I caught up with Adriana Maggs, just as she returned from a holiday in Newfoundland.  Amidst the bustle of her young family, she sat down to discuss making her first feature film.

AH: I find female directors so inspiring.  It's tough enough to get a movie made, but when there are less role models, it takes great vision.

AM: It's just a really big collaboration, and if you have a good producer on board, they make it one step at a time, so you do it one step at a time.

I did a panel during the Oscars on a CBC pod cast, with a bunch of women directors, talking about how hard it was being a woman director.  I have to say, I didn't have the hardships that they had.  I had so many female predecessors in Newfoundland.  I couldn't say the grips weren't listening to me.  There was virtually no tension on the set, (which I need because I can't stand fighting).  I had incredible support.   

AH: Newfoundland seems to be such a wonderful incubator of talent.  The film is a who's who of Newfoundland actors, and the production credits list many well-known names.  There seems to be a strong community there that nurtures its own storytellers.  Is this true and what is the relationship like with the big centres in Canada in terms of getting your work made?

AM: Newfoundland is an amazing environment.  I went to York University and did a degree in film and video screenwriting.  It was great, but then I went home and got involved in NFCO (Newfoundland Film Co-op), which has been around since 1975.  They are the most amazing, inspiring people, and their philosophy is if you want to make a 5-minute film, you can.  What I learnt at York, and spent a lot of money learning, I put into practice at NFCO.  It's just a lot of dedicated people, a lot of women, and a lot of people who have already made films who are dedicated to helping and teaching and learning.  Some great folks like John Doyle who made Extraordinary Visitor, and Gerry Rogers who made My Left Breast when she had breast cancer.  Jean Smith who runs it is a powerhouse and a tireless and supportive woman.  With the degree from York University, I was bartending, and then once I made a film with NFCO, I was working constantly. 

I look at a lot of Newfoundlanders who came to Toronto younger; I feel they had a hard time breaking in.  When you are able to get that kind of experience in a smaller community, if you come to Toronto with something under your belt, people pay attention to you.

As a young actor from Newfoundland, Toronto casting directors here are hard to see.  With the exception Shawn Doyle, Andy Jones and Mary Walsh, I was happy to showcase some lesser-known Newfoundland talent.  In my impression, they are some of the greatest actors.  Susan Kent, who was on Hatching Matching and Dispatching (the series Maggs created with best friend Sherri White), how do I describe her?  Ridiculous?  She would be on the top of my list for everything I ever did.  She should work more than she does. 

Mark O'Brien, who played the cutey boyfriend – people gotta be careful, they gotta snap him up.  Adorable!  He's like a Michael Cera, he's so charming. 

Steve Cochrane (who is my ex and the father of my kids, so I'm biased), his role was small as Shawn Doyle's boyfriend, but he is the funniest person in the world, the stuff that he's done, he's just spectacular, such a great comedian. 

Tatiana Maslany (Ruby) is from Regina.  I had the idea that I would cast it locally and I wish that Tatiana had been from Newfoundland, as there was no one else who could play that role.  When you have somebody who blows your mind, that principle of local casting means nothing.  

Mary Walsh was so supportive of Sherri (White, who plays the mother Lillian) and I when we created Hatching Matching and Dispatching, and then we created the pilot Rabbittown, and now we're in development with Showcase to evolve Rabbittown into a new show about our ridiculous friendship.

So the people I work with and the projects I create mostly come out of Newfoundland.

AH: There is a conflicted relationship in the film with the setting, a feeling of small town frustration and being trapped on the island, yet the characters and landscape are depicted with such care and detail.  What part does Newfoundland play in your life?

AM: Toronto is full time for me now and it's actually pretty hard on my kids.  A lot of us moved up here at the same time, after Hatching, Matching and Dispatching ended. It just felt like there was not a lot going on there.  I was from Cornerbrook, which has 20,000 people, I wanted desperately to be in the big city, although I had no idea what that meant. 

Sherri and I have always dressed characters quite brightly against those grays and blues of home.  We felt like we stuck out like a sore thumb, and that is where a lot of inspiration for our stories and characters come from.   

After York, I went back to St. John's for seven years.  I wanted to be there, more than anything.  It was a place I wanted to escape, but it was a place I wanted to go back too as well. 

