That's a wrap

Tom Quinn, Assistant director for Kids In The Hall mini-series 'Death Comes To Town' (centre yellow T-shirt) discusses a scene with Director Kelly Makin.

The old saying goes 'As one door closes another one opens,' and for former North Bay resident Tom Quinn, who is busy wrapping up the Kids In The Hall (KITH) mini-series project, it looks like several doors are about to open.

Quinn, who has worked as an assistant director with some of Hollywood’s biggest names including acclaimed directors; David Cronenberg, Sidney Lumet , Sofia Coppola, Norman Jewison and Gus Van Sant, is ready to take his career to the next level.

“I am thinking this is probably my last film as an assistant director because I have been doing this for a long time and I've been working over the last 6 or 7 years to become a director,” he tells BayToday.

“I also invented this game 'Things ... humour in a box,' (with his old friend and business partner Mark Sherry) it's really taken off and this is going to be our first big year were there's a North American TV campaign for it and we are in all the big chains in the States in Wal-mart, Toys R Us, Target and K-Mart so I don't have to rely on being an assistant director anymore for money.”

“So, I have a whole bunch of projects in development of my own and one of them takes place in North Bay. I have a whole bunch of North Bay Stories and I have one about growing up on the edge of wilderness in a subdivision in North Bay but my backyard was wilderness … and specifically about one summer growing up there.”

“It definitely is about a boy into manhood story and there is some specific North Bay stories that form the backdrop to historical stuff that I can't really talk about right now,” he adds.

After working on the KITH project and surveying what is available to him in terms of crew and location Quinn says the plan now is for his first project to shoot here in the Bay.

“I had a whole bunch of projects in development I am really just at a point where I need to decide which one I am going to put my efforts into first,” he explains.

“And with this project taking place up here ... to tell you the truth I assumed I would just shoot the story about North Bay just outside of Toronto because that is where the infrastructure is -- but now that we were able to pull this kind of project off here I know I could do it up here. And so over the next couple of years there is a good possibility that I will be back.”

Not only is the infrastructure inviting for potential film makers but the province through the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation has also made the area an attractive destination for movie productions.

“Oh it is definitely a buzz ... even before this project there's a bunch of brothers from Sudbury that I know who work in Toronto a director and some producers and they have a couple of projects coming up this way as well because of these great tax breaks and loans and these incentives.”

“Well it got us up here this project it is one of the reasons we are here as well and yet because of those incentives I am seriously considering that (North Bay story) to be my first project as my first one.”

Quinn, along with KITH member Scott Thompson, is one of the ties that helped bind the production to the city.

“Yes I guess you could say I'm one of the lynch pins but really they chose Northern Ontario before I came on. But North Bay seemed to have more of the things we needed, location wise, infrastructure wise, and of all the communities up here North Bay is one of the prettiest right, so really, if you are going to shoot a film that takes place in a small town or small city in Northern Ontario this was the place to go.”

Quinn says two things ran through his mind when he was offered the job -- one was that it was Kids in the Hall and the other one was that it was North Bay.

“Because I have been doing this for 25 years I've never been offered a job in North Bay before. And I probably would never have left North Bay in the first place if I could make movies, I knew I wanted to make movies before I left, so like I say I would never have left if there was a film industry in North Bay I would probably still live here.”

Quinn blames his parents for his interest and subsequent career in the often turbulent world of movie making.

“I know everyone loves movies but I spent a lot of time watching movies with my parents … there are four kids in my family so we all went to movies together, but individually they knew that I was very interested from a young age and they would take me individually to movies that the other kids didn't want to see and by the time I was 13 or 14 I got a hold of my dad's old super 8 camera and started making for films.”

“Just little 3 or 4 minute films -- I wrote way more than I made I just started very early. And so when I got to the end of high school and I'd already made a number of little films but I wasn't sure,” he notes.

“I didn't get a lot of support from -- like my family was fine, but even the guidance councillor just didn't understand ... what do you mean you want to make movies so I decided to I knew movies was basically about story telling so I got a degree in literature and then from there went to Ryerson for a short time but jumped into the first big boom in the film industry in Toronto and then went non-stop for 25 years.”

That's a wrap continues Here.