presents
This Beautiful City
A film by Ed Gass-Donnelly
Starring
Aaron Poole, Kristin Booth, Caroline Cave
Noam Jenkins, Stuart Hughes, Kat Germain
Tony Nappo, Jefferson Mappin
Official Selection – 2007 Toronto International Film Festival
Drama – Canada- 2007 – RT : 87 Minutes
www.sevillepictures.com
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3 Legged Dog Films and Resolute Films present This Beautiful City, a twisted and dark
tale of urban isolation and human relations, written and directed by first-time feature
and award-winning short filmmaker and stage director Ed Gass-Donnelly.
This Beautiful City is a sharp-eyed, character–driven story about five characters who
become connected after a woman plummets from the balcony of her downtown condo
and is discovered by a drug-addicted prostitute, her newly clean boyfriend, and a cop.
The film is set in the heart of Toronto’s downtown west end - a neighborhood
comprised of artists, derelicts, and the nouveau riche. Teetering on the cusp of change, it
is a place where decadence and desperation mingle in the streets. Prostitutes hustle
outside of $700,000 condos while the city’s affluent lurk through dingy alleys in search
of the next grunge chic.
This Beautiful City stars Kristin Booth (Kardia, Prairie Giant, Foolproof), Caroline Cave (The
L Word, Six Figures), Stuart Hughes (Troubled Waters, Where the Truth Lies), Noam Jenkins
(All Hat, Saw II, The Statement), and Aaron Poole (Z.O.S., Touch the Top of the World,
Gangster Exchange)
This Beautiful City was produced by Lee Kim, Aaron Poole and Ed Gass-Donnelly who
also wrote, directed and edited the film. Production designer and costume designer
Rachel Ford, cinematographer Micha Dahan, and music supervisors FemBots complete
the creative team.
This Beautiful City is a privately financed picture, and was produced with the
participation of Seville Pictures, which also serves as Canadian distributor and
international sales agent.
Synopsis
Friday night in Toronto’s lower west end. Chatter from a dinner party in Harry and
Carol’s nouveau riche condo drifts through an open balcony door, as two freebase
cokeheads, Pretty and Johnny, have a party on their own in the alley below. As the
dinner guests leave, the hostess is nowhere to be found. Until, a wet thud and a sharp
scream rise up to the balcony.
Pretty stares in horror at Carol’s body, splayed on the alley floor, as Harry screams for
help from above. The sharp burst of police sirens sends the cokeheads running as Peter,
a middle aged police officer, sprints from his cruiser to check Carol’s vitals.
Rocket forward three months and these five disparate lives begin to cataclysmically
intersect through weaving multi-narrative story arcs that release spurts and geysers of
long-suppressed sexuality and aggression.
Beautiful things can happen when you hit rock bottom.
Cast
Pretty
Johnny
Harry
Carol
Peter
KRISTIN BOOTH
AARON POOLE
NOAM JENKINS
CAROLINE CAVE
STUART HUGHES
Crew
Director/Writer/Editor/Producer
Executive Producer/Producer
Cinematographer
Production/Costume Designer
ED GASS-DONNELLY
LEE KIM
MICHA DAHAN
RACHEL FORD
Story
A stage production called ‘Descent’, also written and directed by Ed Gass- Donnelly,
was the first incarnation of what would later become This Beautiful City. Aaron Poole
played the character of Johnny in the stage version and was eager to work with GassDonnelly on the screenplay as producer and story editor. The two have been long time
collaborators.
Using ‘Descent’ as a framework, Gass-Donnelly and Poole began working on the
screenplay for This Beautiful City by reshaping the dialogue and further exploring the
areas of the city that Gass-Donnelly had derived inspiration from - areas that would
soon become the setting for the film.
“I wanted to make a film that embraced the specificity of the neighbourhood I live in. I
have always been inspired by stories of normal people who are pushed to extreme
behavior,” notes Gass-Donnelly. “There is a mystery involved in humanizing extremity
that I find compelling. But I'm far less interested in the salacious details of extremity
than I am the emotional consequences and the journey that leads people to them.”
