\u201cRun Terry Run\u201d<\/a> is premiering at this year\u2019s festival. The film, featuring never-before-seen archival footage, offers a reintroduction to a Canadian icon.<\/p>\nBaruchel and Menard met up before TIFF at the Star offices to talk about their upcoming premieres and their enduring passion for Canadian stories.<\/p>\n
![\"Jay](\"data:image\/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAQAAAADCAQAAAAe\/WZNAAAAEElEQVR42mM8U88ABowYDABAxQPltt5zqAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==\")
<\/p>\n
Lance McMillan Toronto Star<\/p>\n
Hanging out with Terry Fox: \u201cHis own family members never heard him speak about these things\u201d<\/p>\n
Jay Baruchel: Man, you made such a beautiful movie. I remember doing Terry Fox runs and learning about him in school. I get goose bumps thinking about your movie because I was really faced with his humanity and it drove home that this (man on the screen) was effectively a child. So, thank you for giving us a chance to hang out with him. We never hang out with him. We learn about him, and we\u2019re inspired by him, but you allow us to hang with him.<\/p>\n
Sean Menard: I would see a statue (of Terry Fox), and I would stare at it and go, \u201cWho was he? What was his laugh like? What was he really having to endure out there?\u201d And I didn\u2019t have the answers. I didn\u2019t know the details of the journey. I think that happens sometimes in our country with a lot of this stuff, right? The details get forgotten over time.<\/p>\n
J.B.: We seem to be caught in a push and pull of thinking we\u2019re too good to distil our history into romantic little flash points because there are other countries around us that are very good at doing that, and we think that we\u2019re better than them. But we need them, like anybody else, in any other culture. Terry Fox is as iconically photographed a Canadian as there ever was. We grow up seeing that \u2026 probably just one crew\u2019s footage that\u2019s been repurposed for years. How did you find this other footage?<\/p>\n
S.M.: I was touring my last film, and something about Terry popped into my head. I remember being in Charlottetown, and I jumped on YouTube, looking for clips. All the footage of Terry was very grainy \u2014 it looked like it had been taken from VHS, but I could tell at some point that it was shot on film. It didn\u2019t make sense to me that someone would throw that footage out.<\/p>\n
J.B.: It had to be sitting somewhere.<\/p>\n
S.M.:\u00a0If you\u2019re filming that, and he goes on to be Canada\u2019s hero, I don\u2019t think you\u2019re just gonna turf it. So I reached out to the family and asked if there was any footage out there. They had maybe four reels that no one had seen before. They sent it over but they were labelled number five to nine. So it became a search: \u201cWhere are these missing four?\u201d Eventually I found a storage facility, and it was five streets lights from my house.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Terry Fox is pictured in this still image taken from \u201cRun Terry Run.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
HO The Canadian Press<\/p>\n
S.M.: Yeah, and it wasn\u2019t climate controlled. The footage was deteriorating. It wasn\u2019t labelled, and it ended up being over 90 reels.\u00a0<\/p>\n
J.B.: The reels that the family had, were you the first to come knocking and asking about the footage?<\/p>\n
S.M.: I think so. It does seem nuts, right? His own family members never heard him speak about some of these things. I had a private screening; I flew out west for the family and one of the family members said, \u201cThanks for letting me learn about who my uncle was. It just felt like I spent two hours with him.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Chasing the Ken Carter story: \u201cIf you could make anything, what would you make?\u201d<\/p>\n
S.M.: On your film, you kind of did the opposite of mine. With \u201cThe Stunt Driver,\u201d it has moments where it\u2019s trying purposely to feel like a doc.\u00a0<\/p>\n
J.B.: I\u2019ve been lucky enough to call (director) Michael Dowse one of my dear friends for over 20 years. When we first started hanging out, we would have those conversations that anybody that\u2019s interested in making movies has, which is, \u201cIf you won the 649 \u2014 if you could make anything \u2014 what would you make?\u201d The first thing he said was the Ken Carter story.\u00a0<\/p>\n
S.M.: Was it a struggle to get the film made?\u00a0<\/p>\n
J.B.: It was very hard. Five years ago, Mike and I are having lunch at Fran\u2019s Diner by Massey Hall and he\u2019s like, \u201cI wrote a Ken Carter script, and I actually think you could play him.\u201d Because when we were first talking about it, I was like a 24-year-old young pup \u2026<\/p>\n
S.M.: You didn\u2019t think much of it. But then once you have the all-day breakfast at Fran\u2019s; you digest it \u2026<\/p>\n
J.B.: 60 pounds heavier, you know. (Laughing) I got the script, and I read about half of it before I called him and was like, \u201cWe have to do this movie.\u201d There\u2019s an urgency, right? When you like something, and you don\u2019t want to miss the chance. Except then he was stuck with me and there are far more famous people than me. I was walking this tightrope of \u201cI wanna be in this movie, but I also want my friend to get to make his movie.\u201d I called him four times and said, \u201cDo not feel bad. Get the famous guy.\u201d Every time he and his wife Jennifer, who produced it with him, said \u201cNo, you\u2019re the guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jay Baruchel in \u201cThe Stunt Driver.\u201d The TIFF movie opens wide on Sept. 25.<\/p>\n
