BTC: Can you give us some background on Park Ex pictures? How was it started?Where is it going?

KT: Park ex pictures was started when I struck out on my own in 2000, after working for the previous 11 years at a company called Productions La Fete. I had a previous company called Ardglasson Productions, named after the village where my mother came from in Ireland and where I had a house for over 30 years.  It proved a successful name as neither francoids or angloids could pronounce it.

It’s named for the area of Montreal I was born and spent the first 11 years of my life; chosen because it is said the same way in both English and French.

Where is it going? Now that’s a question.  Essentially I am trying to be a producer without a production company. That is not actually possible but it is my goal. In other words I want to produce one project at a time and stay very close to the entire process as opposed to “overseeing” multiple projects, involving employees, and infrastructure.

BTC: Who are some of the filmmakers or writers who inspire and influence you?

KT: Welles, Hitchcock, Bertolucci, Scorcese, Chabrol, Altman, John Huston, Zhang Yimou,  Fassbinder, I am a big movie fan.

BTC: My husband (French Canadian) and I (English Canadian) nearly fell off our chairs laughing through Bon Cop, Bad Cop. Were there any unusual measures taken to film in two languages? What was the atmosphere on the set?

Bon Cop was always thought of as it came out: bilingual from start to finish. The atmosphere on set reflected what was going on on screen. I almost always speak to Patrick Huard and Eric Canuel in French but that’s only out of habit. When Colm was around things were very bilingual. First of all, his French is quite good and then there is his gregarious personality, if he could be channeled, we would be less dependent on James Bay.

BTC: Bon Cop, Bad Cop won two awards (Genie and Golden Reel) What do you think it is about this film that touches so many people?

KT: It’s about us, who we are. Most people, even English Canadians, like to see themselves portrayed on screen, as long as they don’t look too dopey and depressed, as they often do in Canadian movies.

It also hit the right tone. I don’t know if I can completely articulate that idea but I know it’s true. We could have easily been TOO sarcastic or TOO clever or TOO in or TOO whatever. But we weren’t, we got the balance right, unbeknownst to ourselves, i.e., you hope you will find an appropriate tone for your story but you can’t guarantee that the audience is going to respond accordingly, or that a large segment will.  It’s kind of like telling a joke.  Our pal, Larry**, for example is as you know an incorrigible joke teller, many of them bad jokes and often totally inappropriate to the situation. Yet he gets away with it because of something in his TONE. I think of it as being inherent in his attitude towards both the joke and the audience, to say nothing of how he sees himself.  Maybe it is a question of personality and his allows him not only to get away with more than most people do, but to make people laugh. Movies, like people, have personalities, and while it is more complicated to arrive at a harmonious notion of personality given the fact that so many people are contributing to the movie, I think our success remains a question of tone nonetheless.   

BTC: How do you decide which scripts will become a film?

KT: When I fall in love with a great idea and think it will make money. Not necessarily in that order.

BTC: Have you ever chosen a script from a slushpile, and if so, what made that one stand out?

KT: No. What must stand out for me is that it must illuminate something for me, make me see, think or feel, or laugh or cry in a way that I haven’t felt, thought or laughed before. Doesn’t have to be a big deal, but it has to be worthy of my (our) intelligence, humanity and decency. It must not be humorless and it must not be phony. Its truth must be real and its values palpable, though they don’t necessarily have to be mine. I don’t react well to vague.

I love Bon Cop but I did not ever pay to see a Lethal Weapon. I would not pay money to see. I loved 48 Hours and  Midnight Run. I like quirk.

BTC: What is your favorite part of making movies?

KT: What I like about being a producer is that you get to do ALL of it. That’s also what I hate about being a producer, but that’s another story.  By that I mean to experience the entire life cycle of a film.  Huard told me a story about a paragraph long and I thought it was an absolutely dynamite idea.  And today, 4 years later I am living through a government audit while I make speeches all across Canada because I am now temporarily” famous.  Therein the good and bad about being a producer: from inception until forever. It’s worse than having children.

BTC: What advice would you give to an aspiring filmmaker? Writer?

KT: Make movies. Write movies. There has never been an easier time in the history of the world to make a film and get your work seen (check out the 9 billion festivals). Those who do write or direct or produce immediately know if they are any good ai it. Many continue even if they aren’t.  Others keep talking about it and asking people like me about how to get started.

BTC: What is the next project for Park Ex?

KT: Just finishing a French language feature called Serveuses Demandees, a film d’auteur by Guylaine Dionne, that could be thought of as a feminist stripper movie.

**See Larry Weller in New Poetry