Knowing Lee Kim’s background in film as a producer, director and actor, Poole
approached him with the screenplay. “The creative elements of the script were
compelling with characters that were rich in emotion yet completely understated,” says
Kim. “There was a very European sensibility to the story and characters, one that
pushed the boundaries of what we are used to seeing in Canadian cinema.” These
elements combined with Kim having seen Gass- Donnelly’s award-winning short film
Pink, solidified his commitment to the project as a producer.
Gass-Donnelly, Poole and Kim committed to a production date for the film, despite a
number of unsettled technicalities. “We were a train with no brakes…the spirit of that
commitment carried us through the obstacles that face an independent production,”
says Gass-Donnelly. “The start date always loomed on our calendar…we never
wavered. People responded to that tenacity. Our confidence inspired them to help.”
People
How do you resurface after hitting rock bottom? How do you find authentic happiness
in a life that is, from the outside, picture-perfect? This Beautiful City is made up of five
lead characters that struggle to find the balance between pain and pleasure within very
different boundaries of money and class. The element of fate and human
interconnectedness is the force that ultimately unifies their raw and disparate stories.
“I don’t see them as dark characters but rather as beautiful human beings who get stuck
in unfortunate circumstances and their own challenged limitations as people in
relationships,” notes Gass-Donnelly. “It’s their own fatal flaw that leads them to
tragedy. Repression leads to catastrophe in their relationships.”
Pretty (KRISTIN BOOTH)
She is a prostitute and intravenous crack addict living in an area of Toronto that sees
swank condo dwellers as her neighbours. She turns tricks to feed her addiction and
struggles with the inconsistency of her boyfriend Johnny, also an addict. Her
psychological dependency on pain and pleasure makes it difficult for Pretty to affect any
kind of positive change in her life.
Actor Kristin Booth spent time with a crack-addicted prostitute as a form of research in
order to mine authentic elements for the character of Pretty. “Crack – smashing” is a
particularly brutal form of use that sees the victim cooking and injecting the rock form
of cocaine. Coming from a middle-class family, Booth felt she needed a foothold and
perspective on this kind of life that usually sees prostitution and drug addiction in codependency. She also spent a lot of time with co-star Aaron Poole in order to get to the
heart of Pretty. “I couldn’t have gone to these places without Aaron,” says Booth.
“When we started rehearsing, I was unsure of how to approach the character. Because
Aaron is one of the producers, he’d been living with these characters for a really long
time and knew both Johnny and Pretty inside out.”
“By delving into this character, I gained a new way of looking at aspects of the city and
people living in these very particular areas…I think we become desensitized to many
things…to human beings sitting on the street asking for help,” says Booth. “What this
movie does is illustrates the heart behind these people that we see everyday.”
KRISTIN BOOTH made her feature film debut in the 2003 caper Foolproof alongside
Ryan Reynolds and David Suchet. More recent projects include the BBC mini series The
Company with Chris O’Donnell and Alfred Molina, The Tommy Douglas Story for the
CBC, the indie feature Kardia, and a guest star role on the Global/TMN series Regenesis,
which earned her a 2005 Gemini for “Best Supporting Actress in a Guest Role”. Counted
among Kristin’s TV movie and miniseries credits are Missing for Lifetime, Show Me
Yours on Showcase, Ken Finkleman’s CBC series The Newsroom, The Salem Witch Trials
with Kirstie Alley and Henry Czerny, Sleep Murder with Jason Priestly, and Burn: The
Robert Wraight Story with Alan and Jonathan Scarfe. Notable theatre credits include
appearances with Soulpepper as Olivia in their production of Twelfth Night, and in the
title role of 2005’s Olympia.
Johnny (AARON POOLE)
A reformed crack addict, he believes he can help his girlfriend, Pretty, get clean. Many
obstacles stand in his way. Not only is their poverty an issue, requiring that they remain
in a pimp/prostitute relationship, but now Johnny begins to suffer terrifying blackouts
and bizarre nightmares that leave him increasingly unable to distinguish between fact
and fiction. Still, he struggles to save himself and his lover from the wasting fate of the
streets.
