Guy Maddin documentary screening celebrates Canadian Film Day

In 1997, Guy Maddin made a film called Twilight of the Ice Nymphs. Its production plan had all the trappings of success: a big budget and big names Shelley Duvall and Tom Waits in starring roles.

But for Maddin — who’s gone on to distinguish himself among Canada’s pre-eminent arthouse filmmakers with such works as My Winnipeg and Rumours — this was not to be his breakout film.

“It was quite traumatizing … I don’t think he was getting along very well with his producer,” recalls local filmmaker Noam Gonick (Hey, Happy), who shot a documentary, Guy Maddin: Waiting for Twilight, about the film’s troubled making.

The film streams Tuesday night — Canadian Film Day — on the Manitoba Documentary Archive channel on YouTube.

Another blow was singer-songwriter Waits’ departure from the project for scheduling reasons.

“Next to Guy’s office in the studio, there was a Tom Waits’ CD with a huge nail going through it, hammered to the wall,” recalls Gonick. Apparently, Waits still felt an attachment to the project, so agreed to narrate Gonick’s doc.

“He was the most open-minded and easygoing narrator I’ve ever worked with,” Gonick says. “We brought a big bottle of whiskey for him … and he promptly told us that he actually had given up drinking,”

Then in his early 20s, Gonick was something of Maddin’s protegé at the time, and one of his roles was showing out-of-town actors around Winnipeg.

“I took Shelley Duvall to Beaconia nude beach without telling her it was a nude beach … she was shocked, but she was pleasantly outraged,” says Gonick of the late star of The Shining.

“She liked the Prairies. She did. She had a really good time here; she tried to look for property. She just thought it was pretty.”