Canada has many talented actors, writers, directors, and other content creators. To help our industry grow, we would like to introduce you to some of those talented folks who have managed to capture that magic on screen.
This week we spoke with Vancouver/Toronto, actor, writer, director, producer, and every other film & TV job you can think of… Nicholas Carella.
HNMAG: You were recently on Hudson and Rex. Did you film that in Newfoundland?
Nicholas Carella: Yes. It was a great time. Great cast and I love St. John’s so much. And I finally got to meet Diesel (who plays Rex).
HNMAG: You work with Michelle Ouellet, your wife, quite a bit.
Nicholas Carella: The best collaborator on Earth. Our first movie was released in 2008, Hooked on Speedman, but we produced indie theatre before that.
HNMAG: Nice. You met your wife, Michelle, in Toronto.
Nicholas Carella: That’s right.
HNMAG: Did you meet because of the movie?
Nicholas Carella: We went to high school together. This past October 30th, we celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary. Time flies.
HNMAG: Congratulations. It’s funny how these things work out.
Nicholas Carella: I know, it feels like we’re a real industry couple.
HNMAG: It’s kind of funny to have a wedding around Halloween.
Nicholas Carella: True and funny enough, our engagement ended up being almost two years. We could’ve got married earlier but the only available date at our friend’s hall was the first anniversary of 9/11.
HNMAG: Did you write Hooked on Speedman with Michelle or how did that happen?
Nicholas Carella: No, I wrote that with my pal Vince Gabriele. It’s actually a longish story that starts at our high school in Toronto, Cardinal Carter Academy for the Arts, where Michelle also went.
HNMAG: Nice.
Nicholas Carella: The genesis occurred in our last year of high school when Vince and I headed to the mall near our school and everyone was freaking out because Scott Speedman had just been there and we were like “Who the hell is Scott Speedman”. Turns out everyone we knew had a Scott Speedman story, he was even on the cover of the Bayview Post a local paper and we had our own freak out, like “oh my gosh we need to make a documentary” and of course, we don’t know how to make a documentary. Actually, this is kinda the entire plot of the movie, I’m spoiling it.
HNMAG: Right.
Nicholas Carella: Anyhow we went to write the script, I had only written plays and Vince hadn’t written anything so we thought we would improvise and record it. The scenes we improvised ended up being a little on the nose, but the delusional conversations we had in earnest while the mini-disc player was still recording, about this movie becoming huge and us becoming famous, ended up making up most of the dialogue of the movie.
HNMAG: Right for sure.
Nicholas Carella: It was all very meta. I played played Nick Carella who’s making a documentary about Scott Speedman. You get the picture.
HNMAG: Have you have you ever met Scott Speedman?
Nicholas Carella: Actually, yeah, I have a couple of times. Originally during the Fringe festival in Toronto, I was in a play called Christian Values. It was kind of my arrival into the Toronto theatre scene.
HNMAG: Nice.
Nicholas Carella: The whole joke in the movie is that everybody has a Scott Speedman story. Then another actor in the show, Scott McCord, told me they knew Speedman and would arrange for a meeting after one of our performances. I remember standing there in the Tranzac Club, waiting for him to arrive (this scene is also dramatized in the film) to come and talk to me. We waited for hours and then around 11 o’clock, he walked in like this golden idol. He walked straight up to me and said “I know who you are and I know you’re making fun of me but I’m in.” He writes his number on a piece of paper and now I got Scott’s phone number in my wallet for months while we try and actually write this thing. I finally get the gumption to call him and it’s gone out of service. Fully ghosted…or so I thought. We eventually write the film I talk to his agent and everything’s good, he’s in. There must’ve been some kind of miscommunication. A couple of days before Scott was supposed to work, we get a call. He’s not gonna do the movie.
HNMAG: Wow!
Nicholas Carella: Yeah, it was really messed up. We actually had trouble getting insured to release it! A couple of years later, I ran into Scott randomly on College street in Toronto and he asks if we ever shot the movie.
