He looks more like a cowboy bouncer outside a biker bar than a first-rate Canadian director.
That's Bruce McDonald.
Wandering around a downtown Toronto alley in the middle of the night, he's resplendent in a scrunched-down brown cowboy hat and long black leather jacket.
McDonald is not hanging out, but preparing to film a scene from his latest movie, Claire's Hat, showcasing Juliette Lewis, Gina Gershon and Mickey Rourke.
The lights, the big camera and the crew at work around the trucks give away the task at hand. But if McDonald feels the strain and the pressure as the go-to-guy, he's not showing it.
The 39-year-old casually sits on the back of an equipment truck while grips and gaffers dress up the alley for the shoot.
"You forget," says a friendly McDonald, looking around at the slow but steady activity, "how long it takes to get anything done. It still amazes me."
His memory isn't failing him, it's just hazy. The director of Hard Core Logo, Dance Me Outside, Highway 61 and Roadkill has been out of the film business for five years, doing lots of rapid-fire TV stuff.
Claire's Hat ("A fun noir adventure," he says) marks his return to the feature game, and he seems creatively excited and personally relieved.
"TV is great but it's not a director's medium," he says. "It really is for writer-producers."
Not that there is anything wrong with that. In fact, McDonald made the transition smoothly from film to TV with some high-profile moments, most notably Twitch City.
The Claire's Hat project had been kicking around since '93 when he came up with the idea, then later had a friend, Semi Challas, fashion his outline into a screenplay.
A few years ago McDonald hooked up with producer Robert Lantos and his Serendipity Point Films, which obtained the rights and got the feature into a "go" mode this fall.
For McDonald, Claire's Hat is departure in a couple of ways. It's the first time he's not producing his own picture. He's also directing well-known American actors.
"I've done four movies without movie stars," McDonald says. "Maybe this is the one to do it."
Actually, McDonald and Lantos mutually "agreed that this was the way to take" Claire's Hat.
When Lewis "walked into a casting session in Los Angeles" to audition for the lead, McDonald considered himself fortunate. Gershon and Rourke followed.
Commercial opportunism aside, the director has not gone over to the mainstream, abandoning his Canadian content in the process. Lewis' Claire is a Quebecois streetnik from Montreal who desperately heads to Toronto for help.
Yes, for once Toronto plays itself.
As for the Hollywood hired hands? McDonald shrugs.
"It gives us the extra little push," he says. "We can compete in a world market, and we haven't compromised the integrity of the film by choosing some second-rate cheeseball actors."
With the name actors comes a bigger budget, "which buys some more time and design." And there's the luxury of allowing more care and attention to detail.
"It's not just rushing to connect the dots," he says. "You can add more layers."
We'll see what those results will be, perhaps by next fall. Meanwhile, McDonald promises that neither movie stars nor a bigger budget will change his independent maverick ways.
Five years of TV, on the other hand, might have had its negative impact. The trademark McDonald grin covers his face.
"No," he says, confessing that the television stretch was a good thing. "I became more confident."
Then he defines the experience the way only the street-wise McDonald can, like a cowboy bouncer at a biker bar.
"It's like target practice," he says of doing TV work. "You get to know how to handle the gun, and you become a pretty good shot."
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