Michael Weir Movies
- 2002
Wasting no time after shooting his 2003 Sundance Film Festival entry The Event, director Thom Fitzgerald returned to Romania, the country that served as the setting for his 2001 Canadian-TV film Wolf Girl, for this cerebral study of commerce, camaraderie, and degradation. The Wild Dogs explores the circumstantial relationship of Geordie (played by the director) and Victor (David Hayman), two men who meet on a plane to Bucharest. Each is in the country for different reasons: Victor is a British diplomat in the city, and he and his wife Natalie (Alberta Watson) and daughter Moll (Rachel Blanchard) are among Romania's privileged class; Geordie, on the other hand, is a Canadian porn photographer sent to the country to shoot underage "talent" for his employer's website. Repulsed by the job he's been sent to accomplish, Geordie is instead captivated by the teeming masses of orphans, disfigured beggars, and the other homeless that flood Bucharest's streets. Just as he makes it his goal to help a crippled young man nicknamed "Sour Grapes" (Visinel Burcea, the spiritually-empty Natalie focuses on the dejected orphan Dorutu (Mihai Calota. Shot on digital video, the low-budget The Wild Dogs premiered at the 2002 Toronto Film Festival just a few months before the premiere of The Event. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anca Androne, Rachel Blanchard, (more)
This portrait of the man who brought nude male flesh into the American mainstream combines present-day interviews, archival footage, and semi-fictionalized dramatization into a cinematic hybrid. Photographer and filmmaker Bob Mizer (Daniel MacIvor) founded the Athletic Model Guild, or AMG, in Los Angeles in 1945, hoping to turn his fascination with the male physique into a successful business that used nude and semi-nude photographs to sell the services of models to painters and the like. When the photos themselves proved more lucrative than the non-existent modeling contracts, Mizer launched Physique Pictorial. The magazine ostensibly offered bodybuilding tips and moral guidance to young men the world over, but in reality its clientèle included legions of gay men eager for eye candy. With the help of his mother and business partner, Delilah (Carroll Godsman), Mizer parlayed his magazine, short films, and other work into a palatial residence/studio where young men fresh off the bus from Nowheresville could frolic, crash, and earn a little cash in front of the camera (or on the casting couch). Occasional run-ins with the law and stints in prison couldn't deter Mizer from continuing his photography until his death in the early '90s. His models, contemporaries, and associates included bodybuilding proponent Jack LaLane and future Warhol superstar Joe Dallesandro, who are among the many men interviewed by filmmaker Thom Fitzgerald. The writer/director/producer intersperses his dramatic and documentary sequences with plenty of actual AMG and Physique Pictorial images. The film's narrative arc, however, focuses on the fictionalized character of novice model Neil E. O'Hara (Joshua Peace), who serves as a stand-in for the audience as he acclimates himself to Mizer's campy, flesh-filled compound and witnesses the photographer's betrayal by another model, Red (Jack Griffin Mazeika). Beefcake was inspired by F. Valentine Hooven III's book Beefcake: The Muscle Magazines of America, 1950-1970. The scenes of Mizer's trial for pandering were based on transcripts of the real-life Red's courtroom testimony. The character name Neil E. O'Hara, of course, is a joking reference to Neely O'Hara, the ingénue character from Valley of the Dolls. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daniel MacIvor, Thomas Cawood, (more)
Ten years after he disappeared from his family's life, Sweet William (Chris Leavins) returns home to Nova Scotia for his sister's wedding. Despite the fact that he's gone from a morbidly obese adolescent to a thin, handsome, self-assured young man, the reunion proves bittersweet. Although he reconnects with his loving sister Rosemary (Kerry Fox) and his Alzheimer's-afflicted grandmother Grace (Joan Orenstein), he is dismayed to learn that his parents' rocky marriage has settled into permanent animosity. He also witnesses the toll his absence has taken on his abusive, alcoholic father, Whiskey Mack (Peter MacNeill); his tight-lipped mother Iris (Seana McKenna); and Violet (Christine Dunsworth), the tomboyish younger sister he's never met. The past lingers in the very air of William's childhood home; disturbing visions of himself as both a waifish boy (Ian Parsons) and a fat adolescent (Troy Veinotte) follow him everywhere. And it's not just the ghosts who dredge up the past. Rosemary's new husband, Fletcher (Joel S. Keller), flirts shamelessly with William, bringing back memories of the painful relationship the two shared as teenagers. When Iris disappears, William must confront not only the haunting visions of his past, but also the unfinished business he left behind. The feature debut of writer/director Thom Fitzgerald, The Hanging Garden was the winner of the Air Canada People's Choice Award for best picture and the co-winner of the Toronto-CITY TV Award for Best Canadian Film at the Toronto International Film Festival. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Chris Leavins, Kerry Fox, (more)
