MRH: Was this film more difficult to make than your prior two, because there are inherent problems in getting financing and a distributor in Canada.

Certainly one of the things I notice in reviewing films on home video is a film will come out theatrically, and then completely disappears save for periodic appearances on television. Neither H or Mustard Bath are currently available on DVD and / or are very hard to track down, and I wonder, knowing what can happen to a film after its been released, does that make it harder to find a producer or distributor to go with a storyline which is not overtly commercial, and is a more personal and meticulously designed character piece?

DW: It is very difficult to get a film like this, to try to sell it to distributors or theatre owners because it’s so bleak. Once an audience sits down and sees the film, they can appreciate it. I find audiences’ response to it is extremely positive, but getting them into the theatres is the problem… and a lot of that has to do with (I really believe) the theatre owners. There are some theatre owners that are very sympathetic to these kinds of films, but if you’re not a huge director or have an American star in your film, you’re practically swimming upstream.

MRH: Do you find H was a really unusual situation, in which audiences were surprised by how much quality could be wrought from a combination of great care in spite of an extremely low budget?

DW: I think I was more surprised than anybody because I had made it shortly after my parents had passed away and I was sort of smacked with my own mortality, and knew that if I was going to do what I had always wanted to do, I’d better do it now because there’s not very much time. Life is short.

I had worked in theatre for years and years which gave me a great background to deal with the world of actors, so [in the case of Mustard Bath] I had no problem working with people like Martha Henry. I was never intimidated because I felt very comfortable with my theatre background.

MRH: When someone makes a personal film, they don’t expect it to be a commercial success and a huge critical success – they just need to get the film made.

DW: I certainly felt that. I was living in Toronto at the time and I tried to go through Telefilm and the Ontario Film Development Corporation and both turned it down. So then I applied for an arts council grant and I got one. Canada Council had a program where if you want to change your career or take your career in a different direction, they had a certain amount of money that you could live off of to do that. That amount was $15,000, and so with that and deferrals I managed to scrape together $20,000.

With two people in one room, it was a struggle, but it was doable, and even though my producing partner told me it wasn’t, I sat down and showed him on paper that it was absolutely possible.

Then once it was made I didn’t really expect it to do anything except maybe show it to a few of my friends and family and that would be it – then it would disappear. And then suddenly it started getting recognition, and invited to festivals and winning prizes and getting critical acclaim, and I was absolutely shocked. I was in Switzerland with the film, and going to the screening I expect maybe 200 people, and there were like 2000 people sitting in the theatre watching this film, and it was completely surreal, so I was more surprised that anybody else.

MRH: Is there a chance that with the distribution of your current film the other two might come out on video?

DW: Mustard Bath is available on DVD. I know you can buy it on the Domino Film & Television website, and in terms of H, Domino owns the foreign rights, and Alliance Releasing owns the domestic rights, and so what [we're] going to do is we’re going to put out a foreign release of H and make it available at Amazon.com or wherever, but we can’t sell it [in Canada]. I don’t think Alliance has any interest in doing it because it’s not commercially to their advantage, and justify the cost of releasing it on DVD.