Actor Aaron Poole had to find the right balance in portraying a character with a dark
side while maintaining a glimmer of hope. “It’s a tricky but potentially beautiful task
exploring the dark side of a character,” says Poole. “How does somebody like Johnny
overcome and escape his circumstances? Finding these specific tools of coping and
capturing his active struggle imbues his violent seemingly irrational acts with a certain
empathy. There’s no judgment. I think that’s what Ed (Gass-Donnelly) finds beautiful. “
A long-time friend of Gass-Donnelly, Poole also enjoys a creative kinship with the
director. “Ed is fearless as a director. Not only does he achieve beautiful shots but he
also holds high standards of performance. He makes an agreement with the actor on set:
be great for the first couple of takes, don’t be afraid to suck through the next few, then
let’s discover what happens next. Ed’s not afraid to go to 16 takes in an attempt to find
brilliant and deeply authentic work.”
AARON POOLE is a rising part of the Toronto film scene. Recently, he beat out many of
his peers, landing a regular role on TMN’s exciting new miniseries, Z.O.S.. His credits
also include leading roles in Touch the Top of the World (A&E), Gangster Exchange (indie)
and Barstool Words(indie), guest starring appearances on This Is Wonderland, as well as
the workshop and development of many new works in film and theatre (most recently
for the acclaimed Company Theatre in Toronto). In 2006 he wrote and produced the short
film Empty, starring Michael Mahonen (This is Wonderland, Conspiracy of Silence), Karyn
Dwyer (Better Than Chocolate, Superstar), and Julian Richings (The Claim, Hard Core Logo).
This Beautiful City marks Aaron’s feature-length debut as a producer.
Harry (NOAM JENKINS)
He is a man who has coasted through life without questioning what makes him happy.
Great job, great home, great wife. He has achieved success by society’s standards – or so
it would seem on the surface.
What Harry understands to be reality comes crashing down after a near-fatal event
involving his wife, Carol. When Carol pulls back the curtain on their life together,
Harry finally begins to examine himself.
“Harry's post-crisis relationship with Carol is fundamentally about trying to hold on to
the past,” says Noam Jenkins. “I believe somehow, at least subconsciously, he feels if he
can get her to stabilize, he won't have to face his own demons.”
Only newly aware of being emotionally estranged from his wife, Harry reaches out to
the neighbourhood in what he initially believes to be an act of charity. He begins to
“gift” the street-bound Pretty food and pocket change. In return, he gains a glimpse of
her intimate life stories. “Harry's relationship with Pretty is an awakening of a repressed
side of himsel. It's a relationship that is terrifying to him because it forces him to hold up
that mirror and see that his preconceived model of himself - the contented, upwardly
mobile architect with a social conscious and a beautiful wife - is a lie However, like the
proverbial witness to a car accident, he cannot look away.”
NOAM JENKINS is a formidable talent familiar to both stage and screen audiences. His
feature film credits include featured roles in Saw II, Childstar, The Statement, Luck,
Century Hotel, and Studio 54. He has had recurring roles on Regenesis, The Eleventh Hour,
The Associates, and Earth: Final Conflict, and has guest-starred on Wild Card and Queer as
Folk. Also well regarded for his stage work, Noam’s theater credits include Things are
Falling Always and The Gospels Accordingly. In addition to This Beautiful City, Noam shot
the lead role of Sonny Stanton in the upcoming feature film All Hat, in fall 2006.
Carol (CAROLINE CAVE)
After plummeting from her balcony, Carol (CAROLINE CAVE), miraculously escapes
with only a crippled leg. In the aftermath, she is unable to verbalize to her husband
what caused the fall, fearing he won’t understand the truth. But what is Carol’s truth?
After being in a marriage that revolves around structure and expectation rather than
deep satisfaction, Carol finds herself in a state of emotional isolation and painful
internal crisis.
“I am intrigued by characters who set out to shock themselves, who attempt to disturb
their old notions of who they are and what they want,” says Caroline Cave. “I was
fascinated by Carol’s betrayal of her self-imposed, socially enforced role and what she
believed to be her moral code.”
While her husband isolates himself in increasing anger and their marriage is reduced to
kitchen banalities and crushing silence, Carol steals solace in brief encounters with the
cop who helped her recover from the accident. “Carol’s essential journey is about
rebelling by seeking authenticity. She makes the leap, figuratively and literally, and
finds someone with which there is no history, no damage, something that gives her
hope.”