Courtesy of TIFF<\/p>\n
A health crisis: \u201cThere was a chance I wouldn\u2019t be on set for a long time\u201d<\/p>\n
J.B.:\u00a0Without getting into melodramatic kind of territory, I had some pretty crazy health challenges last year, and it was touch and go about whether or not I\u2019d ever get to make this movie. Then I got the call that I was OK to work, and that was around the same 48-hour period that they secured their financing. Then we just went, bro. I was like literally on set a month and a half after crazy invasive surgery. It was heavy. When Mike and I made \u201cGoon,\u201d we were kind of hooligans. Now, he\u2019s got two kids that have graduated high school and I\u2019m gonna have a daughter in January.<\/p>\n
J.B.: Thank you very much. This just means we\u2019re super soft now and this movie is impossibly emotional for both of us.<\/p>\n
S.M.: I feel like it brings it to another level because you realize with a lot of these stories that it\u2019s like a tiny miracle when you can bring them to life.<\/p>\n
J.B.: It\u2019s a window, man. I don\u2019t think people realize how hard it is to make a f\u2014-ing movie.\u00a0I was raised in a grand tradition of \u201cbe many things, but humble above all,\u201d and be ashamed of ambition.<\/p>\n
Canada, patriotism and ambition: \u201cI was treated like garbage in Toronto before I started working in the United States\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Sean Menard and Jay Baruchel.<\/p>\n
Lance McMillan Toronto Star<\/p>\n
S.M.: Did you feel that more when you were in Hollywood?<\/p>\n
J.B.: What I found was, up here, if you weren\u2019t content to just watch movies, you wanted to make movies, and you weren\u2019t content to just listen to music, you wanted to be in the band, the initial first thought that everybody around always has is, \u201cWho the f\u2014- do you think you are?\u201d I\u2019m a very proud Canadian \u2014 I\u2019m so patriotic, I could be accused of nationalism, right, so, it sucks that I have to say what I\u2019m gonna say, which is I was always treated like garbage in Toronto until I started working in the States.<\/p>\n
J.B.: Someone\u2019s asking if I\u2019m excited for TIFF, and it\u2019s like, I have a strange \u2026 love-hate thing with TIFF, as I\u2019m sure a lot of people that work in Canadian movies do.<\/p>\n
S.M.:\u00a0My last film was literally an address, \u201c299 Queen Street West,\u201d and I couldn\u2019t get into TIFF. I had to rent Roy Thomson Hall the weekend after, and it created some friction, but I felt that that film with those VJs deserved the biggest stage.<\/p>\n
J.B.: No s \u2014 t!\u00a0So here\u2019s my question, if it has changed, because I do notice that it has changed \u2026<\/p>\n
S.M.: We\u2019re part of the change.<\/p>\n
J.B.: I\u2019d like to think so.<\/p>\n
S.M.: You made a film about a Canadian that is taking on a big American, and it was a Canadian company that did it. Canadian director. Canadian star. As opposed to a British team with a bigger resum\u00e9 or an American team with more financing. They come in and they tell our story.<\/p>\n
S.M.: They might have those advantages, but what they don\u2019t have is the passion and the determination to get things accurate and to really commit to something.<\/p>\n
J.B.: And the stakes will never be as high for them because it\u2019s not their own culture that they\u2019re trying to foster and keep alive.<\/p>\n
S.M.: You felt those stakes when you\u2019re making \u201cStunt Driver.\u201d Same for me, (making a movie) about a guy who has seven statues across the country.<\/p>\n
J.B.: It means something. Thinking out s \u2014 t is worth doing \u2026 I want it to be less of an outlier.<\/p>\n
S.M.: People want to come out (and) support great Canadian stories, if done well.<\/p>\n
J.B.: One of the things that I\u2019ve always gotten very clear in my head and heart is there\u2019s how I feel about the thing, and there\u2019s the how the world feels about the thing. Ideally, they\u2019re similar \u2014 but who knows? I think I know some stuff about movies, but one thing I\u2019ve never been able to figure out is if someone\u2019s going to like a thing or not. And why people like a thing.<\/p>\n
S.M.: That\u2019s the magic code that nobody knows. But how do you separate that?<\/p>\n
J.B.: I think because it\u2019s not mine anymore. The minute that our movies are in a theatre, they\u2019re not ours anymore. They belong to the world.<\/p>\n
This interview has been condensed for length and clarity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jay Baruchel loves Canada. \u201cI\u2019m very proud,\u201d says the 44-year-old actor. \u201cI have a maple leaf tattooed over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":893466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":["post-893465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=893465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/893466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=893465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=893465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=893465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}