Tom McCamus (11/99 Possible Worlds)
Excerpt from Playback 11/15/99: Tom McCamus | Possible Worlds
Lepage’s Possible Worlds
November 15, 1999 by Playback Staff
Filming is underway for 30 days in Montreal and the Magdalen Islands through to Nov. 21 on Robert Lepage’s first English-language movie, Possible Worlds, a coproduction between Sandra Cunningham of Toronto’s East Side Film Company and Bruno Jobin of Montreal’s In Extremis Images. Alliance Atlantis Motion Picture Distribution will release the film in Canada and the u.k. aac also has worldwide sales. Based on the John Mighton stage play and adapted for the big screen by the playwright and Lepage (No, Le Confessional, Le Polygraphe), Possible Worlds explores the concept of parallel universes through the narrative device of a cubist love story and a more grounded, gruesome murder mystery. Leading players include Tilda Swinton (The War Zone, Orlando), Tom McCamus (The Sweet Hereafter, Long Day’s Journey Into Night), whose character is nominally ‘dead’ as the story opens, and Sean McCann (Affliction, Naked Lunch) and Rick Miller (When Justice Fails) as two police detectives.
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Possible Worlds will be ready to target major film festivals by May 2000. A fall release is a possibility.
© Playback
Excerpt from Montreal Film Resources 12/99: Tom McCamus
Shot in Montréal 1999
Robert Lepage's POSSIBLE WORLDS Shooting ended November 21st. Starring Tilda Swinton, Tom McCamus, Sean McCann and Gabriel Gascon. This film will premiere at the Toronto film fest in Sept. 2000. His last film Nô won best Canadian Film at the 23rd International Toronto Film Festival.
© Montreal Film Resources
Excerpt from Canoe Jam!Showbiz 12/11/99: Tom McCamus
Confusing plot assault on senses
December 11, 1999 By IAN NATHANSON
In the John Mighton play Possible Worlds, the constantly changing universes one George Barber experiences, it's difficult to pinpoint just how much pain he goes through in a lifetime. Fact is, grasping which direction Possible Worlds is headed can be a pain in the brain. Berkley and his bumbling partner Williams (Jim Warren and Jamie Williams) first find the body of Barber (Genie Award winner Tom McCamus) with his brain missing. Cue flash! Barber is alive and, well, liaising with a woman named Joyce (Tamsin Kelsey) who's a scientist ... no, Barber's lover ... no, Barber's wife ... no, Barber's ... (sigh) she's part of Barber's existence. Cue flash! Barber tries to figure himself out in front of a scientist named Penfield (Richard Binsley) who's business is to collect animal brains. Cue flash! He's dead again, with Berkley stressed over the case, holding an encased brain that flashes in need of stimuli and getting no help from the dorky Williams. Cue flash! Barber's alive, trying to figure out Joyce, who claims she's his lover ... no, a scientist ... never mind, you get the picture. Of all the characters, Barber is the hardest read. In scenes with Joyce, McCamus wavers on being spaced out (like Barber should be) to being bored, which means he has to force pain into Barber's dialogue.
© Canoe.ca
Excerpt from Reel Life Review 2000: Tom McCamus
Possible Worlds (2000)
As for the leads, McCamus plays his dimension-tripping role with just the right amount of vacant emotional feel and Swinton is simply sublime, playing varied incarnations of the same person, each with its own style but all heartfelt, endearing and credible.
© Reel Life Review
Excerpt from Winnipeg Free Press 7/28/00: Tom McCamus
'Emotionally powerful' Quebec story opens Canadian screenings
By John McKay July 28, 2000, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Director Denis Vitleneuve says the first print of his new film, Maelstrom, was fresh out of the processing lab and practically still wet when programmers for the Toronto International Film Festival screened it and wanted it. As a result, Maelstrom will open the festival's Perspective Canada program, which this year boasts 20 features -- a record 15 of them world premieres -- and 29 shorts. That will include a special presentation of Possible Robert Lepage's first English language film.
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The 25th annual festival runs from Sept. 7 to 15.
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Lepage's Possible Worlds is described as a cubist love story and stars Tom McCamus as a man who exists in many different worlds at once but who loves the same woman (Tilda Swinton) in all of them.
