Shoot me spins tender tale while roughing it in the bush
By Rita Zekas Toronto Star
November 29, 1987
ALGONQUIN PARK - Ah, what a beautiful autumn day. The leaves were brilliant red and gold, there was a nip in the air and the geese were restless.
But not as restless as the producers of Shoot Me, a $2.7 million movie set in Camp Arowhon - a summer camp. Forget Indian summer, they wanted high-noon, wilt-your-antiperspirant heat that brings mad dogs and Englishmen to their knees. But good weather was running out. Luckily they picked a camp with a high evergreen content around the lake so they could fake it.
Shoot Me, due for release next fall, comes from Lauron Pictures, the folks who brought you the Genie-Award winning Loyalties. It is directed by William Johnston, written by Jay Teitel, with Ronald Lillie and Peter Simpson as executive producers.
The storyline is set in 1969, against the backdrop of the Viet Nam war. Denis Forest plays Michael Posen, son of a New England law professor who drops out of his Harvard law studies and leaves the U.S. to work as a counsellor in a co-ed Canadian summer camp. His decision of conscience - will he return to face the draft - is helped by a 12-year-old camper named Ronald (Gareth Bennett).
Shoot Me has been six years in the making, due to budget constraints and rewrites. "The script is worth the pain," said Johnston, during the bumpy ride from Bracebridge airport to Luma Lodge, half-way point to the set.
That Shoot Me is arriving on the heels of a crush of Viet Nam films like Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and Gardens Of Stone could be a plus. Or not.
"This film is ahead of its time," Lillie insisted. "I know Oliver Stone (Platoon's writer/director) was out there but this is the other side of Platoon, the story of the U.S. and its relationship with Canada.
"The U.S. and Canada diverged quite sharply then. America hardened as a culture over Viet Nam and has remained that way. Our film is more powerful in a dramatic sense than Platoon because it's a story of human beings and their personal relationships. The simple affection between a man and boy moved me - it's a cycle movies now miss."
We arrived at Luma Lodge just in time to screen rushes downstairs at Lumina discotheque. "Sit And Be Damned" warned a sign on the wall.
It's a seduction scene. Bayla (Catherine Disher), a counsellor who is set on bagging a Harvard man, is putting the move on Michael. "Tell me about Hasty Pudding Club," she purrs.
"Bayla is shallow, materialistic but brutally honest, even caustic," said Disher, a native of Montreal. "She had her Holt Renfrew card at 10."
A graduate of the National Theatre School, Disher is a regular in Mr. T's new series, T&T.
"I play the wacky receptionist Sophie (in T&T)," she laughed. "I'm incredibly ditzy. Sophie has such long nails she has to type with two fingers."
Ahhh. Bayla dumps Michael. It's a delicate scene shot beautifully in shadow, another kudo for director of photography Vic (Dancing In The Dark) Sarin.
"I'm dying to shoot the leaves and the beautiful backdrop," he sighed. "We're only 120 miles up north but everyday we see bears, loons. One night a bear came into camp, smelled the food and got into the catering truck. It broke down the door.
"Then the other night while we were shooting, there was this raucous noise in the kitchen. I yelled, 'Shut up,' because I assumed it was the crew. But it wasn't, it was the raccoons. They look right at you but what are you gonna do, they're so cute."
Wanna talk cute? Check out Gareth Bennett, who plays Ronald "the problem child." This kid has never had a pimple in his life.
A 13-year-old from London, Ont., he's been acting for 3 1/2 years, ever since his mother started clipping auditions in newspapers.
"Ronald is very rebellious, a showman," Bennett explained. "He has all these 'Look at me' modes." One of his modes is begging everyone he meets to "Shoot me," hence the title, which undoubtedly has some Viet Nam overtones as well.
But Ronald's not the problem, Bennett said, it's his mother.
"He has only two shirts which his mom has stolen from old boyfriends. His mother doesn't care for him. She never visits him. If asked if she has any children, she says 'no.' Ronald relates to Michael because he pegs him as having problems too."
Toronto actress Kelly Rowan plays the love interest, Cynthia. Her credits include Air Waves, Night Heat, Hangin' In, Mount Royal and The Gate.
"Cynthia is bright and very politically active,'' she said over coffee. "I'm 21. I was 4 years old in '69 and I wasn't even born when the Viet Nam War started. But you can't be neutral about it."
The strains of "Rockin' Robin" playing outside the counsellor's cabin, stirred my old hippie heart. Inside the cabin: Beatlemania memorabilia, "flower power" graffiti on the walls and a stuffed bear wearing a "Nixon bugs me" button.
Two hundred and fifty actors were auditioned before Forest was cast as Michael. And the 26-year-old French Canadian actor looks not unlike William Hurt in The Big Chill. He even has Hurt's wardrobe from Big Chill: faded jeans, tweed jacket, wire-rim glasses.
"He has that William Hurt quality," Lillie conceded. "He has many layers. He doesn't give it all away."
Blond hair notwithstanding, Forest seemed a dark, brooding type. Maybe it had something to do with his wicked cold, a side effect of diving into the frigid lake, sans wetsuit. Or the fact that he'd been zipping back and forth to Florida to star in the children's film, Frog And The Whale.
Never mind "make love, not war," making love was hell too.
"Taking Kelly's shirt off while everyone else is in a parka made the experience unbearable," he shuddered. "I sort of play myself as Michael. I chose to do the last scene where I dive into the lake, naked. Showing my butt in a 40 foot screen would signify something."
Forest came to Toronto via Ottawa. Among his credits: Henry Ford II in The Man And The Machine, CBC's Race For The Bomb, episodic work in Night Heat, Alfred Hitchock Presents and Friday's Curse. He and actor Bruce Verine created The Putzes, a hilarious send-up of performance artists which played at Toronto Free Theatre two summers ago.
"I'm hoping to do something similar with Louis Tucci who plays Larry Silverstein, another counsellor," he said. "Maybe we'll collaborate on the Vile Brothers."
While there's humor in the relationship between the counsellors and the kids, Shoot Me is no Meatballs.
"The kids were all great," Forest said, "but at one point I was ready to kill them all with a chain saw." Spoken like an inveterate camp counsellor.
Copyright 1987 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.