Q&A with Chad Pelley, Mark Hoffe and Brad Gover on film Away from Everywhere

Local writer Chad Pelley's debut novel Away from Everywhere has been turned into a movie — and the movie is heading to Perspective Canada at Cannes in May.

Running parallel to the prestigious international film festival Cannes, Perspective Canada is a Telefilm Canada initiative that features Canadian films at the Marché du Film at Cannes.

• Jason Priestley in St. John's filming Away From Everywhere

The honour of such exposure isn't lost on Pelley, or the film's screenwriter, Mark Hoffe, and producer, Brad Gover. All three spoke with Anthony Germain on CBC's St. John's Morning Show.

Here's their conversation.

Q: This is one of those speciality sideshows of Cannes where they actually promote Canadian films in particular, right?

Brad Gover: Yeah. So, it's for international distributors and sales agents. They'll show a whole bunch of Telefilms from last year. But it's still a really good opportunity and it's great that we're over there at the same time.

Q: Mark, what's the storyline?

Mark Hoffe: The story is about a struggling writer named Owen Collins. He's also a recovering alcoholic and he emerges from rehab and he reunites with his estranged brother, Alex Collins.

But he soon descends into a tragic love triangle and he's forced to confront the devastating reality, which we won't give away here this morning.

Q: What was it like shooting the film here? How'd the shoot go?

Mark Hoffe: Oh it was fabulous. Our schedule was a little tight, 16 days, but we pulled it off with flying colours.

Q:  Brad, what were some of the major challenges getting this film made?

Brad Gover: Raising the money is always difficult. We first brought the project to Barbara Doran of Morag [Loves Company] Productions, and she helped us a lot to start a relationship with Telefilm and the Newfoundland and Labrador Film Development Corporation.

Then we hired Justin [Simms] as our director, and by then we were able to, because we had Barabara and some money and Justin, we were able to talk about getting people who were more of an international star than just a local movie, I guess. So it was important that we have the top three characters be performers that people would recognize from around the world.

Q: Well that's certainly the case with Jason Priestley. How did that work out?

Brad Gover: It was great. Jason was great. Shawn Doyle was amazing. He's in virtually every scene of the movie, he's just fantastic. And Joanne Kelly is incredible as well. She really rounded out the whole cast.

Q: When you're writing a screenplay, Mark, how difficult is it to capture the essence of a novel?

Mark Hoffe: I mean, the novel covers the brothers' entire life from their childhood right up until their mid-30s. Basically we just came into the story when Owen is emerging from rehab, so everything before that is sort of the back story.

Q: The novel is made into a film that's going to be played at Cannes. How big a deal is that for you as a novelist?

Chad Pelley: It's a huge deal for a lot of reasons. The recognition of having a book turn into a movie is a big bio boost for placing your next two novels.

Just extreme gratitude that this cast and crew of people wanted to spend that much time and money on something you wrote is very encouraging because that's a first novel for me so you can be really hard on it. And you can be hard on anything you've written in the past as you try and grow as a writer and move forward, s the fact that somebody saw something in that story is a huge inspiration for me.

Q: Often when a novel is turned into a film by a screenplay writer it's not often the first novel.

Chad Pelley: That's the beauty of this town, I think, is that we're all so interconnected in the arts scene that we're familiar with each other's work and the books that are coming out of here and who the filmmakers are and stuff.

Q: When you're a novelist and a guy like Mark takes that and turns it into a script, when you read that script, is it painful?

Chad Pelley: To me, I think it's going to be Mark's interpretation of the book, which I'm just interested to see. I think it can be better or different or worse, but it just becomes a different piece filtered through somebody else. And I think that's an interesting thing. It's a way to revitalize a book or a story that's already been told.

Q: So which of you three gets to go to France?

Chad Pelley: Not I.

Brad Gover: I'm hoping to go. We're working with some travel funding from the Newfoundland and Labrador Film Development Corporation, so I'm hoping to be there for sure.

Q: When can people in St. John's see this?

Brad Gover: Hopefully once we get through Perspective Canada, we're hoping to premiere it at the Toronto International Film Festival. Then from there it would do a number of other festivals … it may play at the [St. John's International Women's Film] Festival in October.

We have a presale for Super Channel, the digital movie channel. So it'll play on Super Channel sometime in the fall as well.