CAROLINE CAVE has achieved success in both her stage and screen work. Her feature
film credits include The War Bride, Almost American and Six Figures, which premiered at
the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival. On the small screen, Caroline can be seen
in Stargate: Atlantis, The L Word, The Associates, and Regenesis. No stranger to the stage,
her selected theatre credits include Past Perfect, Macbeth, The Royal Family, Three Sisters,
and The Syringa Tree, which garnered her a Dora Mavor award in 2005.
Peter (STUART HUGHES)
Peter, the Toronto detective who discovers Carol after her fall, is haunted by failed
attempts at finding his missing daughter. Suffering a breakdown, he is “let go” from the
Department. Now the only semblance of emotional salvation comes from his secret
meetings with the recovering Carol.
“Peter's relationship with Carol is delicate,” says Stuart Hughes. “They are both
wounded figures seeking a safe place to harbor.”
Much like the other main characters, Peter has sustained spiritual scarring, yet is still
able to maintain hope—attempting to heal himself by reaching out to others.
“Peter struggles like all the other characters - often clumsily - to connect to tenuous
elements of love.”
STUART HUGHES is an accomplished screen and stage actor. Some of his film and
television credits include Where The Truth Lies, Troubled Waters, Street Time, Evidence of
Blood, PSI Factor, and Forever Knight. He has also had the pleasure of working with many
of Canada’s foremost theatres. Selected stage credits include King Lear, Fool For Love, She
Stoops to Conquer, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Othello. Stuart won Dora Mavor Moore
Awards for his work in The Collected Works of Billy the Kid and On the Verge. In addition,
he is one of the founders of the acclaimed Soulpepper theatre company.
Place
“To shoot this film in another city or another area of the city would be a betrayal to the
film itself and to Toronto, whether the characters are fictitious or not,” notes Kristin
Booth.
Shot and set in Toronto, specifically in the transitional West Queen West and Parkdale
areas, these neighbourhoods became vital in shaping and contextualizing the varied mix
of personalities found in the film. Many of the characters in This Beautiful City were
influenced by real people living and working in and around these beautifully gritty
neighbourhoods.
“This film is a love letter to Toronto,” says Aaron Poole. “But Ed (Gass-Donnelly) is in
love with the whole city, the one who wakes up in the morning without any make-up,
not just the airbrushed, “world class” city we read about all the time.”
The west side, downtown neighbourhoods embody what This Beautiful City seeks to
expose in its narrative: the clash and contrast of two different classes in a space that
forces them to be neighbours and the unavoidable interaction that ensues within these
constraints.
Look
By shooting on super 16mm film, Gass-Donnelly chose to capture an organic realism
fitting with the roughness of the story. In this case, the technical weaknesses of the
medium offered an emotional parallel to the narrative. The raw impact of the characters’
journey is fully felt through the unfiltered communication of this handmade aesthetic
Gass-Donnelly used photographs from Nan Goldin’s ‘The Ballad of Sexual Dependency’
as a reference. He wanted to achieve an emotional impact and color palate similar to the
photographs in Goldin’s work. Gass-Donnelly and cinematographer Micha Dahan were
also inspired by overexposed highlights and a hand-held aesthetic.
“The world of Johnny and Pretty is completely hand-held and the world of
Harry and Carol is static. When their lives begin to collide, there is also a visual sense of
the two worlds melting together,” explains Gass-Donnelly.
This Beautiful City has the mixed look and feel of a raw documentary combined with
poetic photography. “We shot a lot with obstacles in the foreground, soft focus, blown
out windows and highlights. Visually, I wanted to celebrate beauty in dark, dirty, and
unglamorous environments. Which is ultimately what the film is all about.”
Sound
The production signed FemBots as music supervisors for This Beautiful City. Long-time
music video collaborators of Gass-Donnelly’s, the band contributed original music to the
soundtrack and worked with Gass-Donnelly to attract contributions from other
prominent artists from the local music scene including Bryan Webb of The Constantines,
Buck 65, Sebastien Grainger of Death From Above 1979, Amy Millan of Stars and Broken
Social Scene, Jewish Legend, Sunparlour Players, and more.
“We were inspired by Toronto’s DIY (Do It Yourself) music scene. Here was an example
of a grassroots movement achieving international status on their own terms. As an
exchange and a thank you, we wanted to include some of this great music in our film
project.”
