January 2006
Good Doc
Legendary filmmaker Allan King has chronicled everything from disturbed children to divorce. His latest work takes on the scariest subject yet: aging By Mark Pupo
Image credit: Finn O'Hara
If you want someone to blame for the proliferation of reality TV programs, start with Allan King. The grand old gent of documentary film pioneered what he calls “actuality dramas” back in 1969. A Married Couple was a 96-minute distillation (from a 70-hour shoot) of the antagonistic, edge-of-divorce pas de deux of Billy Edwards, an advertising exec, and his wife, Antoinette. Audiences were startled by the documentary’s intimate, seemingly spontaneous style—and by the voyeuristic thrill.
King has directed 25 films since then, on subjects as disparate as bullfighting and post-Soviet Estonia. They all share a preoccupation with laying bare social dynamics, the viewer becoming a sort of amateur psychologist, left to analyze unspoken motivations and topsy-turvy relationships. King’s latest, Memory for Max, Claire, Ida and Company, debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall; it plays at Cinematheque (as part of a screening of 2005’s top Canadian films) in late January and on TVO this month. Memory follows eight residents at the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, each exhibiting memory loss and dementia from Alzheimer’s. It centres on 89-year-old Claire Mandel and her even more elderly boyfriend, Max Trachter. Max’s death after a fall precipitates a sequence of heart-wrenching scenes in which Claire, unable to remember Max has died, repeatedly asks Baycrest’s caretakers where Max has gone. Every time she’s reminded, she grieves anew.
King creaks as he lifts himself from a chair in his book-stuffed rent-controlled apartment high atop the Sutton Place Hotel. He lives with his third wife, Colleen Murphy, a playwright and filmmaker, and his collaborator on 1989’s Termini Station. He admits his own memory isn’t what it used to be (“I’ve got too many files up there”) and that he mixes up the names of his six grandchildren and his golden retriever, Abby.
King was born in Vancouver in 1930, and his own parents divorced when he was 15, making him an oddity among his friends (and perhaps sparking his life’s fascination with psychodynamics). His first film, Skidrow, about alcoholic derelicts in Vancouver, was made in 1956 while he was working at the city’s fledgling CBC station. His 50-year career has included long stints directing feature films, such as Who Has Seen the Wind, and television shows, including several seasons of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Road to Avonlea. It was “the easiest, quickest way to make money I’ve ever discovered,” King says, but he often worried about misinterpreting the writers’ scripts.Documentaries allowed him to write and direct. Plus, he likes to be surprised by what he finds.
In some respects, Memory recalls Warrendale, his notorious 1967 film about a facility for emotionally disturbed children. It was commissioned (and never broadcast because of its explicit language) by the CBC, and, like Memory, it pivots on an unexpected death. However, while in the '60s there was no need to get consent from Warrendale’s children, King had to negotiate for months with Baycrest's board and the residents' families before he could unpack his cameras.
King became interested in Alzheimer's while making his acclaimed 2003 doc Dying at Grace, which chronicled the palliative care of patients at Church Street's Grace Hospital. One day, he struck up a conversation with an elderly patient being treated for dementia and was impressed by her wit. "Everyone treated the condition as a horror story," he says. "I just didn't believe it. There are a number of cognitive skills, and one doesn’t lose all of them."
His methods haven’t changed much since Warrendale and A Married Couple. To build up trust and comfort with his subjects at Baycrest, he hung out with them for a few weeks, gradually introducing his camera and soundmen, then vanished from the scene and let his crew capture life as it unfolded. If he stays away during the filming, he explains, there’s one less factor influencing the action. He only begins to film when his subjects are as committed to the process as he is. “People must give you something that’s important,” he says, “or you don’t have the film.” The result is a documentary that is as close as possible to the unvarnished truth.
Today, he’s in the planning and fundraising stages for his next project. Tentatively titled The 'Hood, it will be about one family living amid the shootings and gang culture in either Malvern, Jane and Finch or Regent Park. It's a change of pace from the palliative care wing. He’s not sure where it’ll lead. “I learned long ago that you can never predict what you’ll get from another human being.”
Allan King's Top Five Canadian Films
1. Pour la suite du Monde (1963, d. Pierre Perrault and Michel Brault). I was fresh back in Canada after ten years in Europe and Pierre’s film was a deeply moving new view of a new Canada for me.
2. City of Gold (1957, d. Colin Low and Wolf Koenig). A superb capturing of a story I knew inside out. It has always been my favourite Canadian film (as is it was John Grierson’s—along with my own Skidrow).
3. The Clinton Special (1974, d. Michael Ondaatje). My favourite Canadian feature: Michael Ondaatje’s documentary drama rendition of the genesis of Theatre Passe Muraille’s great Farm Show, which Paul Thompson, Janet Amos and their colleagues created.