© Winnipeg Free Press
Excerpt from Film Freak Central 7/31/00: Tom McCamus
Film Freak Central Does The Toronto International Film Festival
July 31, 2000
Never one to be out-hyped, Robert LePage's (Le Confessional) latest, his English-language debut, is being shown under the label "Special Presentation". Possible Worlds, a magic realist fable, follows the cross-dimensional feelings one man (Tom McCamus) has for a woman (Tilda Swinton).
© Film Freak Central
Excerpt from Playback 9/4/00: Tom McCamus
Possible Worlds
September 4, 2000 by Mark Dillon
June 1999: Lepage makes a couple of trips to Toronto for casting with John Buchan. Lepage first casts Tom McCamus (A Long Day’s Journey into Night) as George. Although the production endeavors to cast all Canadians, it believes British actress Tilda Swinton (Orlando) to be best for the role of Joyce and brings her on board.
July to August 1999: Lepage departs to mount an opera in Japan and location scouting proceeds in his absence, although he does contribute via e-mail . The Magdalen Islands are selected as a primary location since the ocean plays a part in the story.
Labour Day 1999: Preproduction starts.
Mid-October 1999: The six-week shoot begins.
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September 2000: Possible Worlds makes its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, to be followed by its North American debut at tiff. Alliance Atlantis Pictures International is handling the film’s international distribution, with Odeon Films/Vivafilm in charge of distribution in Canada. *
© Playback
Excerpt from Screen Daily 9/21/00: Tom McCamus
Possible Worlds
21 September, 2000 | By Agnes Poirier
Dir: Robert Lepage. Canada. 2000. 93 min. Prod co: The East Side Film Company, In Extremis Images. Int'l sales: Alliance Atlantis International, tel: (1) 310 899 8000. Prod: Sandra Cunningham, Bruno Jobin. Scr: John Mighton, from his play. DoP: Jonathan Freeman. Ed: Susan Shipton. Prod des: Francois Seguin. Main cast: Tom McCamus, Tilda Swinton, Sean McCann, Rick Miller.
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Based on the philosophical postulation that each of us populates a universe of possible worlds, the film imagines one man who experiences each world simultaneously, at varying levels of consciousness. This man is George Barber (McCamus) who falls in love with Joyce (Swinton), or rather Joyces. Swinton does well inhabiting the same soul in different trappings - in one world she's a shy neurologist, in the next a go-getting business woman -- while McCamus is as enigmatic as a person in George's situation would be.
© Screen Daily
Excerpt from Playback 10/2/00: Tom McCamus
Von Trier, Lepage headline 29th New Media festival
October 2, 2000 by Playback Staff
Montreal: Lars Von Trier’s Palme d’Or-winning musical melodrama Dancer in the Dark (Film Tonic), starring Bjork and Catherine Deneuve, will open the 29th edition of the Montreal International Festival of New Cinema and New Media (fcmm), Oct. 12-22. The closing night movie for the expanded indie showcase is Robert Lepage’s first English-language film, Possible Worlds (Alliance Atlantis Motion Picture Distribution), which had its world premiere at the Mostra of Venice and is a coproduction between In Extremis Images of Montreal and East Side Film Company of Toronto. Lepage’s film stars Tom McCamus and Tilda Swinton in an adaptation of the award-winning John Mighton stageplay.
© Playback
Excerpt from Eye Weekly 1/18/01: Tom McCamus (Pictures at Film Walrus; clip at io9)
Writer John Mighton on the possibilities of Possible Worlds
By Jason Anderson
Possible Worlds Starring Tom McCamus, Tilda Swinton.
Screenplay by John Mighton, based on his play. Directed by Robert Lepage. (PG) 93 min. Opens Jan. 19
Something is missing from George Barber's apartment: his brain. In the opening moments of Robert Lepage's film adaptation of the Governor General's Award-winning play by Toronto's John Mighton, the police discover the rest of George (Tom McCamus), a financial analyst, but are baffled as to why he's literally been left empty-headed. Though the police are busy trying to solve the mystery behind George's death, George does not assume the usual behaviour of a corpse. He still has a life to lead. In fact, it becomes clear as Possible Worlds unfolds that he has many lives in many different worlds. He meets a woman named Joyce (Tilda Swinton) in each of them, and their romance is played out again and again with significant variations. In one world, Joyce is a shy neurologist he meets in a cafeteria; in another, an aggressive businesswoman who seduces him in a bar. As the events become increasingly tangled and surreal, the details of George's true fate begin to surface.
