besides, as Art Film, the Adam & Dave offering included in this issue’s FilmCAN podcast, demonstrates, the duo may already be out-arting the auteurs.

“It’s based on an answering machine message Adam received from his mother about a ripping pumpkin soup recipe, and it’s kind of like a witches’ brew of creativity,” says Dave. 

“I knew there was something more to the message,” says Adam, “and what we extracted from that is probably one of the most powerful films I’ve ever seen.”

Visit www.adamanddave.com for news updates and more of the pair’s films. 

When Nick Bicanic and Jason Bourque set out to make a film about the privatization of war, they had only a vague idea of what they were about to uncover. Intrigued by stories of thousands of armed security forces working in Iraq and in other conflicts around the world, they began to ask questions about what exactly these people were doing. And so, the young directors thrust themselves into the world of private military contractors and so-called new age mercenaries (and learned quickly that using the word mercenary is a definite no-no). The film provides a lot of answers to questions you probably wouldn’t think of asking – which, considering the subject matter, is a very good thing. The more we know about what’s going on in this industry, the better. Bicanic and Bourne delve deep and travel around the world speaking with experts, former ‘mercenaries’, philosophers and a British contractor who tells cheeky, diary-like stories of his own experiences. The film moves at a quick pace and is dressed up with plenty of cool graphics and animations to keep it entertaining and make it accessible to a broad audience. With a bipartisan and open-minded approach, it really succeeds in providing a great insight into a subject that is rarely discussed or covered in the mainstream media. Bicanic and Bourne claim that ‘the rules of war have changed’, and Shadow Company tells you exactly how. I caught up with Nick Bicanic for a one on one.

Geoff Morrison What motivated you to go out and make a movie about these ‘new age mercenaries’?

Nick Bicanic I went to university with this guy named James Ashcroft. He was studying chemistry, and I was studying law. I lost touch with him, but about 3-4 years after university I got this email from him saying – hey I’m going to be a mercenary. I thought this was kind of funny because I didn’t think he was being serious. So a few joke emails went back and forth and then I realized that he was being serious and he was about to go to Baghdad to start working as a private security contractor. I didn’t really realize how big this industry was, and I didn’t intend to make a movie at that stage, but that’s what drove me to find out more about the industry. When I found out that there were 20,000 guys working in Iraq and elsewhere around the world, I realized that essentially, the rules of war had changed. I talked to a couple of other people and they didn’t really know anything about this, so I thought there’s a story in here and it seemed kind of natural to lend itself to a documentary format.

Geoff MorrisonWhen you say the rules of war though, these people aren’t actually fighting the wars – they play a different role…

Nick Bicanic You’re completely right. The capabilities in which they are tasked are defensive. A security team is armed in a similar way to soldiers, but they don’t go out and do offensive missions like the army might do. However, it’s very difficult to draw a line between a military offensive presence and a military defensive presence. A huge amount of the army isn’t charged with going out and attacking the enemy, they might be guarding perimeters or guarding installations or bases. So considering that so many of those roles are interchangeable, it makes sense to consider these guys as part of the war.

Geoff Morrison One thing I thought was really interesting was how well the film details the business side of things and how much money is made, but it also tells personal stories. I’m wondering why you thought it was important to show both of those sides, instead of going straight for just exposing what’s going on.

Nick Bicanic That’s a good question. I really wanted to make something that I would find interesting to watch. Just presenting a lot of professional business information would very quickly get boring. So I thought that hooking it on to a personal issue meaning – who these guys are, what they do and why they do it – and then answering those questions but through that telling the whole story about the industry, made a lot more sense than just going – here’s the facts man, this much money, this many countries, this is what the industry is. Because very quickly people would go, he’s lecturing, this isn’t very interesting, why do I care about these people? So I wanted to present individuals, and present them as essentially humans and then describe exactly what I just said – why they’re there, what they do and what it is they’re doing in the first place.

Geoff Morrison Beyond that, in terms of the film’s look, style and pace, it’s very accessible. As a first-time documentary filmmaker, how difficult was it for you going into the film, to be able to make a film that was going to be accessible to different audiences?

