''Waydowntown'' (stylized as ''waydowntown'') is a 2000 film directed by Gary Burns and starring

Fab Filippo Fabrizio "Fab" Filippo (born November 30, 1973) is a Canadian actor. Personal life Filippo was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. His parents are first generation Italian immigrants (his mother is from Campora San Giovanni in Calabria). He bri ...

Don McKellar Don McKellar (born August 17, 1963) is a Canadian actor, writer, playwright, and filmmaker. He was part of a loosely-affiliated group of filmmakers to emerge from Toronto known as the Toronto New Wave. He is known for directing and writing th ...

, Marya Delver and Michelle Beaudoin. The film is a

dark comedy Black comedy, also known as dark comedy, morbid humor, or gallows humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discus ...

that explores office culture and its effects and often uses surrealism to achieve its thematic goals. The film is set in Calgary,

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...

, where many downtown buildings are connected by the Plus 15, an extensive network of indoor

skywalk A skyway, skybridge, skywalk, or sky walkway is an elevated type of pedway connecting two or more buildings in an urban area, or connecting elevated points within mountainous recreational zones. Urban skyways very often take the form of enclos ...

s. Because of this network, the hustle and bustle of the traditional "main street" has been replaced by recirculated air, food courts, and fluorescent lights. The result is a bleak and often humorous

about Canadian corporate culture.

Plot

The film centres on a group of office colleagues in downtown Calgary, Alberta, who bet a month's salary on who can last the longest without going outside by using the system of covered walkways that connect the buildings. The film takes place over one lunch hour on day 24 of the month-long competition. Things start to become complicated as the office prepares for the company founder's retirement party. The film's title is derived from a particular form of suicide where one smashes the (non-openable) window of one's high-rise office and then jumps through. In the movie, one of the characters has accumulated a 2-litre pop bottle full of marbles in the hopes of breaking his window. The dark joke for this is referenced in the film as: "a 15 bus takes you downtown, uta bottle of marbles takes you way downtown."

Cast

as Tom Bennett *

as Brad * Marya Delver as Sandra West * Gordon Currie as Curt Schwin *Jennifer Clement as Vicki *Tammy Isbell as Kathy *Tobias Godson as Randy *James McBurney as Phil

Production

The majority of the film was shot in TD Square, the

Calgary Eaton Centre The Core (stylized The CORE), which consists of TD Square, the Holt Renfrew building, and the former Calgary Eaton Centre, is the dominant shopping complex located in the downtown core of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. It spans three city blocks and c ...

, and

Bankers Hall Bankers Hall is a building complex located in downtown Calgary, Alberta, which includes twin 52-storey office towers (197 metres high), designed by the architectural firm Cohos Evamy in postmodern architectural style. The first building, known a ...

. The company's offices are situated in the TD Canada Trust Tower. The low-budget film was shot on digital and later transferred to 35 mm.

Reception

The film has a 70% freshness rating on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

. Most critics praise the satirical elements, casting, and plot. Others find the film to be humourless and incomplete, and the plot to be too nonsensical and uninteresting. The film won the Best Canadian Film Award prize at the 2000

Toronto International Film Festival The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, attracting over 480,000 people annually. Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has grown to become a perman ...

. In 2001, an industry poll conducted by '' Playback'' named it the 10th best Canadian film of the preceding 15 years. The film was shown at the

Calgary International Film Festival The Calgary International Film Festival (CIFF) is a film festival held annually in Calgary, Alberta, in late September and early October. CIFF is the largest international film festival in Alberta and the sixth largest in Canada. The Festival's ...

on September 19, 2019, to celebrate its 20th anniversary.

References

External links