4. Never a Backward Step (1966, d. Donald Brittain). Another great Canadian documentary [about press tycoon and businessman, Lord Thomson of Fleet], sparkling with Don’s droll wit and superb narrative style.
5. Fields of Sacrifice (1964, d. Donald Brittain). Another great Brittain documentary, his deeply moving lament on the horrors of war, again graced by his inimitable narrative voice, is unmatchable.
King has directed 25 films since then, on subjects as disparate as bullfighting and post-Soviet Estonia. They all share a preoccupation with laying bare social dynamics, the viewer becoming a sort of amateur psychologist, left to analyze unspoken motivations and topsy-turvy relationships. King’s latest, Memory for Max, Claire, Ida and Company, debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall; it plays at Cinematheque (as part of a screening of 2005’s top Canadian films) in late January and on TVO this month. Memory follows eight residents at the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, each exhibiting memory loss and dementia from Alzheimer’s. It centres on 89-year-old Claire Mandel and her even more elderly boyfriend, Max Trachter. Max’s death after a fall precipitates a sequence of heart-wrenching scenes in which Claire, unable to remember Max has died, repeatedly asks Baycrest’s caretakers where Max has gone. Every time she’s reminded, she grieves anew.
King creaks as he lifts himself from a chair in his book-stuffed rent-controlled apartment high atop the Sutton Place Hotel. He lives with his third wife, Colleen Murphy, a playwright and filmmaker, and his collaborator on 1989’s Termini Station. He admits his own memory isn’t what it used to be (“I’ve got too many files up there”) and that he mixes up the names of his six grandchildren and his golden retriever, Abby.
King was born in Vancouver in 1930, and his own parents divorced when he was 15, making him an oddity among his friends (and perhaps sparking his life’s fascination with psychodynamics). His first film, Skidrow, about alcoholic derelicts in Vancouver, was made in 1956 while he was working at the city’s fledgling CBC station. His 50-year career has included long stints directing feature films, such as Who Has Seen the Wind, and television shows, including several seasons of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Road to Avonlea. It was “the easiest, quickest way to make money I’ve ever discovered,” King says, but he often worried about misinterpreting the writers’ scripts.Documentaries allowed him to write and direct. Plus, he likes to be surprised by what he finds.
In some respects, Memory recalls Warrendale, his notorious 1967 film about a facility for emotionally disturbed children. It was commissioned (and never broadcast because of its explicit language) by the CBC, and, like Memory, it pivots on an unexpected death. However, while in the '60s there was no need to get consent from Warrendale’s children, King had to negotiate for months with Baycrest's board and the residents' families before he could unpack his cameras.
King became interested in Alzheimer's while making his acclaimed 2003 doc Dying at Grace, which chronicled the palliative care of patients at Church Street's Grace Hospital. One day, he struck up a conversation with an elderly patient being treated for dementia and was impressed by her wit. "Everyone treated the condition as a horror story," he says. "I just didn't believe it. There are a number of cognitive skills, and one doesn’t lose all of them."
His methods haven’t changed much since Warrendale and A Married Couple. To build up trust and comfort with his subjects at Baycrest, he hung out with them for a few weeks, gradually introducing his camera and soundmen, then vanished from the scene and let his crew capture life as it unfolded. If he stays away during the filming, he explains, there’s one less factor influencing the action. He only begins to film when his subjects are as committed to the process as he is. “People must give you something that’s important,” he says, “or you don’t have the film.” The result is a documentary that is as close as possible to the unvarnished truth.
Today, he’s in the planning and fundraising stages for his next project. Tentatively titled The 'Hood, it will be about one family living amid the shootings and gang culture in either Malvern, Jane and Finch or Regent Park. It's a change of pace from the palliative care wing. He’s not sure where it’ll lead. “I learned long ago that you can never predict what you’ll get from another human being.”
1. Pour la suite du Monde (1963, d. Pierre Perrault and Michel Brault). I was fresh back in Canada after ten years in Europe and Pierre’s film was a deeply moving new view of a new Canada for me.
2. City of Gold (1957, d. Colin Low and Wolf Koenig). A superb capturing of a story I knew inside out. It has always been my favourite Canadian film (as is it was John Grierson’s—along with my own Skidrow).
3. The Clinton Special (1974, d. Michael Ondaatje). My favourite Canadian feature: Michael Ondaatje’s documentary drama rendition of the genesis of Theatre Passe Muraille’s great Farm Show, which Paul Thompson, Janet Amos and their colleagues created.
4. Never a Backward Step (1966, d. Donald Brittain). Another great Canadian documentary [about press tycoon and businessman, Lord Thomson of Fleet], sparkling with Don’s droll wit and superb narrative style.
5. Fields of Sacrifice (1964, d. Donald Brittain). Another great Brittain documentary, his deeply moving lament on the horrors of war, again graced by his inimitable narrative voice, is unmatchable.
