Martin Gero gives hands-on direction in Young People Fucking.

Typically, a first-time independent film director rattled awake by an early-morning mid-winter phone call is being told of a surprise Academy Award nomination. But, in the case of Martin Gero — working in Vancouver as co-executive producer of sci-fi series Stargate: Atlantis — the caller was from a producer for The National.

Gero was being asked to comment on how a new amendment to Bill C-10 would allow the Heritage Minister to deny tax credits for film and television productions deemed to be offensive, even if federal agencies already invested in the production. Now, Gero's CBC News appearance is referenced on his IMDb page, alongside a title that partly inspired the amendment: Young People Fucking.

“I hadn’t heard about any of this C-10 stuff beforehand,” Gero says. “And then there’s The National on the line at 7:30am saying, ‘We think you’re ruining the Canadian movie business for everyone, you’d better come in to defend yourself.’

“The attention has been great because it helps to lock in a certain audience,” he says. “And it’s also not so great because it can alienate people who would be turned off by the title.” The remedy is putting together the best possible trailer, which will run in cinemas across the country for the next two or three months.

While originally slated for release in mid-April, this unexpected wave of publicity for Young People Fucking motivated a new distributor, Maple Pictures, to pick up the film for a June 13 release in conjunction with its original Quebec-based distributor, Christal Films. And, contrary to a Toronto Star report claiming the film was likely being kicked to the straight-to-DVD curb for an American release, this run for momentum on Canadian screens will possibly alter the outcome stateside, too.

The interest stirred up by the controversy might motivate more people to see exactly what kind of decent-looking feature film can be made these days for $1.5 million — approximately $200,000 of which is owed to tax credits. And don’t forget about the actual young people fucking, a title which came before the rest of the script.

Such gratuitous language was part of the effort by 30-year-old Gero and his co-writer Aaron Abrams — who also stars — to create a sex comedy that reflects their own reality, further down the line than the first-time slapstick of an American Pie movie, or movies starring Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey where the denouement is a first kiss.

“There’s been a real try by our generation to separate sex and love,” says Gero. “But it doesn’t work that way in real life — the two can’t help but be intertwined.”

The point is illustrated through a couple of platonic friends, a married couple in their mid-20s, reconciling exes, a fraught first date and a lout seeking to satisfy his voyeuristic desires by recruiting his roommate for a romp that he can watch.

Music was obviously a significant part of the budget, too, including an apparent effort to elevate Toronto band Sheriff’s 1983 power ballad “When I’m With You” to the kind of resurgent canonical status currently enjoyed by Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.”

Characters spout dialogue that occasionally leads one to wonder what it would be like if the silicone thespians in an early-1990s vintage erotic thriller suddenly started reciting lines by David Mamet — only where the men have neither muscles nor mullets. Far as a Canadian production goes, YPF is several leagues ahead of past attempts to reconcile a lower budget with lots of talking and a few bared breasts, since the nerdy guys don’t have owlish glasses or cardigan sweaters knotted around their necks. Rather, if the pillow talk provokes a cringe, it’s because of the possibly genuine reflection of how young males have come take their cues from the way they hear passion lewdly elucidated in porno movies.

“The idea was to reflect how people pick up these social mores in the oddest places,” says Gero. “It’s not like you learn about it from watching your parents.”

Gero’s education in filmmaking came from a series of jobs after the Ottawa native dropped out of the Radio and Television Arts program at Ryerson University, frustrated by having to spend time on projects like how to produce public service announcements rather than something people want to watch. He has moved up the ranks at Stargate: Atlantis over the course of five seasons.

Young People Fucking took a year and a half to write, but it was filmed in just 19 days at the end of 2006. With international distribution already sewn up, the finished product was unveiled at the Toronto International Film Festival last September.

“The people at the film festival really want to love movies,” says Gero. “So, their reaction far exceeding my expectations, they were laughing at all the right moments. I walked out of there figuring, 'Man, I just made the greatest film ever.'

“Then I went to another movie the next day and saw the same kind of enthusiastic reaction. So, at least I got to have that sensation for 12 hours.”

Between 650 and 700 actors were auditioned for YPF, estimates Gero, who was looking for three magic qualities: “First of all, they had to be good looking, because the movie wasn’t going to be called Ugly People Fucking. They also had to be great comedic actors, that was a given. But the thing was, they also had to do nudity, which a lot of those just starting out don’t necessarily want to do.

“The guys were more nervous about that than the women were, though — because it never occurred to them, if they were setting out to be funny for a living, that someone would ever ask them to take their clothes off someday.”

A detailed audit of the female flesh on display in YPF was posted on the Mr. Skin website within days, something Mike Nichols surely didn’t experience after the premiere of Carnal Knowledge, although Gero is certainly under no delusion that this is now a part of the culture that he’s feeding into by making a movie like this.

“The problem with what Charles McVety is doing is that he’s taking issue with art that isn’t meant for him to understand in the first place,” says Gero of the president of the Canada Family Action Coalition taking credit for the Bill C-10 amendment. “Movies are an aggressive business, and when there’s a demand for something then that has a positive impact on everyone from hotels where the cast stays to the guy on your street who makes a living as a sound recordist.

“A lot of the focus has been on the censorship angle but, even just economically speaking, this is a bad idea. If the tax credits start getting denied after the movie is finished being made, and banks start wondering if they’re going to get back the money that they lent, the result is that people just won’t shoot movies in Canada.”

Then, what might be a breakthrough for a certain kind of flick in this country could end up being the last. None of this attention seems to have made Gero less modest about YPF’s prospects, either, since the shoestring only stretches so far.

“I knew I wanted the film to look good,” he says. “But it’s not like there’s a crawl at the beginning that explains how this is a Canadian movie and we only had a certain budget to work with so therefore you should try and like it more. Just like how you didn’t see a disclaimer at the beginning of Transformers that says the movie cost $180 million and it’s gonna be great — either it works, or it doesn’t.”  

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