Between Friends (1973)

Between Friends (Canada, 1973) 91 min color DIR: Donald Shebib. PROD: Chalmers Adams. SCR: Claude Harz. MUSIC: Matthew McCauley. DOP: Richard Leiterman. CAST: Michael Parks, Bonnie Bedelia, Chuck Shamata, Henry Beckman, Hugh Webster. (Clearwater Films)

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Canadian Film Day is a lot like Record Store Day or Video Store Day. It’s great that people come out to support for it for that one day, but this institution also needs our love the remaining 364 days of the year. Case in point: of all the features made by the legendary Don Shebib, Between Friends remains his hardest to find. So when it’s being shown at U of T as part of Canadian Film Day (and U of T’s ongoing “Toronto on Film” series), with Mr. Shebib in attendance, what else? You go! But still, a notoriously unavailable film played in a small screening room with fifteen people in attendance. How Canadian. Even on Canadian Film Day, we could be showing a lot more love for our own cinema.

Between Friends opened and closed within a week during its initial run, although it was well received. Robert Fulford, writing under his “Marshall Delaney” pseudonym, wrote a laudatory review of the film, proclaiming it as Shebib’s masterpiece. (This is collected in the must-own book, Marshall Delaney at the Movies.) The film has never been released to home video, and was even conspicuously absent on television (where most of Canadian cinema is fated to be CanCon filler at 2 PM or 2AM): the last TV airing I can detect in this region is from 1989, on the French channel, no less. Its elusiveness is due in part, I’m told, to a greedy producer that has kept it locked up.

Alas, that matter was never addressed at the night’s screening, as Mr. Shebib had other things on his mind. Although the fifteen of us shared expressions like “Wow, I can’t believe I’m finally seeing this!”, pre-conditioned as we were by its reputation as a lost masterpiece, the tenor of the room was however navigated by Mr. Shebib’s own mixed feelings about it, largely over his leading man, Michael Parks.

The star of TV’s Then Came Bronson could have become the next James Dean, but his career was derailed by his reputation for being difficult on set. Between Friends was spoiled, in the director’s view, by Parks’ insistence on changing things every day, so much that one couldn’t properly prepare for the next day of shooting. It wasn’t so much because Parks liked to improvise, or to keep things fresh. In Shebib’s mind, “he was just being a selfish asshole.” On the other hand, the director was very effusive that night about his co-star Bonnie Bedelia (who, ironically, also appeared in the feature-length TV pilot for Then Came Bronson): if the film works at all, he maintains, it is because of her.

Indeed, Ms. Bedelia’s character Ellie provides the conflict between her boyfriend Chino (Chuck Shamata) and his old surfing buddy Toby (Michael Parks), who journeys from the west coast back to Toronto after a botched heist. Toby and Chino, in conjunction with Chino’s father (Henry Beckman) and his friend (Hugh Webster), plan another robbery: this time a payroll at a Subway mine. (How Canadian.) Ellie’s affections soon drift from Chino to Toby, resulting in tensions before they execute this ill-advised scheme.

Although Between Friends is scripted by another, one is tempted to read a lot of Shebib himself into Parks’ character. He had also lived in California: studying film, theatre and television at UCLA and working in Roger Corman productions, before returning to Canada, to produce CBC documentaries on counterculture topics of surfers and bikers. Shebib’s early feature films retain that verité sensibility, in part because of his frequent cinematographer, Richard Leiterman. Indeed, Between Friends has an Edward Hopper-esque quality, as its characters are filmed in the loneliest corners of urban life: including night time buses, diner and piers, while the characters (and viewers alike) await the inevitable.

In truth, I felt the tone was much more interesting than the characters. With the exception of the effervescent Ellie, these people are boors. That isn’t logically wrong, but they aren’t very compelling, either. This is not quite a genre film (the movie poster sure doesn’t suggest any thrills), as the writer and director are more interested in their shifting dynamics before the heist commences, but the final quarter gives us some much-needed excitement. There may not be any great surprises, as film noir conventions dictate that people must pay for their sins somehow, and because this is a Canadian movie made during the era of “loser” characters onscreen. And yet, there are no false notes during this sequence – these characters hurt just like real people.

All in all, Between Friends is a film I admire more than I like – perhaps because I’m influenced by the tone of the evening. Typically, I leave a screening of a Canadian movie in a bittersweet mood, reflecting more on what it could have been than what it was. The film by the way, was shown on a DVD-R: it had nice colour though, suggesting that there is still a good master lurking somewhere, whose resurrection remains in question. How Canadian. (The movie was preceded by two shorts: because Shebib was enamoured of documentaries, Gordon Sparling’s 1934 classic, Rhapsody in Two Languages, was presented; and because it was Canadian Film Day, so was Jared Raab’s hilarious 2011 film, The Revenge Plot.)