© Eye Weekly
Excerpt from Alex Fung's Page 1/29/01: Tom McCamus
2000 Genie Awards
The nominees for the 21st annual Genie Awards, honouring the best in Canadian cinema for the year 2000, were announced December 12th, 2000. The winners, as announced on January 29th, 2001:
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Best Motion Picture Maelström Produced by Roger Frappier, Luc Vandal
Other Nominees:....Possible Worlds Produced by Sandra Cunningham, Bruno Jobin
Best Achievement in Direction Denis Villeneuve, Maelström
Other Nominees:....Robert Lepage, Possible Worlds
Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role Marie-Josée Croze, Maelström
Other Nominees:....Tilda Swinton, Possible Worlds
Best Achievement in Cinematography
André Turpin, Maelström
Other Nominees:....Jonathan Freeman, Possible Worlds
© Alex Fung's Page
Excerpt from BBC 7/11/01: Tom McCamus
Possible Worlds (2001)
Reviewed by Jason Korsner Updated 11 July 2001
George Barber (McCamus) is found dead with $1000 in his pocket but with his brain missing. Interspersed with the subsequent police investigation, we see moments of George's life as he struggles to make sense of the world - or worlds - he lived in. "Each one of us exists in an infinite number of possible worlds," he muses, as he keeps meeting the same woman, Joyce (Swinton), although each Joyce he meets has a different past, a different present, and a different personality.
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Tom McCamus displays just the right amount of vacant confusion, while Tilda Swinton gives a remarkable performance - or four performances - reprising the same character in different but simultaneous worlds.
© BBC
Excerpt from The Guardian 7/12/01: Tom McCamus
Possible Worlds
Peter Bradshaw The Guardian, Thursday 12 July 2001 19.38 EDT
George is a middle-aged executive, played by Tom McCamus, who is found dead with his brain removed. Two cops - respectively weary and incompetent - follow up various leads, including questioning a local scientist who does creepy Donovan's-Brain-type experiments. But this is not a forensic thriller, rather a surreal, playful account of the living George's glimpses into the existence of parallel lives. We get "alternative" scenes showing his romantic encounters with Joyce (Tilda Swinton) who in one reality is a neurologist who rejects his overtures - and in another reality a vampish city type who hits on him.
© The Guardian
Excerpt from Playbill 7/29/01: Tom McCamus
Mighton's Possible Worlds Ends July 29 at L.A.'s Marilyn Monroe Theatre
29 Jul 2001 - By Christine Ehren
Canadian playwright and mathematician John Mighton's Possible Worlds completes its West Coast premiere July 29 at the Marilyn Monroe Theatre in the Lee Strasberg Creative Center.
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Possible Worlds was made into a recent film directed by Robert LePage and starring Tom McCamus and Tilda Swinton.
© Playbill
Excerpt from Biff Bam Pop 3/29/14: Tom McCamus
The Curious Case of Robert LePage
Mar 29 Posted by Luke Sneyd
This year the multitalented theatre and film director won the Glenn Gould Prize for his many artistic contributions. In recognition of that honour, TIFF has mounted a retrospective of LePage’s films, called Possible Worlds.
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Take Possible Worlds. The film centres around George Barber (Tom McCamus) a man who’s able to jump his consciousness from one world to the next. In each world he experiences, he encounters his lover Joyce, played by Tilda Swinton. Each world is different though, and each Joyce markedly so. In one world she’s an introverted scientific researcher, in another a vivacious and prickly stock trader. George woos them all, though the more he speaks of his multiple reality experiences, the creepier he gets.
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McCamus and Swinton are excellent, but dry.
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TIFF’s retrospective Robert LePage: Possible Worlds runs from March 27 to April 1st. The film Possible Worlds screens at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on Saturday, March 29th at 7pm, with Robert LePage present.
© Biff Bam Pop