Nick Bicanic It’s one thing to say first-time filmmaker, its another thing to consider that there's a team behind everything that goes on. For sure, every step of the way I’d argue with people involved, for the sake of arguing. It took a great deal of coaxing before everyone was supporting the same joint goal, which was to make everything very sexy, new and modern. The reason being was the same as before – we wanted to make something that was dynamic and exciting so it would be both entertaining and educational at the same time. The problem with stuff that’s just education is you tend to fall asleep very quickly. If you have something that just says (in boring tone), well, the new rules of war… then you’ll fall asleep after five seconds. So I thought that if I’m going to make something that’s fun and exciting that I would actually want to watch and be proud of, its got to be quick, its got to be modern, its got to have some fun stuff. That’s why you see the videogames, that’s why you see The A-Team. Traditional documentary filmmakers, some of whom could probably do a good thing for the documentary if it fit into more traditional stereotypes have said to me, what is this? You can’t make a documentary like this, it’s supposed to be structured in a classical way. And I think that’s bullshit. First of all, of course it’s bullshit because we went off and made it. But more to the point, I think that people do enjoy this style of filmmaking because it wakes them up. They don’t feel like they’re in a classroom.  They feel like they’re having a little bit of fun, but at the same time getting a lot of useful information along the way. At least I hope that’s how it works.

Geoff Morrison What was your process like after you went out and shot all the interviews? You went to Sierra Leone, you went to Iraq, and you went to the UK – when you got home and started to piece the film together, did you know instantly what the story was going to be?

Nick Bicanic We knew some of the story up front. Many people would argue that you’re supposed to write some kind of script as a template at least and then go out and shoot, even when you’re making a documentary. I most certainly didn’t do that. I don’t know how filmmakers are able to do that when they’re shooting a documentary, because for me I was investigating the story at the same time. I didn’t know all the answers to the questions. I kind of knew the questions, but I didn’t know the answers. But by knowing the questions and by knowing the broad structure – meaning, I knew that I had to tell the history, I knew that Sierra Leone was an important chapter in helping people understand what kind of impact private military forces have had on world conflicts before, and obviously I knew that Iraq had to be there. So we had a rough structure that we knew we had to fit into. But certainly the idea of having 50-60 hours of interviews was a daunting task, so essentially the sequence went, transcribe everything. Then I sat there in front of this huge stack of paper and said I know what I’m going to do, I’m going to read these things and I’m going to highlight all the things that are cool and that sound good, and then I’m going to cut those up and figure out exactly how they fit together. Well, that failed after page three of the first interview, because I realized that I was highlighting virtually every sentence and I realized that was a useless way to go about doing it. So I wasn’t really sure what to do. What we ended up doing was, literally, cutting. We physically used scissors to cut up sections of the interviews, group them into different sections according to the chapters that we had at that point.  By we, I’m referring to the co-director of the film, Jason Burke. It was Jason actually who suggested, let’s actually physically do this. Let’s take these twelve chapters and just drop stuff in there. And slowly we ended up with something that seemed to work. I guess you could say that we did our first edit with scissors and glue. Bizarrely enough, when we assembled the first edit, it was two hours long. Which was amazing because it could have been five hours long and we didn’t know how long it was going to be. So our first assembly was two hours, than we just kept cutting, cutting, cutting, allowing room for graphics, deciding where we might put animations in and we got it to 86 minutes and that’s what it currently is.

Geoff Morrison As you said, you were investigating along the way and from what I gather you didn’t know all that much about private military companies and contractors when you were going in. You just sort of knew about what your friend James had told you. Had you formed any opinion about what these companies and people were doing when you went into making the film?

Nick Bicanic I definitely did not go into the film, like many documentary filmmakers do, with a pre-set idea of what I wanted the conclusion to be. It seems nowadays, you see these documentaries that essentially go – here’s my point of view and I essentially don’t give a shit what the truth is, I’m just going to go out and gather information to support that view. We didn’t want to do that. We didn’t want to go in there and say these guys are evil and here’s why they’re evil. Nor did we want to say, look how cool these guys are and here’s all these great shots of mercenaries doing great things, everybody should be a mercenary. We wanted to do something that was really balanced. Funnily enough, we had an early development meeting with the CBC a long time back and they didn’t particularly like the fact that we wanted to have a very open minded, balanced view. As it happens, we’re friends with them again, but that’s a separate story which perhaps will announced sometime in the future…

Geoff Morrison So when are we seeing the movie on (CBC) Newsworld?

Nick BicanicHa ha, I don’t know about that, we’ll see. Maybe in the coming months.

Geoff MorrisonSo you went in with an open mind, what do you think now about what these companies are doing and the role they’re playing?

