Charles Officer loves alleyways.
The writer-director of
Nurse.Fighter.Boy, in theatres Friday, wanted to explore the hidden parts of Toronto in his first feature-length film - from the alleys he explored throughout his life, to the historic gym where he boxed as a youth, to a hidden gem restaurant whose soup he adores.
"Toronto's an incredible city, going to all-night parties and coming home and looking around the city and the cityscape. It was only because I was travelling - I was doing that in other cities and I was like, 'Why don't I do that in Toronto?' And when I started doing that in Toronto, staying up late and watching the sun come up in the city, I was like 'Wow. I've got to capture this stuff,'" Officer mused in an interview with
CityNews.ca at
Harlem restaurant ahead of the film's opening weekend.
Nurse.Fighter.Boy, the
Canadian Film Centre's feature film project for 2008, was well received in its premiere at last fall's
Toronto International Film Festival. At the time, Officer said he was overjoyed to have been selected as one of a few dozen Canadian films to make the cut.
The plot centres on three characters, Jude (Karen LeBlanc), a nurse fighting her own illness, sickle cell anemia, her son Ciel (Daniel J. Gordon), who knows his mother is hurting and turns to faith and spiritualism in the hopes of healing her, and an aging boxer, Silence (Clark Johnson) who fights in illegal matches to keep afloat financially. How their lives interconnect forms the basis of
Nurse.Fighter.Boy.
The film's unofficial fourth star is Toronto's east end.
"I grew up in the east side, around Coxwell and Danforth, but that really stemmed over into the Don Valley," Officer noted. "I've always found it magical - the paths, nature, you go down in this area and it's a whole other world. "But then you come up and it's the city - a concrete jungle, some low-income areas and a mixture of things. I always found it an escape, being down there."
"I wanted to make a film that reflected this part of my youth that I remember," he goes on to say.
"Nooks and crannies under bridges, the whole Don Valley Parkway, right down into Eastern Avenue. I just love the bridges and the water and when you walk along the path and the graffiti along there. It's just a beautiful place to stand on the bridge and look over the city. In early drafts I really had that in there but it became larger, and these huge long shots of (Jude) riding her bicycle through Toronto. That was the objective."
Officer chose
Harlem for a scene with Silence. One of the few soul food restaurants in the city, the intimate eatery boasts a high-ceilinged second-floor space the filmmaker knew would be perfect for a live music scene.
"It was a place that I'd been to before and really, really loved. I originally conceived it as a sort of dancehall bar, a mix of Nina Simone and a Jamaican dance hall," he explained. I think when I walked in here I knew this was the place. It had a really nice vibe to it, everything was just right."
For certain boxing scenes, there could be no other substitute for the historic
Cabbagetown Boxing Club, where Officer boxed as a kid. Shooting there proved challenging but not impossible thanks to its generous owner.
"There are classes and courses and it was tricky to tell someone you need to shoot for a week in a place. That means that they have to shut down their business for a week, and we're a small film," Officer conceded. "But (owner) Peter Wylie was amazing. He was there on the set and amazing support. Because we had some juggling with schedules he got thrown some curves and accommodated us in the most incredible way."
Finding the home Jude and Ciel lived in was another hurdle - but after searching high and low the filmmaker found his set in an unlikely place.
"I walked into this one house and it had a hole in the wall. And I'm like, 'This is it.' It connected to the garage. I thought, 'I never could've written this.' The visual it was creating was amazing. The house was a grow-op," he said. "So we got into this whole issue because it was a rag-tagged house. We had to get it authorized in time for us to shoot."
And then there are the alleyways - where Jude rides her bicycle to work, and where one night she's transfixed by soft strains of music coming from an upstairs apartment, Silence's apartment.
"I have been an alleyway fanatic for years. I have research on all the alleyways in the city and I've probably been to all of them, from the west end to this side," Officer smiled. "It was a hard decision to choose to shoot at an alleyway over here on the east side at Eastern Ave. There's a beautiful alleyway just south of Queen St. between Spadina and Bathurst. Graffiti in there, and there's all these turns. It was amazing to compose things in there. When it came down to it, that location was difficult to secure. But it was a blessing in disguise. Right across from the (film's) production office was this alleyway, and I thought, 'I'm going to go check this one out.' I walked, and there was this building right there, and it was a T-shape, and I thought, 'This is Silence's place.'"
Nurse.Fighter.Boy opens in Toronto and Vancouver Friday.
Still photo from Nurse.Fighter.Boy taken by Anna Keenan
Charles Officer will participate in Q & A's, Friday and Saturday, February 6 and 7, at the following Nurse.Fighter.Boy screenings:
After the 7:15 pm shows at AMC Yonge & Dundas, 10 Dundas St. East.
After the 9:30 pm shows at the Royal, 608 College St.
Related links:
Sister's Battle With Sickle Cell Anemia Inspired Filmmaker Charles Officer's Nurse.Fighter.Boy