Shelagh McLeod wants to put seniors on the moon

By Katherine Monk

VANCOUVER – If you’re looking for a mid-life female role model — who isn’t trying to sell you on goopy rejuvenation tips — it’s a good time to check in with Shelagh McLeod.

The Vancouver-born filmmaker started her career in a thespian vein, training in London in her teens, landing a TV gig on a Dennis Potter-scripted series Young Jean, and spending the next twenty five years as a working actor — sharing sets with the likes of Martin Sheen (Cold Front), Jeff Bridges (first on-screen kiss as ‘Girl at Party’ in The American Success Company) and Peter O’Toole (Pygmalion).

It’s much further than most actors ever get, but in 2011, McLeod switched gears completely. She turned her attention to writing and directing, winning awards for her debut short David Rose, and now, releasing her very first feature with Astronaut.

Starring Richard Dreyfuss as a sexagenarian with heart condition and a long-held dream of travelling to space, Astronaut feels a lot like the Canadian take on Space Cowboys as it tells the story of an aging man with a dream of one more big adventure — but in a much smaller, more intimate way.

In other words, this isn’t a movie that relies on special effects and science-fiction visuals. It’s more of a family drama, and an existential exploration of what it means to grow old in a world that remains obsessed with youth.

“For me, it’s a very personal story,” says McLeod, speaking over the phone from Toronto, where she’s just pulled into a “shady parking lot” to focus on the chat.

“My mother died in a nursing home a few years ago, and I used to go visit her a lot. And in the nursing home gardens, there was an old man in a wheelchair. He never wanted to come inside. He just kept staring up at the sky. And one day I asked him what are you looking for up there? What is it that you want? And he said ‘Another go.’ And that just broke my heart a little.”

McLeod says she knew there was something important in that small fracture, whether it was a glimpse at mortality, or the mourning of lost potential, she knew she had to write about it.

“I am very passionate about the marginalization of older people. There are so many stories to hear… and no one listens. People give up on their dreams, but what better dream than to have a dream to go up to space — no matter how old you are?” says McLeod.

“So, I really wrote this for my mum who died five months after I met this old man, and I also wrote it for my dad who died young at 61. But I wrote it for everybody who really might be feeling like their dreams are perhaps past. All the producers, the cast and I wanted to make a movie that would say no, it’s still possible. Don’t give up. So there’s an element of fantasy and magic in it, but I do think at the same time, there’s this message that we should listen to the elder generation. They should have a voice.”

McLeod agrees that old women are discounted and marginalized even more than old men, but she says the central character came to her as a man — and she felt she had to honour that vision. “But it’s also honouring my mother, because she had hopes and aspirations, as well. This is just as easily her story.”

It’s also just as easily McLeod’s own story. “Being a female director of a certain age, hasn’t been easy. To step behind the camera and say look, I know I’m of a certain age, but I think I have a story to tell and another one, too. You know, but I’m doing it, and suddenly it finally feels like things are beginning to change for women — for the better, I hope.”

McLeod says the next screenplay, Nexus, features a female protagonist — and tells another astronaut story. “I wanted to be an astronaut when I was younger, but I was dyslexic… so this story is the story of a woman who spends so much time in space, she has a hard time reconnecting to her family and her life when she’s back on Earth.”

“Being a female director of a certain age, hasn’t been easy. To step behind the camera and say look, I know I’m of a certain age, but I think I have a story to tell and another one, too. You know, but I’m doing it, and suddenly it finally feels like things are beginning to change for women — for the better, I hope.” – Shelagh McLeod

While shooting Astronaut, the issues in Nexus spilled onto set when a female climber on Everest died. McLeod says she and the producers, and just about everyone within earshot, had an opinion about whether the mother of two young children had taken too great a risk to satisfy her own ambitions.

“Men are allowed to roam the world. And even though women have the same thirst, the same need to achieve, we judge them for it in a way men are never judged. We’re considered selfish. But I don’t think it’s selfish to do what you want to do.”

Recently short-listed for the Sundance Screenwriter’s Lab, Nexus is still in development, but McLeod is ever-optimistic — because, like so much of how we feel about life, she says attitude is a choice.

“I’m lucky. I’ve been surrounded by support all the way through. But it doesn’t mean I haven’t felt doubt. I went back to university in my 40s. I was the oldest person in my classes, but once I got over myself, and dropped my ego at the door, it wasn’t an issue. That’s why I thought Astronaut was such an important story to tell: it’s about a 75-year-old man who achieves a dream.”

The other point McLeod was happy to make was ability doesn’t necessarily decrease with age — only the confidence others place in you.

“As an actor, one of the funny things that happen as you get older is you end up ticking a lot more boxes on medical forms. I go for auditions like other actors and we are now given a stack of medical papers to sign, and some of the questions just make us laugh: like what age group are you? Ever had a panic attack? Suffered from anxiety? And the answer is: “Of course we have! We’re actors!”

McLeod says she and Richard Dreyfuss spoke about the life of a working actor, and the constant desire to give back — which is one of the reasons he accepted the lead role, and suffered through three blizzards and minus-twenty Celsius temperatures for the Hamilton-Toronto shoot.

Cold grey skies and icy runways are not what you imagine when you think of space launches or space in general, because the iconography of the space program is by default, American. NASA owns the imagery, and Americans own the mental space of the “Big Idea,” leaving Astronaut in a geographical zero-G — where the question of nationality is left free floating.

For financial reasons, as a Telefilm funded project, the movie had to be shot in Canada. Producers Sean Buckley (Buck Productions) and Jessica Adams maximized the money by finding locations in Hamilton, and shooting during the winter, when it’s easier to crew up. The limitations spurred McLeod creatively, who realized she could get to the essence of the story by keeping it as real — and as human — as possible.

“When we settled on locations in Hamilton and Toronto, we realized the best thing we could do to serve the story was to keep it rooted in everyday life. Sure, there’s this whole space odyssey thing happening, but the family dynamics are universal.”

If there is a specifically Canadian angle, McLeod says it’s in the spirit of the film. “I’ve lived all over. I left Canada at six and a half, came back at 24, worked at Stratford… I lived in L.A. for eight years. And I remember feeling there was nothing to hang on to, there. I loved the people, and so much of that Big Idea sensibility. But here, you do feel you can hang on to something. There are roots here… and a sense of optimism that isn’t in any way fake or plastic.”

“I lived in L.A. for eight years. And I remember feeling there was nothing to hang on to, there. I loved the people, and so much of that Big Idea sensibility. But here, you do feel you can hang on to something. There are roots here… and a sense of optimism that isn’t in any way fake or plastic.”

McLeod says all those facets of the Canadian identity were built into Astronaut, even if they aren’t readily visible, because it’s about where the story is focused. And in this case it’s not necessarily on the stars, she says.

“There’s a sense of depth here… and that comes from the people.”

Astronaut is playing in major cities and expands this week.

@katherinemonk

Main Image: Richard Dreyfuss in Astronaut, in what looks like a photographic reprise of Duddy Kravitz.

THE EX-PRESS, August 1, 2019

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