Picture Claire / Claire’s Hat

CAST

Juliette Lewis
Gina Gershon
Camilla Rutherford
Callum Keith Rennie
and Mickey Rourke

Credits

A Serendipity Point Production

Directed By Bruce McDonald
Written By Semi Chellas
Produced By Robert Lantos, Wendy Grean
Director of Photography Miroslaw Baszak
Production Designer Rob Gray
Editor Michael Pacek
Original Score By Paul Haslinger
Costume Designer Lea Carlson

Picture Claire: 
2001 | 35mm | Color | 91 Minutes

Claire’s Hat: 
2002 | NTSC | Color | 91 Minutes

Synopsis

Picture Claire is a frenzied film noir about Claire Beaucage, a young woman whose dreams of a better life are kick-started into reality by a one-night stand. In only a few hours, Claire’s life will be turned upside-down. Escaping a group of vengeful drug dealers, Claire flees to Toronto hoping to find Billy, the man of her dreams. But he’s not everything he appears to be, and Claire is about to fall into a web of secrets. Fighting against time and a case of mistaken identity, Claire must race to clear her name and get out alive.

After screening the film at the Toronto International Film Festival, McDonald recut the film, calling the first version a failure. The seldom screened alternate version, Claire’s Hat: The Unmaking of a Film, has garnered a quasi-legendary status. Constructed like a DVD commentary –- with McDonald re-imagining the creators in the principal roles –- Claire’s Hat features some genuinely hilarious, though possibly apocryphal, behind-the-scenes anecdotes. But instead of the usual self-congratulatory throat clearing that characterizes such behind-the-scene forays, Claire’s Hat is a rancorous, excoriating exercise in self-criticism, in which McDonald confesses, “I fucked up my own movie.” Of course, he had some help, as detailed in this film packed with all variety of backstage knowledge.

Accolades

Toronto International Film Festival (World Premiere)

Picture Claire marks director Bruce McDonald’s graduation to hip and sophisticated filmmaker…the directing is bang on.”

Carol Harrison, Exclaim

“Mischievously conflating fact and fiction [in Claire’s Hat], McDonald creates a charming artifact that unfolds like Entertainment Tonight hosted by Jean-Luc Godard. “

Brian D. Johnson, Maclean’s

“A tender and hilarious revelation of the movie industry — an original portrait of how films get made, and how small mistakes become large ones.”

Author Michael Ondaatje on Claire’s Hat

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