Well, here we go...

When Jesse Wente called and informed me that When Life Was Good (pictured right) would be an official selection at TIFF this year, I was immediately grateful, floored, and extremely happy for the cast.

On our first day I sat everybody down and said (something like) this:

"We're making a feature film with NO money, with absolutely NO concern about commercial prospects and/or marketability and/or loglines, and my only goal as a filmmaker is to make the type of film I feel is missing, the type of film I can't find in the theatre or on the rental shelves, the type of film where the only realistic "pot of gold" at the end of the rainbow is a film festival screening. We'll be shooting in a guided improvisational style, and I'll be the only crew."

With the invitation to screen in Toronto, When Life Was Good is a complete success. No matter what happens with the film going forward, this is absolutely everything that I set out to accomplish.

I feel like we're playing with "house money" so to speak, and everything from this point on is a gift.

When Life Was Good is probably the lowest budgeted film to play the festival (I'm including Tarnation), but that's not something we're planning to exploit or draw attention to. I sincerely believe that limitations are the greatest gift in any artistic arena, and I tried to make a film that was enhanced, rather than limited by such a "low fidelity" approach.

My background is lo-fi  indie rock, so I looked at making this film in that way:

What were the things that made Guided By Voices great as they dragged their four track recordings across the pages of Spin magazine? Why was Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville so much better than anything released that year?

They didn't have the money to make their recordings sound like everybody else's.

Using those bands as inspiration (and my own little lo-fi outfit from the nineties), I did my best to try and use our limitations as a strength, to try and capture something of what made those recordings great: Authenticity, Naturalism, and a sense that there are real people up there on that huge screen.

I hope it works, but even more than that, I hope I get a chance to do it all again next year.

We're going to be podcasting a video blog while we're at the festival, and I'll be rambling on about my experiences before and during TIFF (here in this blog) whenever I get a chance.

There are SO MANY amazing films to see, that I can't imagine leaving the movie theatre for the entire 9 days we're there.

More than anything else, I look forward to meeting people who love film and talking to them about the films they saw, the films they made, and perhaps drinking a little red wine?

See you in the lobby.

TM