Nick BicanicWhat I've learned is a number of surprising facts, most easily summarized in the fact that these guys are not going away. The other key thing I learned was any stereotypes that you might approach this subject with, whether you’re seeing the movie or reading about it elsewhere – such as mercenaries being evil baby killers – those stereotypes just don’t hold water. Yes, I learned there are certainly guys who fill the Rambo stereotype of “ho-yaw, I’m going to kick some Arab ass and I’ve got my M16 and that’s my favorite weapon and I sleep with my gun” – that definitely does exist. But there’s far fewer of those guys than there are professional guys who have been career soldiers and have decided that there’s nothing else that they can do. I mean, they’ve got this skill-set, what are they going to do, go and become a painter? Or go and become a postman? There’s this market for people who do this stuff. Maybe they have stable family lives at home and kids to put through college and bills to pay, so they’re doing the only thing they know how to do. So I guess in a nutshell, I learned that there are good companies and there are bad companies and I certainly feel like more regulation and more transparency is necessary so those bad companies can be weeded out.

Geoff MorrisonI enjoyed the fact that the film didn’t really take a position one-way or the other. Knowing very little going in of what these companies are about, my opinion kind of swayed back and forth. Do you find that most people are pretty unaware of what they do and how they operate?

Nick BicanicDefinitely. This is the first full-length film that deals with this subject. There have been a couple news pieces here and there, but this is basically the first film on it. A lot of people come up to us after screenings and go, we didn’t know anything about this. For example, Abu Ghraib – it was a massive issue because prisoners were abused in Iraq and some of those prisoners were abused by people who were not soldiers. They were civilian contractors who were employed by a company called Titan. There are huge issues that go on when you privatize warfare, because what happens is, in some elements, you lose control. Because private companies are concerned with the bottom line, (and) when you’re concerned with the bottom line, you may cut certain corners. But when you’re an institution like a national army, you don’t have to cut those corners because your moneybox doesn’t really run dry – or it just runs dry after a significantly longer amount of time. When you’re a private corporation, every single thing you shave means more money for the bosses.

Geoff MorrisonWhat I was getting to was, as your film gets out there and people learn more about private military contracting, do you think the average person who’s considering signing up for the national military might think twice and instead seek out a job with a private military company with whom they could perhaps make a lot of money?

Nick BicanicThat might happen and I think that’s something that national armies are a little concerned about. Let’s say you’re the kind of person who wants to perform business with a gun, because you like that sort of thing – there are some individuals that like stuff like that. On the one hand, you can join the army. When you join the army you’re signing up for X amount of years, a lot of it is drudgework, it can be fairly boring, and yes, every now and then you could do some exciting, adventurous type stuff. But again, you might not. If you can do the right kind of courses and get yourself into a private military company, you (might be) signing up for a 3-month contract. It’s almost like a joyride. Standards are very strict, but there are some people who have not had prior military experience who are now working in private military companies around the world. Granted, there aren’t many, because of the nature of work and the companies don’t just sign up anybody. If they did, then their clients would die and the people would die and it just wouldn’t be good for business. However, the idea of some sort of military lite where you can just sign up for a short period of time is something that some people do find appealing, so I think this is something that might happen at some point in the near future.

Geoff Morrison When you told people you were going to shoot some of this film in Iraq, did they think you were crazy?

Nick Bicanic They generally thought I was crazy, not just because of Iraq, but to be doing stuff to do with mercenaries. They said – what if you piss some of them off? If you do something that pisses them off are they going to come and kill you? I never thought it was like that. I mean, yes there are some aggressive types out there. I’ve been threatened on websites, simply because some people take offence at the idea of the word mercenary. It’s usually Americans. They like to think that they’re fighting for their flag and country and they think that the idea of me calling them mercenaries is offensive. I get these emails like. ‘hey Vancouver’s not that far away. I’m going to come over there and kick your ass. I use a gun for a living…’ But I don’t know. With the real professionals, which are most of the guys that I was meeting and dealing with in making the documentary, as soon as they realized that I wanted to tell a balanced story, that I wasn’t out to skewer them or the industry they operated in, the doors were opened a little bit more than they usually are, and I never felt particularly threatened.

The producers of Shadow Company are currently working on a distribution deal to get the film into theatres within the next few months. More information can be found at http://www.shadowcompanythemovie.com/