Actress-turned-writer/director Adriana Maggs is proud to be part of the Newfoundland femme mafia, an influential cabal that includes her muse Mary Walsh (the star of Hatching, Matching, & Dispatching, the short-lived CBC series) and best friend/writing partner Sherry White. Her first feature film, Grown Up Movie Star (see our review), is a coming of age story about 14-year-old Ruby (Tatiana Maslany) as she learns how to become a slut, which is contrasted with the sexual reawakening of her father (played by Shawn Doyle) as a gay ex-hockey player in rural Newfoundland. EYE WEEKLY spoke to Maggs, right before she left for her film’s Sundance premiere this week, about Canadian quirkiness, sexual promiscuity and her relationship with White.
Do you feel that there’s an aesthetic to Newfoundland cinema? People always talk about Canadian cinema as being “quirky,” but what does that even mean?
So okay, “quirky” is the worst word ever. Sometimes it means Ugly Betty, and other times it means Waking Ned Devine. As for a Newfoundland aesthetic, I think that life is really shitty and really funny all at the same time. And to be honest, I was worried how Ontario would receive that kind of a tone. In Newfoundland, you use humour to deal with hardship, you use humour to deal with loss, you use humour to deal with death. Some of the best times I’ve had were if me and a boyfriend broke up, or someone died, and I would just get completely drunk and just laugh so hard, just me and my girlfriends. I think that that’s the only way to get over anything that ever happens.
Do you think that’s how your characters deal with the immense tragedy and hurt in the story?
Yeah, I think laughter is needed to release any kind of tragedy and pain. But, in the case of the grandfather character who thinks that Arabs want to blow up Americans because women are sluts, I don’t think he’s using humour to release tragedy. Sometimes I think it’s funny when people are racists because it’s the most obnoxious, ignorant thing.
You have a very honest treatment of the sexuality of your young heroine, Ruby. Being a slut gives that character something to identify with.
Yeah totally, like a slut is almost her superhero. Ruby’s a tiny girl, but she’s learning how to master the techniques of “slut” for sure. I totally wanted to deconstruct the myth of the slut. People get this impression that these people love sex, but maybe more often than not, and maybe I’m just speaking personally, you’re fulfilling a different need through sexuality — a need for love, a need for attention and a need to be special.... And I didn’t want any of the characters to be villains or evil. I wanted the dad to be finally exploring the sexuality he’d been repressing for so long. It’s still going to erupt into complete madness, you know what I mean? Because I think that happens in real life all the time.
What’s it like being a female director in Newfoundland?
I think there’s a huge lack of female directors as it is, but I have to be honest, in Newfoundland the entire film industry is entirely controlled by females — half of them lesbians. There’s Gerry Rogers and Peg Norman and Mary Walsh and Cathy Jones. We’ve got amazing female role models all over the place. And my best friend is Sherry White and she’s got a film called Crackie, competing with mine. She says people come up to her all the time and say “Congratulations on getting into Sundance.” She says thank you because she’s actually in my film. But I’m not in hers.... Like, what the fuck?