One of the films with the most advance-buzz at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival is Canadian native Bruce McDonald’s independent feature Pontypool – the director’s first horror film, produced by Jeffrey Coghlan and Ambrose Roche.

Jeffrey Coghlan began his career as an actor before turning to producing. His producing career began with the television pilot Four Corners, followed by the lifestyle/reality series MVP – Hockey Edition, The Publicists and Romancing the Stove.

Long searching for a good feature script to produce, Pontypool – premiering at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival – is his first feature. In an exclusive interview, The Culturepin had the opportunity to ask Jeffrey some questions just days before the world premiere.

The Culturepin: When did you and Bruce McDonald start working together?

Jeffrey Coghlan: I ran into Bruce at the Horseshoe Tavern on Queen St. West one night in February of this year. We have known each other socially to this point. Over beers and a smoke he told me about Pontypool. I told him it sounded great and that that was something I could do. He sent me the script and two weeks later my producing partner Ambrose Roche and I optioned the script from him.

TCP: How did the adaptation of Pontypool into a film come about?

JC: Bruce had been working on it in various incarnations over the last ten years. It’s been through many producers and dozens of drafts but this film happened after the CBC approached Bruce about doing it as a one-hour radio play. He and the writer Tony Burgess developed it further into a feature script, dramatically changing the original script they started work on ten years ago and now we had this real intelligent psychological thriller that just had to be shot.

TCP: What else did you look at in the genre when exploring how to make this one scary?

JC: Hitchcock films like The Birds, David Lynch, The Blair Witch [Project]. The movie is a really great mind fuck, so it was about figuring out how to play on one’s fear and imagination.

TCP: Tell us a little about how you got the film made?

JC: We just plowed through it. Knocked on every door we could think of. The goal was to shoot within three months (which we did) and then to have it ready for TIFF (which we did), but was also an almost impossible task. Even right now – we’re still finishing the movie hoping to God we have it done on time for our screening in four days!

The money was all raised privately; no Telefilm, no tax credit financing, nothing – just a private equity team that really saw the upside of this film and the industry as a whole. We were lucky. Very lucky.

TCP: What’s next for you guys?

JC: Hard Core Logo 2. We start shooting in January.

Pontypool Screening Times:

Saturday September 06  |  08:00PM  |  AMC 6
Tuesday September 09  |  04:30PM  |  VARSITY 7
Friday September 12  |   05:00PM  |  VARSITY 8

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