Max McGuire has Angelina Jolie to thank for the title of his new movie Foreverland.
The dynamic young Ottawa filmmaker had originally planned on calling his Canadian road movie Salt.
"It had been in development for six years until Angelina stole my title," joked McGuire, referring to Jolie's action thriller.
"Half of me expected a call from Sony asking to buy it from me. The joke was that it would close the gap on financing."
Foreverland, which screens today at the Odeon at 12:15 p.m., was a labour of love for McGuire, who as a child was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, the genetic degenerative lung disease that he has never let get in the way of his dreams.
The film stars Max Thieriot (Chloe) as Will Rankin, a 21-year-old with cystic fibrosis who embarks on a pilgrimage from sa国际传媒 to Mexico. It was to deliver the ashes of his childhood friend Bobby, also stricken with the terminal illness, to a healing shrine.
As Thieriot's initially reluctant character journeys down the Pacific Coast highway to Baja, he encounters a colourful group of characters.
Foreverland co-stars Mexican actor Demian Bichir, who just got an Oscar nomination for A Better Life, Juliette Lewis, Matt Frewer, Jason Priestley, Gary Farmer and Laurence Leboeuf as Bobby's little sister.
McGuire, 30, is well aware some filmgoers will assume the film is autobiographical, which it is not.
"I've lived every page to some degree but it's not my personal story," explains McGuire who, aware of his potentially short lifespan, began making movies fresh out of high school. His feature debut, Newton's Law, was made in 1999 in 15 days.
While "beat-the-clock" has often been used to describe McGuire's compulsion to make movies while he still can, he says he has never seen it that way.
"I don't know if it's hubris or ego. I just wanted to make movies. My dad was a hobbyist writer and he got tired of submitting screenplays so we just decided to make a kidnapping movie back then in Brockville with a sa国际传媒 Council grant for financing," he says.
The last thing he wanted was for his new feature to be perceived as a "disease of the week" movie. It's far from it.
"With every business person we talked to, that was a common thread. People would say 'Another sick Canadian boy road movie?
What's in the water up there?' " he said with a laugh, recalling One Week, Michael McGowan's film starring Joshua Jackson as a cancer survivor on a cross-sa国际传媒 odyssey.
McGuire credits Shawn Riopelle, who wrote the screenplay he collaborated on, with ensuring Foreverland could never be pigeonholed. Ironically, the success of One Week actually helped when they sought funding from Telefilm, he said.
"Shawn was great at making sure the structure was such that we doled out tidbits of character development. It's about a guy who wasn't living life to the fullest. The journey's about Will waking up and realizing you sometimes have to leave your backyard to figure out that everything you have is fine."
McGuire originally envisioned shooting Foreverland in India before realizing the best way to market the film was to take it through three countries.
The shoot last year brought McGuire and his crew to Vancouver Island before they wrapped in Mexico. Locations included Cathedral Grove, which stood in for northern California despite a brief freak snowstorm. They also shot in Coombs, Ucluelet and Tofino, and at Lighthouse Point where gale force winds reached 90 kilometres an hour one day.
"We were shooting about an hour and a half of footage every day, but we went down to seven minutes that day," he recalled. They filmed a couple of drive-by shots and an oceanside "walk-and-talk" that had to be dubbed n post-production.
They also rolled scenes with Lewis, who plays Will's reclusive, straight-laced Aunt Vicky, in Qualicum Beach.
McGuire said he considered himself blessed being able to work with actors like Lewis.
"She's awesome. She said, 'I'm like putty in your hands. Tell me what you want from me and I'll try to give it to you,' " he recalled.
"She's that animated. She talks with her hands, rolls her eyes and flips her head. It was magical."
Casting Thieriot was a particularly fulfilling experience - and a decision they didn't make lightly, he said.
"I wasn't sure if he'd be into the project at first but he was awesome," said McGuire, who flew to L.A. with a producer to meet Thieriot and sealed the deal after a meeting over lemonade. "I really got to know him more as a person. I was testing his mettle because I knew it would be a rigourous shoot and it's an independent film, with long days and short turnarounds."
It was another story filming in Mexico, where Bichir was mobbed.
"This guy's like the Brad Pitt of Mexico," McGuire said.
Although the handsome filmmaker has stayed as healthy as he can since he began weight training at age 12, he knew he'd have to be careful during filming. A minor cold can trigger a lung infection, but he says he always had antiobiotics on call and put his weight training sessions on hold - using that 90-minute time slot to get more sleep at night.
"We put in 100 per cent. I was going to die trying if I had to."
