Tom McCamus, Chick Reid (2/09 Booky's Crush)
Excerpt from The Lindsay Post 2/10/09: Tom McCamus | Booky's Crush
A bittersweet tale of those other hard times
Posted By BRIAN GORMAN, © ZAP2IT
"Booky's Crush," airing Sunday, Feb. 15, on CBC Television, is the third in a series of family dramas about the Thomson family living through the Depression in Toronto.
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Like its predecessors, "Booky Makes Her Mark" and "Booky and the Secret Santa," this movie is based on a series of children's novels by Bernice Thurman Hunter, a former Eaton's employee who published her first book in 1981, when she was 59. And like the others, it was filmed in Hamilton, Ont., because so little of Depression-era Toronto remains as it was in the 1930s.
"Booky's Crush" tells a pair of parallel stories. A new boy has come to school -- someone with a whiff of danger about him -- and Beatrice "Booky" Thomson (Rachel Marcus) has fallen hard. Meanwhile, her brother Arthur (Dylan Everett) has begun to display exceptional artistic ability. This has put him in conflict with his father, a harness maker who has had to abandon his craft, which has no financial potential, for a factory job that pays the bills.
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A subplot of "Booky's Crush" involves an old friend of Thomas' (Tom McCamus) who has lost his job and has been dropped like a dirty rag by all his friends, including the Thomsons. We see him at a birthday party, secretly drinking and glaring at his fair-weather friends. As Follows says, it adds a slightly ominous tone similar to the one we see in the news today, that "the roller coaster is about to go down."
© Lindsay Post
Excerpt from Globe and Mail 2/13/09: Tom McCamus
HIGHLIGHT: BOOKY'S CRUSH
CATHERINE DAWSON MARCH February 13, 2009
Set in Toronto during the 1930s, Booky's Crush is a new movie based on the novels by Bernice Thurman Hunter. Rachel Marcus is entirely believable as the 11-year-old of the title, who's moving from the boys-are-silly to the boys-are-actually-kind-of-cute stage of her life.
The script is warm and sweet, but not saccharine - Booky's family is struggling as the Depression worsens but are not as badly off as others, and an awkward chat between Booky's father (Stuart Hughes) and an out-of-work old friend (Tom McCamus) is as relevant today as it was back then.
Hughes's wife is played by real-life wife Megan Follows - casting that reinforces the family dynamic between Booky, her parents and three siblings. Another smart touch is the way each character's personal dilemmas dovetail nicely with the central storyline - Booky's first love. Our household looks forward to seeing more Booky films.
Sunday, 8 p.m. on CBC
© The Globe and Mail
London Free Press 2/14/09: Tom McCamus
Booky's secret Crush
By JAMES REANEY
Booky's Crush warms up CBC-TV tomorrow night and there'll be lots of London skill and love in the air. Booky's Crush is the latest TV adaptation of Beatrice Thurman Hunter's autobiographical novels about growing up in Toronto in the 1930s.
Two former Londoners help give family-friendly Booky's Crush its adult edge. They are Stuart Hughes and Tom McCamus. The two became friends on-and off-stage in the 1970s. Both still have family ties here. Hughes plays the father of word-wise hero Beatrice (Booky) Thomson. McCamus plays his friend, Sidney, whose family is collapsing as the Depression crushes them. "You've got Stuart and Megan (Follows) to play the mom and dad. You've got great kids," McCamus says of the cast of Booky's Crush. The "great kids" include young Londoner Emilia McCarthy as a friend of Booky's.
"It's a great part of Canadian history. I like the story (and what) Peter (Moss) does as a director," Hughes says. "It's been great . . . working with my honey."
There are many reasons to admire Booky's Crush. To this viewer, many of them go right back to the excellence of Hughes and McCamus. Both have starred at the Stratford Shakespeare and Shaw festivals, in TV and movies.
Toronto-born Hughes, 49, has yelled "Stella" in a Soulpepper production, as fine A Streetcar Named Desire as you might need to see. He can pull that back for Thomas Thomson, even if he's with real-life partner Follows in a kitchen scene. He's wearing an undershirt. It just about shouts Stanley Kowalski.
Winnipeg-born McCamus, 53, knows about the dark side, when things began to slide. As an actor, he played that cool, creepy and destructive character in Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter. Sidney, a decent "guy in a tough situation," is just hanging on to his decency. Barely.
Moss, writer Tracey Forbes, and others on the Crush team connect the Depression with what's happening to kids, families and parents now.
A big part of that connection is felt in the scenes that put the Hughes and McCamus characters in conflict. Sidney is ashamed that he's no longer too proud to beg for work and angry that his friends turn away from him. Booky's dad is perhaps ashamed to shun his friend, fearing to see what unemployment has done to Sidney.
For a few minutes, as Thomas Thomson and Sidney spar at each other, they bring a sharp edge to Booky's Crush. Only fine actors who know each other can explore such angles in friendship so effortlessly. "The first thing I saw Tom in was Twelfth Night . . . he would have been a few years older than me," Hughes says of McCamus, looking back to a Mini-Theatre production from a Grand era more than 30 years ago. "I know 'Stuey.' I've known 'Stuey' for a long time," McCamus says of Hughes. "He's a little younger."
McCamus mentions Hughes, then a teenager, taking part in James Nichol's Sainte-Marie Among The Hurons at the Grand Theatre when it was known as Theatre London. That was in the mid-1970s. Before they were onstage at the Grand, Hughes and McCamus were part of vibrant secondary school theatre programs. Hughes was at Saunders. McCamus was at Oakridge. His phys-ed teacher was Barry McCarthy. Now a retired London educator, McCarthy spends many hours watching his talented 11-year-old daughter, Emilia, on TV shoots. That is where he met McCamus. "What can I say? I remember him as one of Art Fidler's proteges," McCarthy recalls of McCamus as a young actor working with Fidler, then the legendary leader of the Oakridge theatre program.
"Emilia was in with her tutor," he says of spending time on the Booky's Crush set during last year's filming. "Fortunately, Tom was off-set having a coffee. We had lots of fun reminiscing about the Oakridge days."
There must have been serious fun on set, too, with so many friends and family in the cast. Moss directed McCamus at the Grand back in the day. McCamus' wife, Chick Reid, is in Booky's Crush as Dottie, a guest at the ill-fated backyard party thrown by Sidney. Follows is there and everywhere with Hughes. Of course, when you have starred opposite each other in Othello -- as Follows and Hughes have done -- the tender turmoil of the Thomsons must seem sweetly serious.
Just now, Hughes is in Halifax to appear in a production of Doubt, opposite Fiona Reid. McCamus is preparing to return to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival where he will be in three productions this summer.
Tomorrow, you can see them on CBC-TV at 8 p.m. Somehow, the Booky films are heart-warming, never soft-headed. It says here that Booky's London connection helps keep her Crush smart and sweet.
© London Free Press