HNMAG: Oh boy!
Nicholas Carella: I said yes, we did, but we can’t release it. He looked at me with total confusion. The next day, we got the rights to release the movie.
For over 18 months. I was so sad about this guy intentionally screwing us, destroying my life.
HNMAG: Exactly.
Nicholas Carella: Instead, it was just a misunderstanding. It’s like the mockumentary, Waiting for Guffman.
HNMAG: Michelle directed it. How did you get her on board?
Nicholas Carella: We had a company together in Toronto for quite a while, as I mentioned, and she directed theatre. She also directed a short through a 24 Hour Film Festival called On the Fly. Michelle comes on to the film because it’s a new challenge- it was essentially her first full set- and we were so lucky because honestly, she just has incredible taste. She knows what’s good. She understood the tone of the movie in a way that I like comedies. Some directors want it to be pure slapstick or pure art house. Michelle is not one of those kind of directors. She knows what the script dictates and how to get the actors to deliver what is best for the plot.
HNMAG: You moved into producing a television series with Paranormal Solutions Inc (PSI). Did you come up with that after you moved to Vancouver?
Nicholas Carella: That’s right. I worked with David Milchard in 2013 on Afterparty.
He wanted to do a show like The Office meets Ghostbusters. Then we kept talking and meeting.
HNMAG: Right, you all came up with this idea. Was everything scripted or was it partially improvised?
Nicholas Carella: The show was 100% scripted. Though there’s always room for talented people to contribute.
HNMAG: Did you know the cast beforehand or did you find them when you were in production?
Nicholas Carella: Oh, that was 90% of everybody we knew. It really felt right.
HNMAG: Oh. That’s cool.
Nicholas Carella: We made a teaser for IPF Funding. We were able to get some amazing special FX as favors, and it was impressive. We shot the first season in 2016, with the funding of the IPF and TELUS. It took a long time for the show to get online traction. We were releasing 10-minute episodes on YouTube. I didn’t really think that was the place for it. I have to give David full credit here because every time he would attend a sales conference or anything, he would always bring up PSI and would email follow-ups to anybody who showed any interest in it every few months.
HNMAG: David’s persistence paid off.
Nicholas Carella: He was unrelenting. Eight years later, we get a call out of the US. Gunpowder & Sky wanted to license it for their ALTER platform. And now here we are. We just released and second season and a third one is in the can.
HNMAG: Terrific. Where is where is PSI set?
Nicholas Carella: We set it in the Pacific Northwest, but…
HNMAG: So it’s Vancouver, but it’s never really explicit.
Nicholas Carella: Yeah, it’s Vancouver but we wanted to leave space for anyone who wanted to imagine it was Portland or Seattle.
HNMAG: How important is it to you to have productions set in Canada? To show the world what Canada is like instead of making Vancouver, Portland, or Seattle? Or making Toronto, Chicago, or Buffalo?
Nicholas Carella: Well, everything that I’ve written since- and before, weirdly enough- is overtly set in Canada.
HNMAG: Great.
Nicholas Carella: When I’ve pitched shows in the US, executives never have an issue with something being set in Canada. In fact they are often surprised that that’s an issue for us in domestic development. It might be important on a Network Television procedural and it’s been a conversation with the medical show Michelle and I currently have in development, where the laws and practices are different and central to the plot. But on the whole, audiences want to see somewhere different. They like to see places they haven’t been to before. I do think beyond things in Canada. Global markets mean that your content doesn’t need to cater to everyone, you just need to find the people who like it, wherever they are. People in Finland are just as interested in Canada as they are America. If they’re interested in either at all.
It was terrific to speak with a funny and creative Torontonian who moved to Vancouver, and was having a successful career on the West Coast but then moved back to Ontario for family obligations. Check out PSI. We look forward to enjoying more work from Nicholas Carella on big and small screens everywhere.