COMPASS
The Island finally gets to play itself
Why using the real McCoy for Lucy Maud's latest
adaptation has given PEI such a lift
Monday, December 8, 1997
By Kevin Cox
in Summerside, PEI
Summerside, PEI -- THE patience Maisie Adams drew upon as Prince Edward Island's first female lighthouse keeper still serves her well.
The Summerside resident has embarked on a new career that takes her in front of the lights to a hurry-up-and-wait world where people must learn to bide their time -- especially those who have to spend countless hours over the course of a year and a half confined to a rocking chair while waiting to deliver the same line.
Mrs. Adams appears in Emily of New Moon , a forthcoming television series based on the works of Lucy Maud Montgomery. Her role, while not especially demanding, promises to be memorable. When the action takes place in a general store, she can be seen rocking away in the background and then offering this snippet advice: "Cheer up, you'll soon be dead."
Breaking into show business at 84 may seem daunting, but "the cameras didn't really make me nervous one bit," says Mrs. Adams. "The only thing was, the rest of [the cast] had been there for some time when I came on. They knew how to read the books and everything, so I was quite a while catching on."
But to many of the 137,000 people in Canada's smallest province it is the filmmaking industry that is finally catching on -- by producing Montgomery's works in the place where she wrote them -- on the red earth next to the electric-blue ocean of Prince Edward Island.
For years, tour guides here have grimaced when asked by visitors for directions to any sites used in the filming of Anne of Green Gables or The Road to Avonlea . Many Islanders seethed while acknowledging that those productions were in fact shot thousands of kilometres away -- north of Toronto where rural Ontario was dressed up to look like PEI.
Now the camera crews and stars such as Michael Moriarty and Phyllis Diller are a welcome sight for Islanders who no longer have to watch actors working in Uxbridge, Ont., and pretending they are in Charlottetown.
Supervising producer Marlene Matthews spent six years as a senior writer for The Road to Avonlea without ever visiting the place where the series was set. However, she says that she knew as soon as she landed on PEI last year that, despite the increased costs of transportation and accommodation, Emily would have to be made here.
"It just blew me away," she recalled recently near the end of filming on the series. "This is where I had to be. I really believe the Island formed Lucy Maud Montgomery's sensibilities and formed the shape of her story and formed the mind of the very imaginative child. Being here you can feel the magic of the location, the isolation of living on an island. I think we will understand Emily much better."
With the increased budget -- each of the 26 one-hour episodes costs about $1-million to make -- production partners Salter Street Films of Halifax and Cinar Films of Montreal faced another difficulty. They had to find people to appear in front of the cameras in a province where few had done such work.
When she first visited the Island, Ms. Matthews consulted the visitors' guide. On the cover was dark-haired Martha MacIsaac of Charlottetown. The producer arranged to meet Martha, then 12, and her mother Irene. "When I saw this little girl walk towards me, I just knew she was Emily."
What's more, "I told her I [also] was looking for a girl as blond as she was dark, and Martha said, 'You should meet my friend, Jessica Pellerin.'
"I thought this is not real that I could find both these kids right here. So we proceeded to do auditions across the country in places like Toronto and Vancouver -- and we came back to those two girls from the Island."
Martha plays the imaginative child writer Emily Starr, who stirs up the staid and stifling late 19th-century life at the New Moon farm with visions and dreams that reveal dark secrets. Jessica is her precocious and curious friend, Ilse Burnley. Their cast mates include such well-known performers as Sheila McCarthy, last seen on TV in Picket Fences, Susan Clark of Butterbox Babies and Tell Them Willie Boy is Here and Stephen McHattie, who starred in Life with Billy and had a recurring role in Seinfeld. (Mr. Moriarty and Ms. Diller have guest roles in the show.)
To populate their crowd and school-room scenes, the people in charge of casting scoured the Island, recruiting children on the street, in supermarkets and from photographs. Some days as many as 20 youngsters would be lined up for screen tests.
But they didn't have to look far to fill one starring role: PEI's natural elements. The New Moon farmhouse sits within a few metres of the crashing surf, while the story's Disappointed House (a dilapidated structure that no one ever lived in) has been sunk into the side of a sand dune. And like the Wind Woman of Emily's imagination, it can really howl on the Island -- so much so that during many exterior shots crew members had to prop up the girls to keep them from being blown over. (Thanks to an abandoned hangar at the former Canadian Forces Base Summerside, the interior filming was more calm.)
Has all this extra cost and effort really produced better television? CBC viewers can make up their own minds when the first of the 26 episodes airs on Jan. 4. (The series also appears on Western International Communications stations next fall). But Islanders, bitten by the showbiz bug, have no doubts that it's all worthwhile.
As someone who wanted to act before she'd even started school, Martha MacIsaac says that making Emily of New Moon in PEI "means I don't have to go away. I still get to see my friends on the weekends. I still get to stay where I grew up."
And the provincial government, which kicked in $1.9-million toward the cost of the seashore sets (which are to become a permanent tourist attraction), is hoping Emily will help PEI join Nova Scotia as haven for filmmakers.
Maisie Adams, meanwhile, says she "enjoyed it to the fullest" and is already looking ahead.
"If I'm as smart next year as I am now -- and this is still going and they want me back -- I'll be glad to help them out. It was wonderful thing." Kevin Cox is Atlantic correspondent of The Globe and Mail.
Series notes
Story line: Based on the novels Emily of New Moon , Emily Climbs and Emily's Quest , the plot revolves around Emily Byrd Starr, who begins the series as a defiantly independent and outspoken 11-year-old. Her father, played by Michael Moriarty, dies in the first episode (her mother having died long before), leaving her an orphan in the care of her strict and grim-faced Aunt Elizabeth.
Once at New Moon Farm, Emily runs into dark and long-held secrets. She has frequent visions of both the past and the future and disappears to the attic where she secretly chronicles the things no one is supposed to talk about. This despite her aunt's edict that she not engage in anything so frivolous as writing.
Series: 26 one-hour episodes
Cost: Approximately $27-million
Crew: 80 technical people, mostly from Nova Scotia and Quebec with some Prince Edward Islanders being trained in filmmaking.
Cast: More than 100, with Island children Martha MacIsaac and Jessica Pellerin making their film debuts in principal roles, along with dozens of Islanders who play walk-on parts in the school and street scenes.
