From the moment Brian Casilio first laid eyes on Hanna, he knew she was a beautiful thing. Six years ago, the Vancouver Film School writing instructor had been assigned to mentor student Seth Lochhead in an assignment that would take Lochhead’s five-page outline of a feature-film screenplay to the next step, a 25-page treatment.
“It was a very complete story,” says Casilio, who is now looking forward to seeing the big-budget Hollywood production of Hanna that opens today. “From the trailers I’ve seen and what I’ve read about the production of Hanna, from the visual and narrative point of view what’s going to be up on screen is pretty much what Seth had six years ago on the page.”
Lochhead didn’t finish his script until after leaving school, but worked doggedly to find a buyer for his story of a young woman raised to be a killer. As head of the VFS writing program, Michael Baser feels like a proud papa.
“It’s rare,” Baser says. “I’m a writer and I’ve been doing this for 35 years down there [in Hollywood] and it’s rare that, right out of film school, a project that you developed in film school actually gets on its feet. It’s a testament to Seth’s talent and tenacity.”
Casilio notes that some student scripts aim at becoming small and independent films, or meeting Canadian requirements for presentation to Telefilm.
“Then,” he notes, “you have students who are writing scripts that are demonstrably, inarguably a Hollywood swing-for-the-fences, go-big-or-go-home project. That was Hanna, right from the beginning — it was going to need a big budget to be brought to fruition, and he was willing to take the chances on it.”
Baser notes that Lochhead wrote his story with Australian actress Cate Blanchett in mind. Blanchett is indeed in the finished project.
“As a writer,” Baser says, “you always like to, in your mind’s eye, write with an actor in mind, so to have that realized just heightens the wonder of this. What we tell our students here all the time is that everything is possible — you’ve just got to go for it.”
Sun Theatre Critic
pbirnie@vancouversun.com
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