Editor’s note: This story contains discussion of suicide and assisted death in connection with The Manhattan Project. The content may be upsetting for some readers. If you or someone you know is struggling, help is available: call or text 988 in Canada for the Suicide Crisis Helpline, or reach out to local crisis supports.
The Village Playhouse in Bancroft is showing a locally-filmed movie as part of their TIFF series this week.
The Manhattan Project was filmed around Maynooth and Barry’s Bay and features a number of local faces as cast members and extras.
The film tells the story of a cocktail enthusiast, Bob, who is diagnosed with cancer and decides to end his life by sitting out on the lake in the middle of winter until he freezes. He must deal with the impact his choice has on his son, Tom, and his community.
Joe Shulman and Svinda Heinrichs are both locals who participated in the making of the film. Shulman plays Reg the bartender and Heinrichs is an extra.
Both remembered some cold nights filming in the winter weather.
“They had a warming place, so they would shoot for a bit, and then we’d go and get warm, and then we’d come back out and shoot for a bit,” Heinrichs said.
Heinrichs said at the time, she was new to the area, so being part of the film was a good way for her to get to know the community.
Shulman had a speaking role in the film. He said he was interested in acting when he was in his twenties, but went the route of promotion and publicity for the arts for his career.
“To be able to go back in front of a camera 50 years later was really wonderful,” he said.
“ I had left the industry feeling very camera shy, and when we shot my scene as the bartender, I looked in the camera’s eye, which 50 years ago had looked like a shark, like Jaws to me, now was very welcoming and the scene went very well. So, it was exciting.”
He said it was a meaningful project for him to take part in, in particular his scene where his character comforts the son, Tom, in a tough moment.
“It’s an intimate scene. The son is dealing…with his father’s choice to end his life that way and struggling. I, as the bartender, consoled him about his relationship with his father, remembering mine,” he said.
“And once I was saying those lines and the camera was rolling, it became very intimate for me and my memory of my father.”
Shulman said filming the scene was also emotional as he remembered friends he lost to the AIDS epidemic in Toronto in the 1980s.
“[I] remember keenly that preparation for end of life on a calendar that one didn’t think was so accelerated and dealing with a whole generation of people who are no longer with us, who died in their prime, and for many, not even in their prime, in their twenties and early thirties. Incredibly creative people,” he said.
In the 1980s, people diagnosed with AIDS rarely had a good prognosis. With increased research and medical innovation, the disease is now treatable, and can be undetectable and untransmittable.
“So, remembering that, remembering funerals, remembering people who chose MAID, the medical assistance in death and being witness to that, it’s very emotional. I’m at an age as well where there’s more in my past than there is in my future. And I am on a first name basis with the grains of sand in the hourglass.”
Despite some of the tough themes the film deals with, Shulman said it has a warm community feeling to it.
The film is showing at the playhouse Thursday at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
Tickets are available on the Village Playhouse website.
