Enjoyed a cup of coffee with Corey Marr (above), the Toronto-based producer of the low-budget indie film Passenger Side, starring Adam Scott. It has attracted a raft of positive notices, not least from LA Weekly, which called it “a thinking man’s Judd Apatow” flick, “literate, amusing and unexpectedly moving.”
The film’s score, assembled by Superchunk’s Mac McCaughan, includes the music of Wilco (the title is taken from one of their songs), Leonard Cohen, Chad VanGaalen, Dinosaur Jr. and the Silver Jews, among others.
It’s Marr’s first TIFF feature, but unlikely to be his last.
He has several projects in development, including Voices, a psychological thriller and Summerteeth, which he describes as Dazed and Confused meets King Kong, and which he’s planning to shoot in northern Ontario next summer. The latter script, involving a group of students planting trees for the summer, is by Montrealer Matt Bissonnette, who also wrote and directed Passenger Side as well as Marr’s first feature, Who Loves the Sun? L.A.-based CAA is offering help with the packaging of talent. Then there’s Clara’s War, a script by actor-writer Jonas Chernick, based on writer Kathy Kacer’s young adult novel of the same name, and set in the Nazi concentration camp in Terezin, Czechoslovakia. And the Marr-Bissonnette tandem has two TV series projects on the bubble, as well: Rockville, a sitcom set in a rock music website office environment, and The Last Stop, a sci-fi series set on another planet. Also on tap is Get Happy, a TV series Marr is working on with Joseph Kay, about the life coaching business.