It is still a conflicted relationship.  It was brutal to pull myself out of the river yesterday (I just got back to Toronto), I'm so much more suntanned there, we kayak, my dad has a vegetable garden.  I feel bad for my kids, not being able to be outside all the time here.  Although, Toronto is a beautiful, tolerant city; it's amazing how beautiful and loving people are here, except for the drivers!

AH: You were a smash hit at Sundance.  What was that experience and the festival circuit like? 

AM: I met Mark Ruffalo; I think he's already married which is too bad.  I met Samuel L. Jackson.  Most of the Newfoundlanders stayed in one condo, and we had a hot tub, which we spent a lot of time in.  It was a chaotic experience as we were doing so much press.  I also went to San Francisco.  I haven’t been able to go everywhere the film goes, it gets expensive and it’s tough with kids. 

AH: Funding -- it seems Telefilm played a major part -- what was your journey like as a producer to get this project funded? 

AM: Telefilm was amazing.  I love Gord Whittaker, he is at Telefilm Atlantic, and he came down to Sundance.  He wouldn't get in the hot tub, but he was really great.

The Harold Greenberg Fund and Newfoundland Labrador Film Development Corporation have been with me since the beginning.  I hope that I'm making them proud.

AH: The soundtrack has many familiar names -- what was the process of creating the original music and sourcing already recorded songs?  Did you collaborate with Elliot Brood and Joel Stewart?

Joel Stewart is a friend of mine and I love his stuff and he just let me pick through it like a library.  Elliot Brood has been a favourite band of mine forever.  At first they said they had to see the movie before signing on.  I found out they just wanted to be sure it wasn't a Western, because that's what they're always asked to do, but when I showed it to them, they laughed at all the right parts, and embraced the humour and tragedy.  They let me use pre-recorded stuff, and then they wrote some songs for the film.  They also did the score, by sitting down and playing along with the movie, like Neil Young does, who they love.

Sherri White also wrote a song for it -- which comes from her short film Diamonds in a Bucket – so I was paying homage to her movie in my movie. 

AH: I found themes of greatness and failure, stardom and pardon were central.  The stakes were high and the dreams were grand.  I found these themes and their portrayal universal, but do they relate most particularly to small town Newfoundland?

I think thematically while I'm writing.  I got into a fight with my boyfriend about that, I don't believe you can have a single scene that doesn't relate to your theme.  You have to name your themes. 

Greatness and failure are so universal, but everyone relates to dreams and the destruction of dreams, and everyone relates to having incredible desires.

In my town, we had a sign on the highway celebrating a hockey player who went pro for a couple of weeks then got sent down to the minors, but the sign stayed up.  It's horrible because you don't want to be the one to say, "we should take this down, he's not really a hero anymore."  But he was, in his own way, he did a lot of great work with youth. 

I wanted to play with the relationship between Canada and the US.  We were in Nashville a lot working with CMT, and we'd see waitresses in their late 40's who you knew went there with all those big dreams, and now they just can’t go home.  There's something so heartbreaking about trying and failing, and people say, it's better to have at least tried, but I disagree somehow.  That's the theme of the movie -- don't ever try because it's more depressing to fail.  No, I’m joking. 

It’s more about the poignancy of those dreams.  When Ruby and Ray realize what really matters, those dreams are less important.  The film is a kid's journey about growing up too fast and then being able to be a kid again.  When her dad decides to be a dad again, we see the real themes come through.  They were both suffering under the failure of those impossible dreams until they realize that all they need is right there.  Family.  That's a great theme.  I like that!

ADRIANA MAGGS is the executive producer, co-creator and head writer of the 2009 Gemini Winning series Three Chords From the Truth. Adriana has most recently written on the TMN series Call Me Fitz starring Jason Priestly. She was the head writer on The Wilkinson’s and wrote the episode that garnered the Gemini Award for best individual performance in a comedy. Adriana has won awards in Canada for her two short films including the Outstanding Writer’s award at the Atlantic Film Festival in 2004. She created the series Rabbittown for CBC with Sherry White and was a contributing writer and actor in the award winning series Hatching, Matching and Dispatching for CBC. She wrote and directed Grown Up Movie Star; it is her first feature film.