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Silver Road
Overall Rating     Total Runtime 13:00
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Synopsis
In Silver Road, lifelong friends Danny and Mark, both seventeen, struggle with the awkwardness of saying goodbye the night before Danny leaves for university in the city. Mark will stay behind to work his father's farm, hoping someday to buy some land of his own.
About the Filmmaker

Bill Taylor

Bill Taylor grew up on a small farm in rural Southwestern Ontario, Canada. In 1999, he moved to Toronto to study Political Science at York University, but ended up finding a home in the Film and Video Department studying screenwriting. It is here that he developed a profound respect for writers and filmmakers who told stories that were deeply rooted in the human experience. Though he has flirted with experimental videos and films with some success, Bill's heart always returns to his love of the conventional narrative.

Silver Road was Bill's first fictional film and was selected as one of the NSI Drama Prize recipients, for which Sarah Polley (Away From Her) served as Bill's director mentor. The film has played in festivals around the world and aired on CBC's Canadian Reflections. It will be airing on MTV Logo in the US this spring.

Currently, Bill is in post-production on his latest short film The Young Prime Minister (BravoFACT) and participating in the National Screen Institute's Features First program where he is developing his first feature film "The Summer We Ran" with Producer, Richard Blonski (Water, Heaven on Earth).


Filmmaker Q & A
Q: What inspired you to make your film? Was there any specific reason you chose to make your film? How did you come up with the idea for your film?
Bill: Growing up on a small farm in Ontario, I know the world of this story very intimately. Stories have always existed in this landscape for me. When I was a child these stories were about escapism. An uprooted tree became a den where warlocks lived, a skeleton of a beaver found near a pond became a warning from Helga, an imagined woman who had drown in that very pond hundreds of years before. Now in adulthood, the stories that are inspired by my rural roots are not about escape but engagement. Though I live in Toronto now, writing about rural Ontario allows me to connect to a world I still have a desire to feel apart of.

It is my background in this world that made directing this story so important to me. I can easily relate to the feelings of fear and isolation in Andrew Hachey's sensitive portrayal of Danny, a gay teenager who is leaving home but first needs to say goodbye to his best friend. I can also relate to the quiet love expressed in Jonathan Keltz's portrayal of Mark, the shy farm boy who is struggling with being left alone.

Q: What do you hope to convey through your film?
Bill: Though the film deals with ‘coming out', I knew I was never making a film for a gay audience only. I created a film that is at its core about the complexity of male love and friendship. Danny and Mark's love for one another is different in nature, but the bond they share is deep and meaningful. The depth of that bond is clear from the collective heartbreak in the final scene of the film.

Though the film's structure is simple, there is nothing easy about the characterization of Mark and Danny. It is Mark's deep desire to accept Danny and his recognition that he is no longer able to reach out to him that gives the film its final emotional punch. It is to the credit of my actors that the film so richly exhibits the subtleties of male friendship, love and ultimately, grief.

My biggest strategy when approaching the story was to see just how much could be conveyed in the silent moments in the film.

Q: Who are your favorite filmmakers/what are a few of your favorite films and why?
Bill: This is always a hard question; the short answer is there are so many. I am always looking for films that create a specific and believable world for flawed, but sympathetic characters to move through. Recently I have loved The Wrestler, Frozen River, Wendy and Lucy and Rachel Getting Married.

I can't watch The Bicycle Thief, You Can Count on Me or Tender Mercies without crying. I'm in awe of the visual story-telling and poetry found in the films of Terrence Malick. Kiewslowski's Three Colours Trilogy and Decalogue are perhaps the most precise and human films I have ever seen. Almodovar engages all my senses and finds beauty in strange and wonderful places.