The director also recognized the parallels between the music of many of the bands and
the visual aesthetic he was striving for. “We wanted to work with these talented artists
on an organic level to compose original music for the film’s soundtrack.”
FEMBOTS (Music Supervision) began as a home recording project of Dave MacKinnon
and Brian Poirier. Their debut, Mucho Cuidado (2000), featured songs written and
performed on power tools, toys and broken down thrift store instruments. Their
critically-acclaimed second release, Small Town
Murder Scene (2003), pushed the weirdness and angularity of their debut into the
background and adopted a more atmospheric approach that bridged the gap between
the extremes of their sound. They began work on a third record at their Junkshop studio
in the spring of 2005. The resulting album, The City, unveils a rich, authentic sound that
builds upon the FemBots earlier work while moving in new directions. At its heart, The
City is an homage to the band’s hometown – its victories and failures.
Biographies
ED GASS-DONNELLY (Director/Writer/Editor/Producer)
He is an up-and-coming theatre and film director whose work has received great critical
acclaim over the past few years. His stage productions range from See Bob Run & Wild
Abandon which received rave reviews and a Dora Mavor Moore Award nomination to
the experimental creation Exercises In Depravity which was performed in the women’s
restroom of Buddies In Bad Times Theatre for a maximum capacity audience of 15 each
night. His short films include Pink, an award-winning short based on Judith
Thompson’s Governor General’s awardwinning text; and Polished, an award-winning
eighteen-minute film starring celebrated actors William B. Davis (The X-Files) and Karyn
Dwyer (Better Than Chocolate, Superstar).
He is currently developing two film adaptations of Governor-General’s Award-winning
plays, Judith Thompson’s The Crackwalker and Jason Sherman’s Three In The Back, Two In
The Head. This Beautiful City marks Ed’s feature-length debut.
Ed has also directed music videos for hit Toronto independent bands such as FemBots, A
Northern Chorus, Andre Ethier, as well as upcoming videos for Sunparlour Players, The
Ghost Is Dancing, and Rock Plaza Central.
LEE KIM (Executive Producer/Producer)
He has been actively involved in the entertainment industry as a producer, director,
actor and musician for over 8 years. His producing credits include The Message, a short
film that he directed, wrote and produced, and Smiling at the Sky, a feature film currently
in development. As an actor, some of his film and television credits include Intelligence,
Anonymous Rex, Bondage and guest appearances in Smallville, The Dead Zone, The
Evidence, and Killer Instinct. Lee is also an accomplished singer/songwriter, having
released an independent CD titled “Close to You” in 2000. His CD garnered attention
across the country with radio play throughout Canada and the U.S. He has performed
live in numerous venues and had TV interviews and performances on Canada AM, CityTV, and Breakfast TV.
Along with his involvement in the film and entertainment industry, Lee has a number of
years experience in the business world. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto,
with a degree in Economics. His business experience includes 6 years in the financial
services industry as a consultant with a specialization in the brokerage and banking
sectors. He has been involved in a number of high profile transactions, providing
financial analysis and industry knowledge for his clients. He spent the majority of his
time between Toronto and New York City until leaving the financial industry to pursue
a career in the arts. It is the combination of the acting and business that led Lee to form
Resolute Films and Entertainment in 2006.
MICHA DAHAN (Cinematographer)
She is a Juno nominated music video Director/Cinematographer. He has shot and
directed videos for I Mother Earth, David Usher, Our Lady Peace, Holly MacNarland, and
Finger 11. In addition to music videos, Micha has shot commercials, short films,
documentaries, television shows; comedy, action, drama; special effects, and stopmotion animation. Recently he shot episodes of Urban Legends and Masterminds, and
videos for Breaking Benjamin, and Our Lady Peace.
RACHEL FORD (Production/Costume Designer)
She designs both costume and environments. Her production design credits include
Boundless, Outset and Chasing Aces. She has designed costumes for both stage and screen
including Smart Woman Survival Guide, Design Rivals, The House, and Bounded Pairs. Her
stage credits include The Bible and Romeo & Juliet Remixed, which garnered her a Dora
Award Nomination for Outstanding Costume Design.