5 years ago, I was in a rough state. Homeless, jobless and without anyone to talk to. I walked alone for months, aimless, doing random wood carvings to keep me occupied and out of trouble.
Then one night, around 8 pm near the downtown corner coffee shop, a local man came up to me. I knew him in passing as a person who was also experiencing financial and emotional upset, though we never really talked about it much. He came to sit with me, and shared that he had been working on a script adaptation for a book he had written years before. It seems that he too had taken up a creative outlet to keep himself from going past the point of no return.
So we talked about his film ideas, until finally he shared his reason for sitting down. "I've seen you around... the way you carry yourself, and it's a spitting image of what I have in mind for one of these characters." I looked at him curiously... Would you like the part?" he asked.
Stunned, the first thought that came to mind was "what? why me? I'm nobody... a bum on the street." but then my general sensibilities came to bare. I thanked him for the offer and asked "Ok, so what is the role, and what do you need me to do?" He smiled and replied "Well... it's the main role, and I'll need you to come by and go over the script a few times for rehearsal before we begin filming next month. Everything is in place, you just need to show up"
In that moment, It felt like I was dreaming. Just moments before I had basically resigned myself from reaching anywhere near a starring role in a professional film, let alone any role.
And here was the hard pill to swallow. My role was to be a man divided by duty and honor at the highest levels of power; The head inspector general of internal affairs within the Vatican Church.
So we met up, rehearsed the script and got the rest of the crew together. The next 3 months of filming off and on were some of the most memorable times of my life so far. The creative energy on and off set was full spectrum... as human as they come, with a full range of emotions and challenges that we faced along the way, as most film productions do.
And low and behold, a year later, even though we had no reached the budget we needed for distribution, our "quaint" little film from our one horse town won the Royal Reel Award at the Canadian International Film Festival.
Visit our website for more info. Check out the trailer below for "Of Saints and Outlaws"